Fix, Fix, Fix: GROUP EXHIBITION
Gallery S O

FIX, FIX, FIX was a group exhibition curated by Glenn Adamson, which brought together British and international artists and makers. It included curated objects made outside of an art context by self-taught and professional repairers, alongside commissioned works by artists who were asked to respond to the exhibition theme. In each case, the viewer was invited to look closely—much more closely than is usual in an exhibition context—to detect the presence of repair.

The perfect repair was an invisible one. The aim was to completely restore a broken object to its original function and appearance. But no repair was perfect. It was not possible to turn back the clock, and no matter how skilled the restoration, it was detectable—at least to expert eyes. This meant that, aesthetically speaking, fixing worked against itself. It involved a process of self-erasure: the more skilled the repair, the less visible it became.

Fixing had been much in the air in recent years. A general enthusiasm for DIY had prompted many people to make good their old things rather than throw them out and buy something new. Beyond this, a generation of self-anointed “hackers” had tried to improve commodities in ways the original manufacturer never intended. A common tactic had been to invite all comers to bring in the broken detritus of their lives and transform each object into an artwork—a strategy pursued by [re]design (London), Klinik der Dinge (Berlin), and Tobias Sternberg’s Art Repair Shop (Belfast).

Participants: Arlington Conservation, David Clarke, Leo Fitzmaurice, Fixperts, Alice Kettle, Laura McGrath, Jasleen Kaur, Park View Motors, Gord Peteran, Stephen Probert, Roland Roos, Bernhard Schobinger, Hans Stofer, Lisa Walker, Max Warren.