Exercise 1 Reflection on ‘Question for Seller’ by Nicky Bird

Nicky Bird collected unwanted family photographs sold on e-bay to create an archive which she then sold on e-bay or at auction after being displayed on a gallery wall.

1. Does their presence on a gallery wall give these images an elevated status?

Yes. Just as the meaning of a word is its use the meaning of these photographs is defined by their use as art. If they are accepted as art then that is what they are. Their original context and purpose, whatever it might have been, has been lost even when the seller has been able to comment on the images they have sold. Their new context creates a new definition constructed by the artist’s planned intention. She has set out to create a particular response in an artistic environment. This in itself changes the status of the images. Whether art is more ‘elevated’ than any other kind of presentation is another question. Their monetary value has certainly risen.

2. Where does the meaning of the images in ‘Question for Seller’ come from?

Meaning is a function of use. When the images were used as private snaps their meaning could be a simple record – so and so looked like this in his uniform – or an aide memoire, a prompt to a particular emotion – I loved the person once – or whatever. The reasons the photographs were taken and kept, like the reasons they were discarded, are lost. Their present meaning derives from the artist’s express intentions. The viewer is invited to speculate and to see the images in ways that their originators never thought of.

3. When they are sold again, is their value increased by the fact that they are now ‘art’?

Art is famously what you can get away with but here the art lies in the selection and collection of the images in one place according to an artistic intention. The art lies in the abstract thought that produced the work so that individual images, like the paint on canvas, have little intrinsic value. The new value is created to extent that the artist is successful in making viewers think and appreciating the new thoughts she offers them.