Curators / Leslie Clague and Christian French

Goods

Leslie Clague
Jill Conner
William Fellows
Christian French
Stefan Knorr
Jesse Paul Miller
Sean Miller
R. Eugene Parnell
Demi Raven
Sue Anne Rische
Bethany Taylor
Megan Trainor
Sean Vale

June 1998 / ArtsEdge Festival, Seattle Center
September 1998 / Bumbershoot, Seattle Center

Part Claes Oldenberg's "Store," part Digger "Free Store," part interactive theaterperformanceinstallationhappening, Goods was a "Corporate enfranchise designed to give the people what they want: Art you can get™. At our two select retail distribution venues, ArtsEdge and Bumbershoot, Goods consolidated its reputation as the finest purveyor of art product in the contemporary Northwest, with literally thousands of happy customers coming through our doors."

By entering into an audience stream outside SOIL's gallery space, and by including over fifty artists from throughout the Seattle arts community, Goods was a playful, inclusive, and wildly successful project. Rather than a pedantic critique of consumerism, Goods really was about being commerce, and the realization that there is "No way out of the Mall." Guy DeBord, Jean Baudrillard, and Karl Marx were some of our celebrity spokespeople, helping our shoppers to map their desire against our wares. At the end of the day, buying things, selling things, making things–is this art, or commerce? Two sides of a very old coin. Artists, for whom symbols are stock-in-trade, found in Goods an "Idea of the Marketplace™," and a warm and welcoming one at that.

Text by Christian French