Primer (for Raymond Williams) Artists Space, NY. 21 May 1982 – 17 July 1982.
In 1982 Group Material was invited by Artists Space to make a work for one of the smaller rooms of its original space on Hudson St in lower Manhattan. Using Raymond Williams’ book Keywords, (1976), the group produced an exhibition that presented his insistence on the historical formation of language as a way to demonstrate similar conditions for the revaluing of visual culture. The result was a room with red walls presenting a drawing by Margret Harrison next to James Brown album covers next to a Jean-Luc Goddard film still next to Chaka Kahn’s interview in Interview Magazine and so on. As one of the first designed installations produced since leaving its original space on 13th Street, this project set the form for the group’s later investment in exhibiting accepted art objects juxtaposed with with store-bought commodities, cultural artifacts and ephemera as an act meant o question who gets to make culture and who its circulation and display is allowed to represent.
Artists Space archive page _(link)
