What might not be clear from reading Jasia Stuart's previous review is that Simple Functionalism was not a remake of a previous exhibition. It was not a twin. It was the fragment of a previous group exhibition presented as a solo exhibition. In 1981 Simple Functionalism was part of the exhibition Vocation/Vacation curated by Brian MacNevin which included work by Michael Asher, Hans Haacke, Garry Neill Kennedy, Jan Pottie and Tom Sherman. In Vocation/Vacation the gallery was not left spare and empty, but had the work of Asher and Haacke installed inside it. Kennedy's attendant's desk was installed outside the exhibition doors, acting as a simulacrum, barely distinguishable as an artwork at all. Additionally, the three artists exhibiting in the show used a research text compiled by Pottie and Sherman to develop their projects. At the time MacNevin assembled the exhibition as an informal survey of what would later be termed "institutional critique" practices (the term was likely not viewed in print until 1985) and an investigation of how these practices might variously be applied to an institution such as the Banff Centre.

Garry Neill Kennedy, Simple Functionalism, from the Vocation/Vacation catalogue, 1981

What was common to all the works in Vocation/Vacation was an interest not simply in the 'white cube' as a contextual framing device, but in how the ideology of the Banff Centre influenced the artistic activity that took place under its umbrella, and the ways in which this often critical artistic activity actually served to reinforce the dominant corporate and government agendas of the Centre. Asher, Haacke and Kennedy all referenced material outside the gallery space in order to draw these contexts into the exhibition. For instance, the desk which constitutes the major element of Simple Functionalism is not simply an old desk. It is a very specific desk which was constructed in order to comply with the Banff Centre Statement of Design Guidelines established by the Banff Centre Aesthetic Committee. These guidelines were a set of rigorous (and at times absurd) aesthetic principles which determined the material construction and physical appearance of the public and private spaces of the Centre. The desk in the most recent exhibition not only complied with those guidelines, but also (perhaps more importantly) replicated the look and era of the desk from the original Vocation/Vacation exhibition. The new Simple Functionalism desk is a remake. Therefore, the most recent version of Simple Functionalism actually adhered to two sets of rigid aesthetic systems: those of the Design Guidelines as well as the historical specifications imposed by the previous piece.

At the time of Vocation/Vacation (as Benjamin Buchloh's post-exhibition essay makes very clear) the limits and possibilities of critiquing institutions were already widely understood. In keeping with this sentiment, Kennedy's work in the exhibition represented a tacit acknowledgment of the tautological reality that one cannot be 'outside' the institution. Nowadays the situation is even more complicated. Where once the attendant's desk was a 'new work', which made visible the presence of an overarching aesthetic principle implicating the Walter Phillips Gallery, it now also functions as an artifact linking the most recent exhibition to a historically documented previous exhibition. In this sense the current Simple Functionalism historicizes institutional critique while at once signifying and reinvestigating it. This is a challenging situation for a contemporary art gallery to be entering into, but speaks of a necessity to reopen many of the debates which institutional critique originally propagated.

In staging Simple Functionalism Garry Neill Kennedy and Sylvie Gilbert (former Senior Curator at WPG) posed some very tough questions about the capacity for current contemporary art to provide effective critique of the institutions which support it. Primarily, if institutional critique is already being preserved and re-presented historically by contemporary art galleries such as the WPG then how can artists today make work which is critical of institutional contexts, but includes and expands the previous conditions of debate? Perhaps one way we can continue to critically evaluate art and institutions is by reconsidering 'artifacts' like Simple Functionalism as historical, but not as anachronistic. Instead, an exhibition such as this is a prescient reminder that artists, art galleries, dealers, collectors, studios and critics as well as the social and political reality in which we are embedded are all 'the institution', and we all determine its course.

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For further writing on the topic of institutional critique, see Andrea Fraser's "From the critique of institutions to an institution of critique."

Photos credit Laura Vanags, courtesy of the Walter Phillips Gallery.

Walter Phillips Gallery