This month, the Bury New Road project commissioned artists Sandra Bouguerch and Louise Garman, from the prestigious neoartists studios, to produce a non-judgemental heritage artwork on what the media are dubbing ‘Counterfeit Street’.
Titled Believing Is Seeing, the artists were given a budget of £100 to spend on goods along the stretch, and bought a ‘Gucci’ belt, a pair of ‘Yves Saint Lauren’ sunglasses, an ‘Off-White’ ‘Sculpture’ handbag, and a ‘Christian Louboutin’ handbag…
“What is the value of the goods?” asks Louise Garman “The base value is that the copy goods are the ‘cheapest’ – they’re copies worth the hundred quid that we spent…but the original goods, if you look them up, are worth £2,740 – and if you put our purchases in a gallery and elevate them on plinths, who knows what the value of those are. It’s a play on values as well….”
Sandra Bouguerch asks in her voiceover on the video ‘Trick or treasure?’…
Ladies and gentlemen, we present Believing Is Seeing…
* The police tape used in the installation is actually taken from a real Operation Vulcan raid on Bury New Road
With thanks to Rogue Artists’ Studios Openshaw for the plinths and art space www.rastudios.co.uk
For more details on Neo Artists see https://neoartists.co.uk/
For more details on the work of Louise Garman see https://www.louisegarman.com/
For more details on the work of Sandra Bouguerch see https://sandrabouguerch.tumblr.com/
The video was polished by Rafe Conn
See also:
The Future of Strangeways – Over 1,000 New Apartments But…Will the prison still be there? Can they really bulldoze the dodgy warehouses? – click here
