Final abstract

In 1973, Martha Rosler held a garage sale in an art gallery, this installation/performance was entitled the Monumental Garage Sale. This artwork has also been reproduced numerous times, the most recent being in 2005 at the ICA (London). The purpose of this exploration is to situate Rosler’s gesture within two thematic overlapping areas: the everyday and spatiality, the writings of Henri Lefebvre as a conduit to explore these themes. I will be making parallels between the Garage Sale and other everyday gestures, such as those by artists Arman and Jannis Kounellis. In Rosler’s gesture, space is collapsing between a banal everyday event and the gallery, notions that are conventionally divided in Western analytical philosophies. Visitors to the gallery immediately become participants in an art performance, through their browsing and buying. The work oscillates between performance and installation, subject and object. Her gesture is in flux due to this interactive-ness of its visitors, who can browse, touch, and purchase the objects (and of course at low garage sale prices!). The Garage Sale is a potent stance for/on the ideological framework of gallery space. Although, it is staged in a highly contemplative space, i.e. the art gallery, it still encourages a close reading of such a banal quotidian event. Douglas Drake Leeds, August 2005