Our Mission
(July 2008)
Butcher’s is a project founded in 2008 by curators Ben Borthwick and Cylena Simonds. Butcher’s provides a platform for a network of artists, designers and producers to develop projects, share resources, and exchange services using the economic model of bartering. There are no fixed members or sites of operation, but shifting affiliations depending on the availability of resources and the people involved. Projects may materialize as exhibitions, performances, publications or any other format depending on the aesthetics and concept.
Butcher’s is committed to projects that explore new social, political and aesthetic models and seeks to propose alternatives to current dialogues around the presentation of contemporary aesthetic practices. The DIY ethos that is often the impetus of project spaces is also Butcher’s starting point. Yet, while most of these favor work by “young emerging” artists, Butcher’s aims to introduce new audiences to the work of artists with established international practices but who are not widely known in the UK.
As the name suggests, Butcher’s is committed to working on the high street as part of the everyday fabric of communities. But we are also aware of the role art galleries play in regeneration / gentrification processes by which traditional high street family businesses like butchers and bakers are displaced by supermarkets and other multinational chains. Butcher’s currently occupies a shop front window in Camden as a strategy to engage audiences of all generations from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds. The window is a limit between public and private space and Butcher’s seeks to animate this boundary by communicating across it. Each project directly addresses passersby, co-opting and subverting the visual codes of commerce, advertising, and public announcement.
Tim Etchells’s neon sign Wait Here (2008) launched the first project at Butcher’s in July 2008. Shown for the first time in London, Etchells’s work uses language to allude to awkward or troubling encounters, calling on the viewer to respond or act in certain way. By situating the statement ‘Wait here, I have gone to get help’ in the public realm, this project raises questions of trust, both within communities and between strangers, by exploring the limits between self-interest and helping others.
