Supermarket Stockholm

As part of a contingent of Harrington Mill Studios, the only UK artist led organisation to participate outside of London, I attended Supermarket in Stockholm, Sweden over the weekend of February. We were selected along with some 60 others from around 150 such enterprises around the world to have a stand at the Fair, dubbed the largest of its kind in the world. No matter that it may well be the only of its kind – it attracted over 10,000 visitors (at ten quid a pop entrance fee) and was a massive information exchange for the participants. On our stand business was brisk, frenetic by out of town UK standards, and in a half hour period on the busy Saturday I counted through over 150 visitors. In the same period on Sunday the numbers were still 130 plus over the same time including a couple from West Bridgford! All this activity took place in the Kulturhuset, a huge multi purpose arts and entertainment complex that sits across the largest open air square in the city centre, and over a weekend when the weather was positively Artic – heavy snow had compacted on ice and kept on falling through the whole week preceding and during the Fair (I know it's Scandinavia but even the locals suggested this was exceptionally inclement).

What of the work itself? Well as befits the kind of project there was a wide range of presentations – several of the Scandinavian outfits made special and specific activities. Studio 44 from Stockholm itself (and home to the organisers of the whole event) were our next door neighbours and mounted a quasi scientific piece conceived by three of their residents entitled The Litmus Commission (an elaborate construct utilising a variety of technologies old and new including several ancient reel to reel tape machines) whilst across the way from us Galleria Huuto from Helsinki constructed an elaborate inverted Christmas Tree sculptural piece (as an environmentally conscious artists gallery) although, whisper it, parts of which were made of plastic! Some stands were fairly naked sales pitches – MUU from Helsinki runs a photo gallery, the oldest in Finland for lens based work and showed work alongside a table groaning with publications by some of their 350 plus membership.

Others were pretty much a single piece of work – Candyland (also from Stockholm) presented a single work – Bob Dylan’s Blockhead from 1962: whether or not this was spoofed I never did ascertain. Still others were just plain whacky – Titanik from Turku in Finland turned up on the morning of the first day, arranged five chairs across one wall, put up sheets of A4 with their names printed on above each chair and proceeded to have an impromptu (and at times fairly lacklustre) party – fitting perhaps for a collective that started life in a redundant public toilet!

What the Fair demonstrated more than anything is the continuing strength of artist led organisations and the spirit of entrepreneurial endeavour that characterises such organisations. Lest it seem that Scandinavian projects dominated the event there were others that came from much further away. Art On Armitage is a really dynamic enterprise that uses a shop frontage in Chicago as a key exhibition venue, FIT (freie internationale tankstelle) is a Berlin based gallery franchise that sets up in disused Filling Stations (and has seven such ventures underway across Europe and US) and Seven Seven Contemporary Art may be known to some readers, having been a London based co-op/gallery for over a decade.

By Sunday afternoon the artists, particularly Pontus Raud whose idea the whole thing was back in 2006 when eleven artists groups in Stockholm came together, looked bushwhacked – the participants were certainly so – many of them had partied hard during the evenings after the Fair had closed. But impressively their passion and enthusiasm for the idea was still burning brightly. There was much I missed – a performance by Bill Drummond, community singing and a range of what looked like highly interesting talks by various projects. But then again there was much to entertain – not least a highly motivated and educated public anxious to discuss and debate our work with us – now how often does that happen here?