Self-conscious curatorial impetuses are increasingly at the forefront of exhibition programming, a kind of self-awareness that is brought to new light in ‘Unrealised Potential’, a summer show curated by Mike Chavez-Dawson at Manchester’s Cornerhouse. The entry point for visitors is the collaboration between Chavez-Dawson and artists Sam Ely and Lynn Harris, co-founders of Unrealised Projects (2003–ongoing) – a group who investigate unfulfilled creative ideas. Together they revisit Chavez-Dawson’s own Potential Hits (2003) to present an expansive collection of proposals from a breadth of contemporary artists, writers, musicians and curators. The unproduced ideas are lined up in the first gallery, alongside a set of terms and conditions, whereby visitors are invited to purchase the artist proposals for ‘realisation’. The setting adopts a similar structure to an auction space, where a red sticker is placed on each idea sold, with the purchasing ‘producer’ being offered two years to realize the project, before it returns to the marketplace.
The scope of suggestion on offer stretches between the political and the absurd. For example, Tim Etchells, in What Your Right Hand is For, puts the audience to the task of producing a show that unearths the masturbatory fantasies of some of the world’s most famous visual artists (including Steve McQueen, Jenny Holzer and Chris Ofili). While, Doug Fishbone, in There Once Was a Man from Iraq, proposes that a monumental sculpture of Saddam Hussein be re-erected onto the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square.