The Living Room, Lee Mingwei’s show at the Chinese Arts Centre (through July 27) sounds fascinating.

The NYC-based artist arranged a vibrantly wallpapered space for local collectors to use for display and discussion of objects. It seems that they’ve found quite an interesting and diverse range of hosts to participate.

You can learn more on the TheLivingRoomProject.co.uk. The questions posed,

“Why do we collect?”

and

“What do our collections say about us?”

however, seem harder to grasp via the site; perhaps it is more discernible for those who attend the events in person.

On the site, there’s a video of an audio recording of Lee’s artist’s talk—an overview of past projects. As an audio recording, there aren’t any images, but I found it worthwhile because of the open-ended, conceptual and participatory nature of his work does not demand images as much as more formal artworks would. The audio-video shed light on his practice overall, but I wanted to hear more about the above two questions. The researcher in me wants to inquire about the projects’ outcomes, and the artist in me shudders at the thought.

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More things examined in Manchester and viewable at:
PrizedPossessions.co.uk