Project for an Unidentified Political Object

Project for an Unidentified Political Object is an exhibition and performance of all new work by the artist Gordon Shrigley.

Twenty fives years ago, Capitalism basked under the belief, that with the fall of Communism, the West had effectively won the Cold War. However, in 2008 we all watched in amazement as the edifice of our unassailable wealth and prosperity virtually disappeared overnight.

Since these events the artist Gordon Shrigley has been patiently searching for radical new forms of popular ideology to make sense of the present malaise, which are not based on what he sees as either outmoded 19th century political ideas or laissez-faire forms of postmodern aporia. Failing to discover anything new, Shrigley published Without Residue, A Preliminary Introduction to a Manifesto for An Unidentified Political Object (2010). His manifesto is a clarion call for all citizens to embrace the limitless space of the imagination as a path to discovering '… a mode of space-less thinking, an oxymoronic territory of a-temporality, without horizon, that proceeds without the need to affirm on the basis of that which bounds. Simply a fugitive kind of abandon.”

It is our pleasure to announce that for the 2015 General Election, Shrigley is to stand as a prospective member of Parliament, under the banner of Campaign. The questions outlined in Without Residue are to be played out through the form of a political physical theatre of everyday life that seeks to appropriate the electoral process as a frame for exposition.

Campaign Slogans:

I'm from your imagination, and I'm here to help.
Real politics are the possession and distribution of possibilities.
If it is true that the space of the imagination is so precious - why do we ration it?
A revolution need not be an act of violence or an insurrection, but simply a Line of thought.
I have nothing to offer, but offer itself.
I've seen the future, and it doesn't exist.

Gordon Shrigley (b.1964, Wiltshire, UK) studied at Bournville College of Art, Birmingham; the University of Westminster and the Slade School of Fine Art, London. He has exhibited in the UK and abroad including Fruehsorge Contemporary Drawings, Berlin; the Centre for Contemporary Art, Sacramento; the Musée dʼart Moderne, Saint-Etienne and the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart. He was selected for an artist's residency at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart in 1998 and at Hospitalfield House, Arbroath in 2000. His work can be found in the Staatsgalerie Drawing and Print Collection, Stuttgart; Academy Schloss Solitude Archive Collection, Stuttgart; Musée dʼart Moderne, Saint-Etienne and the Ludwigsburg State Archives, Germany.