Event Structure Research Group 67-82

The exhibition Sky & Game: Eventstructure Research Group 1967-1982 is the first retrospective exhibition by the Eventstructure Research Group (ERG) artist collective and provides a large-scale overview of their work. The group was founded in 1967 by Dutchman Theo Botschuijver, American Sean Wellesley-Miller and Australian Jeffrey Shaw and was active in the 60s, 70s and 80s of the last century. The group focused on creating temporary art in public spaces that focused on play and interaction through installations with air and technology. The group was constantly pushing the boundaries with their large inflatable installations, often with audiovisual additions, that elicited an immediate physical response from the spectator. The visitor was always a participant ─ and thus an author ─ made of the work: a structure you could get in or on, that you could change and adapt as you wish: the artwork as an experience, as event. The main ideas behind the interventions were breaking the daily routine, walking off the beaten path and the participation and interaction of citizens, but especially (re) introducing play into society.

‍
The name Eventstructure Research Group (ERG) was derived from the concept of event structures, a term coined by British conceptual artist John Latham to describe the relationship between structures (spatial and static) and events (dynamic and temporary). The name sounds a bit formal and academic, but ERG was anything but that. The group's ideas were published in their 1969 theoretical article Concepts for an Operation Art in the journal Art and Artists. ERG opposed the prevailing modus operandi of the art world at the time, which was too concerned with fixed objects that had only a decorative function. According to ERG, the essential function of art (the call for revolution, self-action and change in society) had disappeared. ERG's works were therefore deliberately temporary and always placed outside the museum walls, so that the traditional art world had no control over them. Moreover, the authorship of the groups' work was intentional and exclusively collective in the broadest sense of the word. Not only the group and everyone around it authored the work, but the user just as much.

The exhibition Sky & Play: Eventstructure Research Group 1967-1982 shows original archival material; drawings, sketches, material studies, aerial artworks, video material and photos.

‍

Curators: Rosa van Rumpt and Jorn Konijn

Curatorial Researcher: Alan Smart

Spatial and graphic design: ST—DUO.

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍