Fancy Goods

Fancy Goods presents oil painting multiples created through a collaboration between Emily Hartley-Skudder and painter-workers at a Chinese oil painting company. During a 2018 residency in Xiamen, Hartley-Skudder commissioned these painters to execute works based on photographs she constructed of discarded objects. Only one canvas in each set of eight was painted by Hartley-Skudder herself.

The exhibition questions assumptions about artistic authenticity and the value placed on hand-painted work. By outsourcing production, Hartley-Skudder examines the labour systems underlying the art world and critiques market demands for constant artistic output. The works raise fundamental questions about when art comes into being—at the ready-made object stage, the photograph, or the painting—and challenge simplified notions of artistic intention and authorship. The paintings are presented alongside their corresponding source photographs in lightbox format, emphasizing the interdependence of image and execution.