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2001
Video on LED Billboard
4 of 5
Instructions for a Happier Life
Flash animation 1000 x 1592px, H.264
Colour, no sound
0:45
1 August 2001
Leicester Square, London UK
Never Travel Economy
apes the style of pictograms used on many airline safety cards though, in this case, the instruction has more to do with expectations than survival.
The work can be taken at face value - you'll be more comfortable in First Class! But it can also be taken philosophically. At the time the artist was spending time with art dealer Jibby Beane
NOTE
Jibby Beane (birth year unknown) was a fifty-something Surrey housewife until she met fashion designer Vivienne Westwood in the ladies' toilet at the Design & Direction building. Impressed by Beane's energy and style, Westwood invited her to model and, at the age of 51, Jibby joined Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell walking for Westwood on the Paris catwalk. Beane was one of the first gallerists to show work in a domestic space. Her inaurgural exhibition opened in her Bayswater flat in London on 14 July 1993, showing the work of then boyfriend Jonathan Golsan. Beane also hosted an arts club. She described
Jibby's Arts Club
as 'a platform for people to do as they like, whether techno-poetry or an impromptu performance. I don't want it to be predictable'. Of her divorce and transformation from suburban wife and mother to artworld doyen she said, 'I don't want to make it sound easy. It was tough. But life is a gift. We owe it to ourselves to live it to the full.'
who was fond of the New Age idea, 'The mind is a teacher, the body is a pupil'.
Some of Beane's thinking appears to have found its way into this artwork.
Never Travel Economy
can be read as a comment on the New Age idea that we tend to get what we settle for in life. Perhaps it's true that the more demanding one is, the better life gets.
