Conceptual artist Jill Magid develops an unorthodox project to explore the colourful modernist structures left behind by Mexico’s greatest architect, Luis Barragán, whose archive and copyright has been aggressively “protected” by the Swiss design company Vitra since his death. According to lore, the chairman of Vitra gifted the $2.5-million collection to his fiancée, an architectural scholar, in place of an engagement ring. The archive has been largely inaccessible ever since. An investigation into how stories are formed, The Proposal is a masterful meta work. It sifts through truth, fiction, speculation and scholarship to construct a thoughtful love story between two women and an architect, and a suspenseful investigation into the corporate control of intellectual copyright and its effects on artistic legacy. What is the social and ethical responsibility of the collector to the artist and their audience? How and by whom should an artist’s body of work be written into history? Angie Driscoll
Co-presented with The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery.