With a name like HANDJOB, you bet the gallery and store is every bit as titillating as one would fantasise. HANDJOB Gallery // Store (HJGS) hosts a selection of works by contemporary artists who design and produce a limited edition of objects that are by the artist’s own definition of functional. By inviting artists to create functional objects, HJGS creates a space between art, design and craft. The space allows for an artist whose practice may be primarily conceptual, or even completely dematerialised – whose work is held up on pedestals and pristine gallery walls, but are not necessarily sellable – to experiment with craft and consumerism. Speaking with HJGS’ New York-based owner and curator, Zoe Fisher, we unpack the origins of the project, the dynamics between producer and patron, and whether functional objects retain artistic value within the consumer market.

I’ll admit, Googling ‘hand job gallery’ brought up some interesting, if not NSFW, imagery. But when I came upon the gallery website and browsed the online store, it was every bit as stimulating as the other searches. I quizzed Fisher on her choice of name, and how this venture came about, commenting that other than being a light hearted way to reference the perimeters of the project, the name seemed similar to the awkward intercourse between art and design. As she explains, “Although the project is deeply rooted in a serious conceptual inquiry into theories of craft, art and design, it pulls artists away from their devout conceptual practices and into an uncharted domain of design in which their art will be handled and used in its post-production consumer life.”


HJGS began as the thesis project in Fisher’s final year of study at Sarah Lawrence College; theory began to greatly influence her studio practice. As an artist she struggled to find a medium in which the value of a work lies in its ability to manipulate the viewer: “I wanted every viewer of my artwork to be a participant. I wanted the objects I produced to, in one way or another, change one’s perception,” she explains. “I found that the objects of our daily lives, those which have real functional value like tools, clothing, and utensils, were the objects that contribute most to the way in which one moves through the world.” She discovered that design was a field that most directly considered the way objects could contribute and manipulate the way one interacts with art and people. In this respect, functional objects that have been designed by the artist are a medium between people.

Perched patiently on the e-shelf beside goodies by artists like Tommy Coleman (who has crafted the coolest diamond-tipped pencil scribes you’ve ever seen), Maiko Gubler and Mel Nguyen, both of whom have been featured previously on PITCH-PRESENT. The space sees Aussie platforms Paradise Structures and Seven Sodas make an artistic appearance, whilst Chen Chen & Kai Williams dive further into their obsession with shanks and knives to produce an exclusive edition of switch blades with handles made of their signature mixed material resin. It’s an international shopping smorgasbord and you’re all invited.


But what of the union between contemporary artists and their welcomed experimentation with wider consumerism? Through HJGS, the contributing artists are provided an alternative income to fund their regular arts practice, not needing to sacrifice autonomous production or value in the pieces they produce in the process. “By borrowing from both the retail models of a typical shop and the gallery, HJGS creates a different kind of space in which each object is appreciated not only for its value as an ‘artist-made’ work, but also by its functionality in the lives of its consumer,” enthuses Fisher.

I often feel guilty when browsing the gift shop of any major museum. Is it wrong to take home a pocket sized postcard of the masterpiece I was admiring only minutes ago in another room? Though I know a Mona Lisa postage stamp or Monet coffee mug does not belittle the significance of the original, but do endless reproductions and replicas detract from the rarity of the work? Fisher assures me that the pieces designed and produced by the artists and sold through the online store retain their artistic value. “The brilliance of the artist’s vision is not lost in the art itself, but in the context of the object – artists can sell beautiful handmade objects without relegating them to the inaccessible and exclusive realm of the private gallery or museum,” she explains. The desire is that objects available at HJGS live beyond the lifespan of the artist’s studio, and exist within the homes and hands of the consumer – to be used, abused and exchanged by the consumer, more like a tool than a piece of art.

HANDJOB Gallery // Store is not only an alternative gallery and creative space, but an innovative artistic ideology. It is a mode of making, a medium through which artists and designers alike can work to create uniquely intricate objects that pose more intimate and direct solutions to the functions and needs of daily life. It may be different to the hand jobs offered in other Google searches, but it’s every bit as rousing.

http://www.h-j-g-s.com/

Words / Braydon Gould