1998
The concept for the Unique series was developed in response to a call for entries by the Birmingham Art Trust for an exhibition on the theme of the environment of the artist. Artists were asked to submit a maximum of five Polaroids on the subject. Bearing in mind the discrepancies between the imagined, mythical, televisionized life that artists supposedly lead and the rather down to earth version we had managed to lay our hands on, we decided to forget our all too real lives and go along in the fantasy of the celebrated star artist, a status one is supposed to ambition with utter zeal. We united text and Polaroid to simultaneously convey this discrepancy, mock ourselves as aspiring artist and show the die-hard optimism one needs to carve out an existence as a professional artist. Unfortunately, we never had a chance to see the exhibition, which traveled around the UK for a while. It took BAT ages to send our pictures back, and when they were finally returned, one was missing -without further explanation - and the rest of the Polaroids was worn out and slightly tatty from all the spray mounting. We took this as an indication of the series having been enjoyed by a wide public.
