Working from the inside ... Russell Thoburn between two Paperscapes, Hay Gallery (2004)
For an exhibition dedicated to the joys of blagging, the launch party of A Fakes Progress was disappointingly easy to get into. No carefully-won, gold-embossed invite required, no schmoozing, simulating, pleading or masquerading as someone of note. The Foundry in Great Eastern Street is not interested in making money out of its displays and lets pretty much anyone exhibit for free. ("What concerns us is that none of the work is subsidized or funded by the Arts Council.")
The self-proclaimed "social sculptor" Russell Thoburn has spent the past three years gatecrashing artworld freebies. Emails pretending to be Alex James or Gary Hume have got him into glamorous receptions for the Turner Prize or the new Sam Taylor-Wood launch. Blurring fiction and reality, so we are told, Thoburn has created a display out of his ligging successes - cards bearing maxims such as "possibilities" and "completion" are printed with his emails to proxies of Saatchi and Victoria Miro.
The centrepiece, In a Circle, was fun: an arrangement of coloured matchsticks, inside a sacred "stone circle" of fashionable matchboxes, with ordinary matchsticks hanging on the fringes, wondering if they'll be allowed in. Inspired by the current Hogarth exhibition at Tate Britain, it is meant to pay homage to Hogarth's Tavern Scene (it should be clear by now that Thoburn is not afraid of piggybacking); it reminded me more of Lowry's downtrodden commuter crowds - an inadvertent expression of Thoburn's exhaustion with all that attention to surface?
According to Thoburn, the work of the publicists and VIP managers is "just as creative . . . as the art that they promote". Unfortunately, that's just not true. He is, however, making a valid point about the unfortunate importance of networking, and this is not to detract from the genuine creativity of his blagging. Like all good cities, London is full of forbidding-seeming doorways, hosting free parties replete with booze, cheese and art. Getting in can be easy: the trick is simply knowing which doors to push on any given night. But Thoburn has pulled off some coups, and should be very proud of himself.
My uncle used to blag his way into football matches by pretending to be the secretary of the fictitious Lord Tyrone ("his Lordship will be in Southampton tomorrow and wondered if he could have some tickets to see the Arsenal match"). A friend once finagled his way past the crowds and into the VIP lounge of Pascha in Ibiza by claiming to be the "clubbing correspondent" of the Times Literary Supplement. It is amazing what people can believe in, subject to the correct application of chutzpah - and that includes the validity of what can be tacked to a wall. Still . . . there was a free band, free crisps too, and you shouldn't go sniffing at things like that.
