A temporary repair service opened shop in Belfast that can repair any object brought in! Launched recently by Swedish artist Tobias Sternberg who sees the corner shop much like a shoemaker or a key-cutter, his repair shop takes on any broken or faulty object and turns it into a thing of value: an original art work by Sternberg himself! Service rendered completely free of charge.
Ok, yeah, so the repair shop is more like a conceptual art project, with Tobias Sternberg exploring questions of what is it that makes an object an art piece, what determined its value and who should pay for the services delivered by the artist. “I am paid wages by the gallery, which receives funding from the Art Council, which is financed by taxes, paid by the general public” says (lucky) Swede. “The difference to other public sculptures is that individuals privately own the ones produced within this project, instead of by a city or institution, and that those individuals can be anyone, including people who would otherwise never afford to own art.”
Public art project or not, we think the results are fantastic, not to mention environmentally sound, and we’ve been following some of the handsome sculptures Sternberg has flipped and documented on his art repair shop blog
PSsquared Gallery, Belfast 28th May to 23rd June