General Idea
Life & Work by Sarah E.K. Smith
General Idea Pavillion. Felix Partz noted the importance of the organization to the group,
explaining, “The actual structure and function of it, is an integral part of our work, of our
overall project.”
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Through FILE and Art Metropole, General Idea contributed significantly to the
“connective tissue” of the Canadian art scene, developing the national artistic landscape
and providing a means for artists—domestically and abroad—to connect to one another
and to share work.
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Noting the importance of publications, organizations, and artist-run
centres in the 1970s as a means for artists to coalesce into a scene, Bronson writes,
“Working together, and working sometimes not together we laboured to structure, or
rather to untangle from the messy post-Sixties spaghetti of our minds, artist-run
galleries, artists’ video, and artist-run magazines. And that allowed us to allow ourselves
to see ourselves as an art scene. And we did.”
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Commerce and Consumption
General Idea addressed consumption and
commerce in diverse ways throughout their
twenty-five-year collaboration. Early in their
career, when they lived at 78 Gerrard Street
West in Toronto, the group used the large front
window of their home (a former storefront) to
stage a rotating series of faux shops that
subverted the store format, exhibiting all manner
of found materials.42 The early shop window
displays by General Idea played with viewers’
expectations: during the initial few projects the
door to the house was always locked and a sign
perpetually advised prospective customers that
the shopkeeper would be back in five minutes.43
General Idea’s first use of the boutique format
was The Belly Store, 1969, a collaboration with
John Neon (b. 1944), where Zontal stood behind
Jorge Zontal at his sales stand in The Belly Store, 1969, a collaboration with John Neon, at 78 Gerrard
Street West, Toronto, photographer unknown
a counter and sold the multiple George Saia’s
Belly Food, 1969, which was displayed in
pyramids, like canned goods.
Later projects focused on commerce in relation to the art world, such as Test
Tube, 1979, a video tackling commodification and the artist’s role within such systems.
Test Tube, like other General Idea endeavours, gave rise to related works in other
media. In this case, as AA Bronson explained, “the making of the video became the
mechanism whereby we created all these props for the video and then produced them as
multiples.”44
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