An empty room – the art you have when you don’t have art

TO THE artist behind it, the new show at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art “questions the value and function of cultural institutions”.

To the casual observer, it is a room with nothing in it.

Marlie Mul, a Dutch artist based in Berlin, is displaying an empty room in a show entitled This Exhibition Has Been Cancelled.

Visitors can wander through the vacant space taking in the complete absence of exhibits. But they can also propose their own projects to fill the room. The gallery commissioned the

‘It forces us to question the value and function of cultural institutions such as GOMA in society today’

work. Will Cooper, curator of contemporary art, said: “Removing the exhibition from the gallery space forces us to question the value and function of cultural institutions such as GOMA in contemporary society today.

“By removing what would traditionally be considered an art object, we are instead presenting the gallery as an empty space, giving us a moment to question the value in turning over exhibition after exhibition after exhibition.

“Perhaps Goma and, by extension, other museums and galleries would be better placed as a space for another kind of activity?”

So far, members of the public have booked the space, free, for yoga classes, film screenings, baby “Bounce and Rhyme” sessions and drawing classes.

GOMA will also consider applications from members of the public who would like to exhibit their own art, taking advantage of its prime spot in the centre of Glasgow as Scotland’s most visited contemporary gallery.

This Exhibition Has Been Cancelled opens tomorrow and runs until October 29. Mul’s previous works have incorporated a collection of cigarette butts and a room with dirty puddles on the floor.

She is not the first to explore conceptual art via an empty room. In 2001, Martin Creed won the Turner Prize with Work No 227: The lights going on and off. It consisted of an empty room in which the lights went on and off.