// Saturday 19 December until Wednesday 23 December 2009

With over 12 years worth of images, exhibition invites, publications and artists ephemera sitting in boxes in our storeroom, RM decided that it was high time that we establish a better and more accessible archive: the type of archive that would enable us to give new life to this old material, but one that might also be shaped by artists and an arts community with a vested interest in it.

Whilst in South Korea for his 2008 SAP residency William Hsu introduced us to the InsaArtSpace Archive, an incredible facility that became a model for an approach that we might take: The IAS aims to stand for making an active archive… a radical archive that seeks out highly creative and innovative projects, a collaborative archive between artists and researchers, an open archive with a loose and intermittent network that enables public participation; in short, an experimental, flexible and evolving archive. The IAS Archive has sought and professed to unfold dynamic activities so that it is not simply a ‘reservoir’ of reference materials…

Part of the RM archive will be shaped by our own catalogue of shows, though we would like it to remain an open structure, with artists and our audience also contributing to it. We would like artist to play an active role in deciding how they would like their work to be represented. We will launch the archive system on Saturday, and invite artists to have a folder, begin to bring material for it, and take a place on our shelves.

The annual RM shop

// Saturday 19 December until Wednesday 23 December 2009

Featuring works by Colleen Altagracia, Melanie Bell, Lisa Benson, Jarad Bryant, Paul Chapman, Xin Cheng, Matthew Crookes, Chris Cudby, Kristin D’Agostino, Kirsten Dryburgh, Marita Hewitt, William Hsu, Meiling Lee, Esther Leigh, Gaby Montejo, NAS, Isabella Pachter, Paperwasp Collective, David Pickett, A.D. Schierning, Masato Takasaka, Erica van Zon and more

Since 2003, RM has ended the year by bringing together a shop full of art multiples, miniatures, catalogues, handicrafts, food and beverages.

This year we thought we would change the format slightly — focusing on perishable art: objects with a shelf-life, art multiples with use-by dates, self-destructing sculptures, a slowly disappearing inventory of stock…

NB: ALL PROCEEDS FROM THE SALE OF WORK GO DIRECTLY BACK TO THE CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS – this is not a RM fundraiser, but a chance to put some money back into the pockets of some of the artists who we love and support.