Since 1999 Elizabeth Price has been working on a project to fulfil the clauses of the 1927 will of Alexander Chalmers. In an exhibition at Hackney Museum she invited artists to enact clauses 6, 8 and 9:
(9) Hayley Newman will stand-in for the Librarian and will undertake to label and describe the artworks.
Hackney Museum is housed in the same building as Hackney Library and for three days I became an unofficial Librarian in the borough. With a matching brown corduroy jacket/skirt and copy card, I photocopied text from library books and periodicals to re-label artworks in the Alexander Chalmers Bequest. In the museum gallery these photocopied labels were stuck vertically and horizontally on the walls next to the corresponding artworks – photocopies of book spines ran vertically, while titles/captions were positioned horizontally. Placing the titles between, above and below paintings and sculptures in the collection meant that individual works had more than one description attributed to them.
A list of the revised labels has been printed in a book published by Elizabeth Price in 2005.
CHALMERS BEQUEST (CLAUSES 6,8 & 9), 2003
Susanne Clausen and Alun Rowlands, Thursday 19 December, 5.30 – 7.30 pm; Charlotte Cullinan and Jeanine Richards (artlab), Saturday 21 December, 5.30 – 7.30 pm; Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska, Thursday 12 December, 5.30 – 7.30 pm – will act as collection attendants.
(8) Matthew Thomson and Alan Brooks will stand-in for the undesignated manual or technical workers, and will undertake the transfer of the collection from storage and ready it for display.
(9) Hayley Newman will stand-in for the Librarian and will undertake to label and describe the artworks:
