'A Modest Proposal' investigates how current approaches to financialisation could be redirected towards a more equitable model by considering the financialisation of public art collections, museum real estate and symbolic capital.
Seeking to mobilise the main financial asset of Pump House Gallery – the building itself, the financialisation of the gallery real estate was considered as a case study. How could Pump House Gallery become true to its original design as a ‘pump house’, leveraging all rising values, both monetary and cultural, that surround it and become a power house for the benefit of the whole art community?
A promotional video introduces the model and the benefits and opportunities it offers to a variety of stakeholders. The main video piece, equally titled A Modest Proposal (in a Black Box), introduces the artists duo Vermeir & Heiremans and Luke Mason debating the financial model and its possible impact. Throughout the galleries included in the exhibition are also archival materials about the creation and realisation of Battersea Park and the Pump House Gallery building, that present a site-specific narrative of a change in the uses of land, from common land for grazing and agriculture to urban land uses, triggering real estate and land speculation in Battersea in the Victorian era.