Auction House

Auction House (2021), taking place at the appropriately named Auction House Project Space in Redruth, Cornwall, Lowry has drawn on the building’s original function as a sale room built in 1880. Through this he reflected on artworks of significance to him since his art foundation studies, selecting nine artists, a piece of whose work he would replicate to form a collection of facsimiles to be sold to the highest bidder. Each simulacrum forms part of the complete work, underpinned by the performative elements of participants in viewing, bidding, buying and owning one tenth of the art work. Lowry invites people to step inside the processes driving the international art world, where mind boggling sums of money change hands and artist’s reputations are made or broken. He asks participants to consider the purpose and value of this activity in relation to the original intentions of the artists who first made the works he has replicated.