“For artists, ‘the model’ becomes method and form, replica and representation, route and routine, rhizome and root. Models can be representations of an object, action or system that one desires to understand. Models can function as analogies – linking models and linking a given model with its subject. As part of my research into the use of models in artistic practice, in April 2022, I staged mode(l) in Goods at A4, looking at architectural plans, maps, diagrams, and maquettes. The research presentation was itself a model towards what an exhibition could be; a place to explore modelling as a form of making in and of itself. The guiding question then, as now in this exhibition in the Reading Room, remains the same: how do artists typically embrace the model, freeing it from its narrowly framed practical framework, altering its approach towards intention and outcome, thereby continuously giving it new meaning? Models can either disclose or covertly convey and reinforce. They are entangled with our biases, assumptions and partialities – whether implicit or explicit. This exhibition expands upon this notion.”

– Nkhensani Mkhari, curator