Reconstructing Duccio (NFT Version)

Ahead of a new exhibition in Exeter Cathedral in September, the NFT version of Lesley Kerman’s Reconstructing Duccio offers a virtual portal into this large-scale project curated by Imi Haisman.

Curator

With a background in Art History, I am a London based curator who delights in grappling with the contentious relationship between the ancient and contemporary canons that formulate our visual culture. Among my different interests, I follow the volatile art market, with a specific interest in NFTs. My most recent endeavour involved curating an installation at Sketch London’s iconic art fuelled space over the Easter period. This show also led to organising an integrated online NFT charity auction that aided the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

Artist

Lesley Kerman was a student of Richard Hamilton and Victor Pasmore in the 1960s. She has shown both internationally and widely in the UK including with the Science Museum and the Wellcome Trust in London. Recent solo exhibitions include Advice to Women in Management at Goldsmiths, University of London, and her current exhibition, Up River at the Plough Arts Centre, Great Torrington. In 2000, Kerman won an Arts Council Major Award and a ‘Year of the Artist’ commission, which has led to many further commissions from the Environment Agency, SUSTRANS, SAFLE, Cardiff, and numerous town councils nationwide.

Lesley Kerman’s Reconstructing Duccio (2019) is a series of 26 paintings, re-uniting the dispersed panels that originally made up the reverse of Duccio’s famous altarpiece, the Maestà.

For this digital manifestation, each panel has been minted as a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) and is presented in an empty shop space around the commercial centre of Exeter High Street, with a single re-unified version projected in the former Hay’s Travel store. Thus, the reconstructed altarpiece, originally commissioned by the city of Siena in 1308, is digitally remediated and reinserted in the everyday context of Exeter’s shopping centre and as an artwork located in the ‘crypto-verse’.

In the context of contemporary consumer culture, where everything is deemed to have an exchange value, the NFT version of Kerman’s Reconstructing Duccio raises questions around belief and what is ‘fungible’ or ‘non-fungible’.

Artwork visible at various city centre shops.

NFTs available via OpenSea.

Information about Reconstructing Duccio at Sketch, London, can be found at imogenhaisman.art.