Art’s ability to critique society may do no more than make us feel sanctimonious. If it is to successfully espouse values obscured by the hegemony of capitalism and its monoculture, it must embody, not merely address, those values. I mean to talk about these thoughts with reference to a recent project on communalism in America.

Francis Cape apprenticed with master carver Dick Reid before receiving his MA from Goldsmiths College, London. In 1993 he moved to New York City. Following a decade or so of architectural interventions that addressed the inseparability of art from its context, he turned to work that confronts issues outside the studio/gallery circuit. One body of work explored the connection between what we saw of our society after Katrina hit New Orleans and what he sees in his own community in upstate New York. More recently, “Utopian Benches” dwelt on the tradition of American communalism, and on values other than those promoted in the mainstream.

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