“Students, alumni and lecturers from the Art Academy sell their work together in an exciting event. The roulette fixes the price!” ~YNET

 

 

Casino Avalon is a participative art installation. The space is transformed into a utopian game where money is replaced by artworks and the artists are on top of the system.

 

The space will include a roulette table, entertainers and croupiers dressed in semi-formal uniforms to lead the game. Installed on the walls will be 37 numbered art-works for the roulette. Several artworks dealing with the subjects of risk, chance and luck will be presented for viewing or selling only. The weekend event will be followed by site specific performances. Winners of the game take home the artworks that correspond to their lucky number on the roulette and all the winning artists divide the house jackpot between them equally. In the possibility that an artwork is won by two or more winners, an auction will be announced.

 

Concept

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Casino Avalon is based on a playful, open-source and collective model for the buying and selling of art. By playing the game of roulette the audience takes on a defining  role in the art system market and the artists’ experience being on top of the system.

As opposed to a casino (or even an art installation) Casino Avalon is not intended to generate high stakes prizes to hosts or artists, but rather to instigate a model in which everyone can take part in collecting art. It is up to luck to decide who will end up with what art work. Through many of its unique properties Casino Avalon brings the thrill of  risk and chance to take center stage within the exhibition space and to the act of collecting art. Creating an infectious atmosphere of playful risk taking, the event functions like a continuous loop, where chance is introduced again and again into a heterotopia-like realm that has its own rules and possibilities

 

The Story of Casino Avalon

 

Casino Avalon is the Casino of the legendary Avalon, the isle of fruit trees, the island of apples which men call “The Fortunate isle”. The name is derived from the fact that the island produces all things of itself; the fields there have no need of the ploughs of the farmers and all cultivation is lacking except what nature provides. Of its own accord it produces grain and grapes, and apple trees grow in its woods from the close-clipped grass. The ground of its own accord produces everything instead of merely grass, and people live there a hundred years or more. In Casino Avalon the artworks are the currency and artists are the owners of the land. Bursting with opportunities for all, Casino Avalon is akin to a paradise, a fantastic heterotopian space where the people of Avalon trade artworks, meet new people and play with the gods a fair game of risk and chance.

 

Press

 

• Tel Aviv, 2010 - Hostel Ayalon: Our first Casino Avalon was held at a mythological rehearsal space from the 70’s in Tel Aviv. Fify visual artists participated, two musical acts and a theatre collective led the game. More than two hundred participants showed up and the installation gained a mass coverage in all israeli media, prime time tv, the Israeli art academy and popular magazines. link to video by channel 2/Ynet

• Tel Aviv, 2012 - Bezalel Academy of Art and Design M.F.A: After a successful first installation, Bezalel Academy of the Arts embraced the concept and invited Casino Avalon to occupy the gallery of the MFA program in Tel Aviv. The event and installation was followed by a symposium “Art, Money and Power” held at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (in conjunction with the Visual Artists’ Union) with lectures by the President of Bezalel and researchers from the Department of Sociology and Economics from the Tel Aviv University.

 

Legality

 

Prior to the event, the concept of Casino Avalon was reviewed by an attorney which resulted in the terms that as long as the house doesn’t earn money from gambling, it is considered a legitimate art installation. The house will receive income from the bar, entrance fee, auctions during the game and the sale of artworks not in relation to the game.

 

Partners

• Israel Museum, Jerusalem

• Art and architecture Arad.

• Bezalel Academy for Art and Design, Jerusalem.

• Central Saint Martins University, London.