Five years ago when Christine Hill presented her Volksboutique in Kassel, Germany as part of Documenta X she had already begun to develop a form of art practice that reflected on the condition of being an artist. Hill’s reappraisal of the artist’s role was based on a variety of other minor parts she adopted (she is listed in the Documenta catalogue as a masseuse, a concessions girl, a rock singer, a shoe shiner, a striptease dancer). Each new temporary identity is a service provider through which Hill investigates their potential as an art presence – an exploratory ground upon which Volksboutique was founded as a site where she could ‘deal with service, interaction, the portrayal and assumption of roles, the generation of conversation between individuals and the information therein.’

Working out of the legacies of the ‘Happenings’ environment and its theatricality, Pop Art’s commodification of the art object and its space of consumption, and Joseph Beuys’ unification of art and life through his model of'social sculpture', Hill exceeds each. In the process she proposes new roles for viewers (as consumers, tourists, members of a television audience), redefines exhibition spaces (as stores, studios, catwalks) and reinvents a mobile artistic identity (whether as a show host, store owner or tour guide).