I’ve been meaning to write a post on this for a while, and now seems as good a time as any. Before Christmas I fortunate enough to tag along to Art Live in London. It was aimed at ‘A’ Level and BTEC students and their teachers from what I could gather. It was an interesting day of talks by Martin Creed, Quentin Blake, Germaine Greer and Gary Hume. Some of the things these guys said really struck a chord with me, so I’m glad I went along. The theme of the day was ‘What is Art?’
Martin Creed was an interesting character. I don’t think many of the students knew who he was or what was going on. He didn’t have any slides or imagery, instead he decided on somekind of performance. He had a dancer shadowing his every move, and seemed to be intentionally stuttering and umming his way awkwardly through the 30 minute or so talk. He was also filming it. He said that he didn’t know what his work was about, and when asked why he makes his work, came back with the answer “because I want to make my life better”, and his work is what he does to help him live. He also said that artists are attention seekers. Feeling bad inspires him because he wants to feel better. He went on to say that it is impossible to know what you’re doing with your work because you’re inside yourself, and you can’t know what it is like to experience the work as anyone else, I found that point interesting as I often feel that way about my practice. I think I got a lot from what he said, but maybe that’s becuase I was familiar with his work, maybe some of the kids were just confused.
Gary Hume was the final speaker, he was a last minute replacement for Anthony Gormley. Once again, it was a presentation without any imagery. He said he’d spoken alongside a slide show before and it hadn’t worked which is fair enough. Once again, as I was familiar with his work I got a lot from what he said, and I guess with what he said, images of his work weren’t that important, although it did spawn the question “what kind of art do you do?” from a student at the end of the talk. Anyway, Gary Hume was saying how thought and excitement runs out, maybe he’s referring to motivation and dry spells here, so it’s always re-assuring to know that established artists have the same problems as me. He seemed to say a lot of one liners, so I’ll just list them as I did in my sketchbook that day, I quite like them: be willing to fail, out of step, create your own world, be embarrassed and embrace that – it’s crucial, make bad work – as worse as you can, when you make something beautiful you experience real pain, beauty becomes the goal, allow yourself to become deluded, the love of moving stuff about, if you have very little, use every little bit of it, you get nagging ideas in your head while you’re doing other things, if you’re low about your work, you’re probably right’. He also said “be unemployed and make things” which i didn’t like, especially coming from someone who found success straight from their degree show, but then kind of made up for it by saying that he can’t stop painting as it just gives him too much pleasure.
Overall I found the day really useful, and got a lot out of it, maybe more than the students who it was actually aimed at.
