Further to yesterday’s post re. studio groups/home-working, today I found this sculpture by Grayson Perry, currently being auctioned to raise money for homeless charity Shelter. It is called Homes Not Studios and is a model of a semi-derelict building, one side of which is pasted with flyers, with the words “ARTISTS OUT” daubed in graffiti on the front.
According to the blurb, the piece is a response to the 1966 film Cathy Come Home, which I haven’t seen – perhaps it’s a model of a building featured in the film? For me, however, it made me consider what the social impact of studio buildings might be.
On the one hand, artists will often inhabit buildings that are otherwise uninhabitable – sometimes, artists are the one thing preventing beautiful but derelict old buildings from being torn down entirely; and the presence of artists can massively enrich an area that would otherwise be sad, dilapidated and forgotten. Additionally, as there is no coherent social housing programme in this country, if these buildings or plots of land were to be sold for housing, the likelihood is that they would be “developed” into horrid blocks full of “luxury apartments”, left to stand empty, awaiting the resurgence of the buy-to-let market. So in this way, it can be argued (and convincingly!) that groups of artists inhabiting derelict inner-city buildings do a lot of good. That’s certainly the way in which I’ve always looked at the matter.
But Perry’s work, with its provocative, confrontational title, has made me think. Although in real terms, many artists exist somewhere around the poverty line, to a homeless person, an artist entering their semi-derelict studio building must seem a great deal like a middle-class person merrily slumming it. And it would be a truly beautiful thing if some of these huge old buildings could be transformed into housing – actual housing that works, rather than speculative buy-to-let monstrosities. But the balance of power here lies with the landowners and the policy-makers. There would be no sense in an artist group surrendering their building only for it to become yet another block of executive apartments. At the same time, it seems tremendously sad that we live in a society where these are the only two choices: a derelict building full of artists (who can go home at the end of the day, when it gets too cold & dark), or a shiny new development standing empty, awaiting the recession’s end. And, just outside, or being shooed from the doorway where they’ve huddled for shelter, a person with no home to go to when it’s cold or dark or rainy. It’s all so terribly wrong-headed.
