Artist as unpaid carer

Carer’s UK are campaigning for Recovery Space – money and mental health. In this blog, for those that are always keen to support artists with mental health conditions, but not artists that care for them, this explains the difficulties we face, and why it’s impossible to practice working as an artist faced with such economic exclusion.

For International Women’s Day, I joined the strike. I think I’m on strike fatigue now. The art world carries on regardless, and seems to give no thought to artists that have been neglected to the point of all abandonment.

Sometimes, I think of vague ideas of ways to make work that requires minimum input, maximum return. Should I exhibit the smashed glass broken because I do 300% washing up? Should I pay a tenner to submit our failed PIP assessment for an Open exhibition?

City Arts emails me with an Open Call for their latest Institute Of Mental Health exhibition, but Portrait Of Ian Duncan Smith With Bandaged Nose still torments me in my studio, unsold, with mounting debts piling, and an unknown wait for the PIP review, my motivation to make something new with no funding is at absolute zero.

The CAB suggest we could make a new application for PIP. (whilst waiting for the DWP to reassess their failures).  And to keep a daily diary. Do I look like Anne Frank??

No.

I’m being realistic here. I’m not dressing up caring as being all nice cups of tea and biscuits, because it isn’t.

Yes, I need time for myself, but that time is valuable. And it needs to be paid for, so for arts funding purposes, make sure you read the blog to understand the effect caring has on artists, and sign the letter to try to mitigate some of the impact.

2017 was mostly spent making Grantium applications that failed.

I was successfully awarded some respite funding, so I have enjoyed a lot of time out, not doing much work at all due to lack of funding.

I recently attended a Carer’s Rights Day event, which didn’t seem to say much about Carer’s Rights.

However, I was fortunate enough to be given a ticket to go to BBC6music’s ArtIsEverywhere live Breakfast Show broadcast at Feren’s Art gallery in Hull, and went to see the Turner Prize exhibition.

Some thoughts on the Turner Prize exhibition.

Another waste of time involved the bureaucracy of a PIP application and rejection, but with this ruling, we may receive this additional income next year.

Last Thursday I hoped to seek insights into sustaining a practice at the a-n Assembly event in Leeds.

Artists were separated into small groups to participate in small discussions. I met with a curator from Tetley and a lady that works at Castlefield gallery in Manchester.

The first discussion was Care. I have absolutely no idea how to keep practising whilst trying to keep everything else going on an absolute pittance of an income, and the question of slavery is still ringing in my mind for anyone that thinks I can just keep working for free.

There was a question of how to make all the work visible, and the results of a poll about all the extra work freelancers do.

This comic stuck in my head

And the consensus is to stop doing so much, take time out. But of course there’s no one to take over when things get too much for me.

For me, the most useful information was to be reminded to apply for Access costs in my current Arts Council grant application.

The separation of work and home is harder when you work from home, and then others appear and say they want to start a studio group, get rate relief and charge a lower amount. Any amount is too much for me, as no one is paying me for my time.

Let me be absolutely clear on this. Without any funding or other additional income I cannot even contemplate making any more work.

Absolutely not. I am not a slave for anyone else’s career goals.

There was a session in the kitchen. All the artists were expected to contribute to making the evening meal. So it wasn’t actually free, it was made with free labour. Of course, asked to pick tomatoes from the vine, my thoughts turned to all the poor, sorry farmers in South Lincolnshire, whose supply of cheap labour has dwindled since Brexit now that all the migrant workers have diminished or gone, and an image of an old Brexiteer marshalling artists to slave away in the fields, instead of producing any artwork, appeared in my head in dystopian awareness.

After all, food preparation used to be Mum’s job, for which she got paid properly to do.

I used to get paid to be a waitress, but I was forced to quit that work many years ago, mainly because it was soul destroying, and I now have the burden of three times the washing up at home, as I have two sons that refuse to do it. Therefore, I hate the washing up. When I arrived home, they had made themselves food and sure enough, there was a whole bowlful of dirty plates.

If it were a business dinner, we would have caterers to prepare the food, and the labour would be deferred to others, thus providing non-artists with work too.

There would most likely be a dishwasher.

In the later discussion about sustainability, it seems other artists have had the same conversation with lecturers that half joke that artists will always be poor.

I’m sorry, but it’s wholly unacceptable. My mention of Article 27 of the Human Rights Act brought nothing but silence.

This morning’s reading this article. There must be countless carers out there to whom the same issues apply. One thing’s for sure, things need to change, and change now.

This week, I have had to take a day off.

Here is a blog in which I try to express some thoughts.

Some other thoughts to go with it include:

Wanting to give talks about Portrait Of Ian Duncan Smith With Bandaged Nose at his rate of pay, which was reported to be £1000 per hour.

I had a Carer’s Assessment some time ago, which was largely another waste of my time, and in which I was told that “anyone” could be a carer for my son. Which isn’t true – there are plenty of others that do not care for him – most of my ex’s family, his non-father, and his ex-girlfriend’s evil mother, who nearly drove him to suicide.

So not true.