In response to Abbi Torrance (thanks for your comment):
Is it true that Visual Art specifically, and cultural activity in general, signify group membership or exclusion? Could one argue that art is only valid if it refers to a group membership delineation?
For instance, as I mentioned in “After Rites” I was educated at a school with a strong military ethos. The cultural activity of the school mainly referred to various group memberships: the military elite, the wealthy elite and the UK aristocracy.
A small bunch of us got together in the XIth form and got busy inventing a little counter-culture: we borrowed heavily from any movement that promoted individuality (the military ethos was biased towards group uniformity and authoritarianism), which included psychoanalysis theory, expressionism, anarchy and pyschedelia. It was rather like “Dead Poets Society” but 12 years earlier.
The whole project was great fun, and kept us (almost) sane for the last 2 years of our education. But once I left the school, the whole thing became irrelevant. Wider society, it turned out, was not oppressively authoritarian to that extent (even under Thatcher), and individual aspiration was already a prominent feature of UK culture. Although I desperately wanted to carry on with the experience of exciting subversion and strong group cohesion, it was difficult to find such a forum in wider society.
Eventually I became involved in the counter-culture surrounding environmental concerns, hence my occasional appearances at Stonehenge. But this is where I became very aware of the limitations of art. I’ve met so many artists who expound at length on the “Power of Art”, how it can communicate between peoples, break down barriers, etc.
However, I don’t see it that way. The art from the fringes of the environmental movement in the late 70s and 80s never communicated ideas or an ethos to the mainstream of society. The whole thing remained fringe. Some of the ideas of the time have become common currency (such as “sustainability”), but this has not happened through some cultural interchange. This has happened through a combination of necessity and debate of ideas.
What the art of the period did achieve was to provide a symbolic gathering-point. A banner around which like-minded people could come together, and through which they could identify each other. A symbol of group membership.
Likewise, the mainstream exclusion of that creative activity formed a powerful aspect to the defining of the mainstream. “You’re not a whacky hippy are you? – good, you’re one of us then, we can show your work in the gallery!”.
From my perspective, something that defined the artistic activity of that period was the ritual. The druids at stonehenge, the full-moon covens of earth-worshipping feminists, the group outings to various “ancient monuments”, and consequent rites. It’s a whole visual and multi-artform aesthetic rolled together, and still regarded as too fringe for comfort. Yes, artists can do whatever whacky pagan ritual they see fit in their spare time, but please don’t bring it into the gallery!
So that’s exactly what I’m trying to do. And in the Rites exhibition, that’s exactly what I achieved, if only in a small way.
The difficulty with this kind of thing, of course, is it doesn’t really belong in a gallery. Sacred ritual isn’t a commodity that can be bought and sold, and I would quickly lose my audience altogether if I tried to push it in that direction. That’s why none of the work in the Rites exhibition was for sale. The work is sacred, it can’t be bought.
Where I take it next, I’m not quite sure. I don’t want to just carry on doing the same thing over and over again. That’s not in my nature, and (this is my opinion) doesn’t befit an artist. More ritualistic work, Yes. More sacred artefacts, Yes. More collaboration, Yes. More work about, and in, nature, Yes. More fun, definitely.
But also, more exploration, more change, more difference, more risk. Maybe more video, more on the internet, maybe some collaboration with more traditional gallery artists.
Oh, and that reminds me, I must join the UK pyrotechnic society. Any galleries out there willing to host an indoor fireworks display, and then open the fire and smoke damaged building as an artefact of the happening??
