13/08/2022
so much for a methodology
In 2019, I got quite aerated by a curator who was swanning around the countryside pushing a strategy for survival as an artist that could only be appropriate for a young, single graduate fresh from the speaker’s metropolitan school still hanging on in the big city. The suggestions were in my view just so far from any practical use to artists like myself in the back -of-beyond as to be insulting. Among other suggestions were for assiduous attendance at PVs, fawning attention paid to gallerists, and an aggressive use of social media.I forbore to ask if the speaker had bought their own day return ticket from the big city at a cost of £45: there are no galleries in my 20km radius, consequently no private views, and social media is the Neighbourhood Watch WhatsApp group. Best avoided.
The advice was the promotion of a view of the art world that seemed completely alien from my experience and self-identification as an artist. For my own peace of mind I began working on a project to reach out to artists who might share my outlook, build some solidarity with them, and to develop a different world-view which could only be more comfortable than sitting around seething angrily over jumped-up big city types.
This wasn’t my first attempt at a group publication and I had investigated channels for publicising a call. I had over 100 responses but for conciseness I had to whittle this down to a shortlist of about 20.
The book was published titled ‘Critical Moss: art beyond the bubble’ [isbn 978-1-9995847-3-3], reflecting the aphorism that a rolling stone gathers no moss. The aphorism is taken to mean that decisive action must be taken in critical circumstances to avoid stagnation. The term bubble, a restricted society of people who live and think alike, and rarely venture from, here is a shorthand for the metropolitan bubble, which I perceived to be insular and self-absorbed.
The chief lesson I learned in that project is that the language of the Call is everything, and as I’m sitting here thoroughly annoyed by the state of the world, the continent, and the country I am using this blog to marshal my thinking for a Call to artists like me who recognise the stinking pile that is end-stage Capitalism with all its essential repression.
