CM: On the Saturday eveningof our stay in London we met with Tamarin Norwood, Claire Nichols and Patrick Coyle who form part of Antepress, who describe themselves as an imprint platform and who’s work we had encountered through Art on the Underground and the MA Art Writing pages of the Goldsmiths website. Antepress are all graduates of the first cohort of the course, and shared their experiences of making and defining the course with staff in a collaborative and at times fractious process, and the sense of unity that resulted from that.
The MA Art Writing course is interesting to me on a personal level in terms of future study options, but I had questions regarding how limiting the focus on writing might be. The group explained how in fact Art Writing can be perceived and investigated in an expanded sense, which fits with our approach to the seemingly new discipline with CWC – we take an experimental approach to defining the term through the combination of works we include in COPY. This also reassured me that the course allows for an expanded practice. However, though they fought to keep the studio space they were initially given and which was temporarily taken away, the current students in fact have to work without a studio. This poses interesting questions as to how the subject is taught and practised within the institution, and therefore the types of practice which come to define and redefine the subject as these students graduate and extend their practice with the local and national visibility.
We found it interesting to talk about a sense of ownership the group might have of the term ‘art writing’, and how the recent formation of the course may have formalised the term. Having met course leader Maria Fusco at the Writing Encounters Symposium in 2009, we became aware of the term but began to use it more through close contact with a network of artists/performers/writers in the north within which practices of art writing/critical writing/performance writing/experimental writing are explored, diverging and intersecting at various points. There is a network of related yet very distinct set of practices and concerns in Yorkshire which we are lucky to be part of, and through which we have defined what we understand to be art writing in a wide sense and an acceptance that the terms art/critical/performance/experimental at times all fail as a representation, yet this seems to encourage further discussion and experimentation. We like to loosely define art writing as writing as practice in the field of contemporary visual art and performance, though are aware that sometimes too much fluidity can result in a lack of critical integrity or coherence, so maintain an awareness of this when devising projects and editing COPY.
A real strength of the way Antepress works is the way in which they support each other’s individual practices whilst leaving the structure of their collaboration open, so it can shift and work best for each member at any time. We had arranged to meet Antepress in The Cut at the Young Vic, which was convenient for us to attend the Cally Spooner’s Indirect Language at The Calder Bookshop (we eventually realised they were probably going too). Patrick, who’s work I had encountered through his involvement with The Woodmill, was performing as part of Cally’s work, so we all went together to watch which was a great end to the meeting. We really felt a connection with Antepress which we would like to foster; we left the meeting feeling really excited by everyone’s enthusiasm and the supportive attitude Antepress offered, we all definitely had a lot to say and hope to continue the dialogue.
