Flesh on the Bones of the Belfast Child

Recently, I got worked up enough to compose a possible Rant for the Axis website, and in my state of raised hackles, totally overlooked the fact that the deadline for such pieces of writing was back in the Spring. So, as not to let the efforts go to total waste, I might as well post it here and see if anyone has a viewpoint on the subject…

Things are getting tough out there, with galleries being forced to close their doors all around the country and open shows receiving more than 800 entries for just 25 places, getting your work seen through the traditional channels is in no way easy and thanks to the long term trend for themed shows, it’s often downright impossible.

There’s no doubt about it themed shows have many plus points for both the punters coming through the gallery door and the curatorial team, but let’s take a look at them from the artist’s point of view. Recently, the list of possible shows looking for applicants have included –themes of birthing, fakery and forgery, magic, mapping landscapes, motherhood gone bad and the darker side of fairytales. In fact with dark the new black, having taken over from an obsession with all things bird like a few years ago, you can be pretty certain to find this theme sprinkled across the opportunities. So what does this mean for the humble artist, struggling to get the work out there? Either the artist hits the bulls eye and pulls out a piece right up the curators street or, in many more cases he or she casts a worried eye around the studio for a piece that can be shoe horned into the remit with as much chance of success as the Ugly Sisters had of squeezing into Cinderella’s glass slipper. So what’s the fallout?

Firstly, the artist may only find one in ten of the exhibition opportunities on offer that genuinely connects with their work. With fewer and fewer outlets for showing work available as the cuts bite, this makes the situation even tougher.

Secondly, we run the grave danger of seeing repetition of work as one gallery echoes the theme of another, and trends run across the exhibiting arena like a rash, limiting the breadth of work presented to the general public,

And thirdly and just as worryingly, we are in danger of stifling creativity as artists brave enough to buck the trends face an uphill struggle which many will just not be able to sustain.

It’s notable that in the information online accompanying a recent forthcoming Open in a south west gallery contains the wording…

‘Repeating the success of recent Open exhibitions…, there is again no theme to this year’s Open, continuing our response to artists’ concerns regarding the restrictiveness of a themed brief’.

So, the penchant for themed shows, – an overreaction to a trend that has brought new accessibility to the general public’s experience of art, or a valid concern for artists and curators alike?

I’d love to know what people think, and talking about contentious issues, I’ve just read this months letter page with Stephen Blacks article on open submission shows, it looks like my hackles won’t be settling down for quite some time.

Continuing on my quest to create the worlds first invisible artwork (and impossible to photograph), the anaglypta text reads,

‘I set my cassette recorder to record and left the room, leaving my parents decorating. When I returned to play back their private conversations the tape was filled with nothing but brushstrokes and silence’

A childhood memory which has stayed with me.

The battle for the computer starts early in this house so I am writing this while everyone else is still sleeping to avoid the rush. I am finding it so tough working without other artists around me I was really looking forward to the Artus meeting set up by the John Hansard gallery in S’Hampton yesterday. The first meeting was promising with a loose crit group structure encouraging anyone involved in creative making/discussion to come along.

The second meeting (yesterdays) was unfortunately less inspiring. Few people contributed actual work for discussion due to the fact that few seemed to be working ‘artists’ as such, (although there’s nothing wrong with that, it was the remit of the group after all) but people, as one woman described it, who are not artists but like to surround themselves with artists who can stimulate them and articulate their ideas. She then produced a file full of images of local historical figures, gave a brief history of the Bargate monument lions and then seemed to encourage us to produce a piece of work on peace which combined these, rather random elements. I’m sure this made sense to local people but I was left bewildered. We then spent a long time discussing what was a trace and what was a mapping and why one couldn’t be the other until everyone had tied themselves in intellectual knots. This is all fine if you’ve got the time to while away an afternoon in discursive contemplation but with free time away from the family on limited supply and a long trek to get there, perhaps it’s just not what I’m looking for.

One piece of info however, did come up that was valuable. The John Hansard gallery has always seemed to me a very remote and detached organisation, showing excellent big name shows with little or no involvement with the life of artists in the area, offering none of the support etc which other galleries such as Artsway or the Bargate Monument gallery see as part and parcel of their work. Due to the forthcoming closure of the Bargate they obviously feel the need to step into the breach and open their doors up to these possiblities as a meeting is coming up where artists are invited to put their needs forward to The John Hansard team. This should be interesting.

New artwork on axis – His Parents Bed, computer manipulated stained bedding, have a look! http://www.axisweb.org/seCVWK.aspx?ARTISTID=13808

Sunday I returned for what I thought would be a quick visit to the exhibition where Gavin Turk himself was hosting a sort of workshop/game/adventure that children could go on and gain medals and badges as they completed challenges.

This proved great fun for the children and after nearly three hours of following them round as they covered their T-shirts in badges and medals (they became obsessed with gaining every one) I was in a kind of bored stupor endlessly circling the arts centre, so much so I completely forgot I had a child to pick up ten miles away and arrived a whole hour late.

This year I’ve carried on getting up hours before the children and working in the studio. I keep fluctuating between being really motivated as the regular time is helping me keep the momentum going in my work and really cheesed off at the lack of opportunities I can apply for and the dark hole that the funding cuts are creating in the area for the visual arts. With loads of empty buidings and shops in Salisbury I’m toying with the idea of putting something on myself but I’m a bit wary of how it will be received.

I’ve been doing some work with anaglypta, beloved by anyone wanting to disguise the imperfections on your walls when decorating. My mother, suffered from manic depression, as it was referred to in those days ( I can never get used to the term bi polar) and was always decorating to stave off a depressive bout. In Northern Ireland you never moved house, we all lived in exactly the same semi-detached boxes, but we decorated like mad. And I distinctly remember as a child, a really disturbing, moment of epiphany, when it struck me that below all these flowery layers there were dirty grubby, rough walls and floors and no matter what we stuck over them, what existed underneath remained regardless. I remember how the folly of it all struck me really hard.

I think I was an odd child.