Thursday I found myself in London, something that I’ve tried to avoid ever since leaving aged 18. But I had two good reasons to go;
First I was invited by International Art Consultants to present my ‘recent work’, by which I mean, my corporate/civic sculpture, to the new director and staff.
Second I had arranged lunch with my dear friend Anna who I hadn’t seen since she became director of ‘Learning’ at Tate Modern.
Anna always nourishes me, and I hoped that a chat with her would leave me feeling empowered, I wasn’t disappointed, but I was a bit surprised.
An hour and a half of verbal lunch with Anna, left me feeling that we really do have our work cut out for us. If, as artists, we want to present an alternative to the ubiquitous business culture that insists we all share uniform values, to maintain the arts as somewhere that true inclusive diversity can happen, we have got to be brave enough to question the paradigms we work within. We have to be wary of what others ask from us, especially if they are paying.
We are in real danger of being complicit in a national curriculisation of creativity – fully accredited and certified, of course (so it’s trustworthy).
My second meeting, a fairly straightforward opportunity to talk about my work, was as it should be, familiar and comfortable, It was a marketing exercise I suppose, I found myself torn between being a salesman and inviting dialogue. I was surprised just how irrelevant most of what I would consider to be part of contemporary arts practise was to this situation, I found that talking beyond the object itself required too much unfamiliar contextualisation, a bit like discussing Carl Andre’s work with old aunt Nelly, worthwhile, but perhaps too much of an investment.
It wasn’t exactly an epiphany but the days contrast confirmed something that has been sneaking up on me for years.
It is one thing to make a nifty object, but without integrity of process you will end up simply a manufacturer working in an ‘art’ commodity market that differs little from any other small business. Exciting for a while, but essentially superficial.
Where this business differs from manufacturing, or design is that it involves personal interpretation of what it is to be a quirky human being, in a manner that invites others to engage with their respective quirky human individuality. It is about multiple interpretations with multiple unknown outcomes. Any object that is involved is simply the vehicle for transmitting evidence about the process of being a human being. It mirrors life in being a stochastic process – It is the antithesis of collective corporate strategy, target oriented thinking, terms such as ‘public’, ‘consumer’ and ‘qualification’.
Time to stop working to a brief.
The reason I avoid London? It usually makes me feel competitive. This time it didn’t. It usually wears off.
