I’ve been doing some research for the next Taxed event in Liverpool and have been visiting some people for a chat as well as emailing (and proabably irritating) everyone I know. I have also been using exhibition openings to prey on artists to answer my questions. So far there have been some really great answers and I’m glad I asked because a lot of things that came up hadn’t occurred to me at all. Patterns are beginning to emerge. Sacha from the group is also doing some research on this so it will be good when we meet up next week and compile the results..
I started a thread on the a-n forums here:
www.a-n.co.uk/forums/read/33,781
and that’s got some interesting responses – but I want more please! Just three questions –
ARTISTS SKILL SWAP SURVEY – Please fill me in!
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3BXTDRT
Ideally before 5pm Wed 10th March, thanks!
Also wanted to mention Waygood in Newcastle – who may be getting their funding withdrawn by ACE, ending 15 years of support for artists. They are collecting good wishes to present to funders on their website. They point out on their website the irony of ACE’s aims to support young artists in light of their decision to withdraw funding to an organisation like this. Please have a look and add your own message.
http://wishesforwaygood.tumblr.com/#428170127
The original ACE ‘think piece’ by Nicola Slawson, a 25 year-old artist can be read here:
http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/consultation/think-pieces/supporting-the-development-of-future-artists-and-arts-leaders/
Oh my I am tired and extremely headachey. School this week is hectic. One more day and I shall get home, hopefully in one piece, and sleep. I am armed with a bottle of baby bedtime bath and new pyjamas. Get set.. zzzzzzzzzzzz. Me, Dan making me tea periodically and the cat stomping around my head and a newspaper I can’t be bothered to read. An amazing picture. Only three more days in schools after this week until the end of May, so this is a real chance to get some rest and reflect a bit on how it’s all going.
A Curriculum starts on Monday and I cannot wait to be back in the studio. The boxes and materials are already packed waiting to go. Looking forward to some brain strain although nervous about all the people I will meet and have studio visits with, also about the presentation to other artists… The curator from YSP is coming to do a studio visit at A Foundation too, so I feel the need to be prolific in the first month of the residency. What was I saying about rest? How about I call it a child-free period instead? I like deadlines. Actually, that should probably read -I need deadlines. There was a nice comment by a book artist I saw, something like ‘without a deadline, there is no book’. Quite.
Sent off the interim report to YSP, which seems to have gone down okay, I think? Although I had an epic technology fail and lots of trouble making the pdf as it was a humoungous file and my laptop wasn’t coping. Looking back over it I realised that the latest version hadn’t saved and the one I had sent had a generous number of typos! I hate that. Really really hate that and I feel embarrassed that they will think I can’t read/write/spell. Seems to be the way my life is at the moment.. best intentions but some avoidable and unnecessary cock-ups in retrospect. Pah. I think I’d better start saying no a bit more – better to do less things well than lots of shonky ones.
Lastly and less self-indulgently, this is a good read by Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/0…
The case for safeguarding arts funding in the future.
Ah haa, this explains a lot. My husband forwarded this link after reading my Fraud complex blog entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruge…
“The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which “people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it”.[1] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality; by contrast the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding.”
Offline for two days and it was when everything needed to be emailed. Anyway, much hurried emailing of reports and things that hadn’t sent because they were too big.. silly girl.
This is interesting and worrying..
Margaret Hodge: the arts are a ‘closed shop’
http://tinyurl.com/ycu9q96
“someone who works for a major gallery told me that the same thing is happening at their workplace: people are being made redundant and replaced by unpaid interns.”
I know someone whose contract hasn’t been replaced at the gallery where she works and she is sure that she will replaced by interns. It’s so insulting!
In other news; some good news, but further updates when I know more!
A friend sent me this link yesterday:
http://jangosteve.com/post/380926251/no-one-knows-…
basically he defines the FRAUD COMPLEX; something I think a lot of people suffer from, especially artists (me included). It’s difficult as there are hardly any measureable successes in this business, so if you do well, sometimes you can’t pinpoint why exactly and there is no guarantee of replicating that. Everything seems subjective and uncertain and precarious and so on ad infinitum….
At a discussion group at Royal Standard last month – about what inspires us to make – the fraud complex business came up and most people nodded a bit.
In the blog post, he defines knowledge by shit you know, the shit you know you don’t know, and the shit you don’t know you don’t know. I have a lot of the middle one; shit I know I don’t know, which can be intimidating, especially when you presume everyone else does know it. This often leads to not trying things or writing off your best ideas before they have chance because you presume you will probably fail. It also means that you know something isn’t right, but you can’t necessarily fix it. I have this a lot when I read back through things. I know it’s not right, but I am me and I will probably write the same thing again, even though my head tells me otherwise.
Also – this new blog on artists talking looks like it might shape up to be interesting…
Critical Creative Support Campaign by Mark Brereton
www.a-n.co.uk/p/608293
