A little discussion started on Twitter the other evening (impossible to do anything other than gloss over in 140 characters or less), prompted by Emily Speed, to do with when does an artist stop being ’emerging’ and become ‘established’. Good question, and unresolved. Any thoughts from anyone?
Susan Francis half-jokingly said she is ‘re-emerging’. We all agreed this would be great for her statement. This prompted further discussion about age limitations imposed willy-nilly by institutions, open submissions, funding organisations etc. I ranted about the Turner Prize here on A-N back in December, because there is NO justification for an age limit here in particular. The problem is this: many artists start late.
Quoting myself: “Questioning this arbitrary limit, I looked into the reasons for it. The website states “There was no age limit at first, but in 1991 it was decided to restrict the Prize to artists under fifty, so that younger artists just setting out weren’t pitted against artists at the height of their careers”.
This is laudable, but it is not exactly joined-up thinking, is it? It assumes, wholly incorrectly, that all artists start their careers at a young age. I would think that a quick glance around every single art education institution in the country will quickly prove the need to repudiate this misjudgement. Furthermore, many, many artists are obliged to put their careers on hold for all kinds of perfectly legitimate reasons. Raising a family, to name but one. The latter inevitably increases the weighting in favour of young males. In fact, if we extrapolate perceptions of the effects of tuition fees, weighting will become in favour of young, white, middle-class males. Oops.”
I am very much in favour of anything that can help emerging artists along their way. Yet all of us involved in this conversation are precluded from entering any number of things because of being over 30 or whatever. Age discrimination is against the law in employment, training and education, isn’t it? Once again, I call for a better way of defining the parameters. It may take a little more effort on the part of organisers in verifying the CVs of selected applicants, but how about a maximum total career length of say 5 years? Anyone?
