Re: What we talked about

A Hypothetical Rant

Say you, hypothetically, set out in November of last year to set up an art space. You start looking for premises, and are delighted when you come across a suitable venue in December, it’s just what you need, and fits your budget.

You talk to the hypothetical commercial lettings agent and discover that the hypothetical premises are being let by the hypothetical local authority. This is good, because you are proposing a project for the same hypothetical local authority arts programme to commence in late spring. You agree a rent, the hypothetical local authority approves you as a tenant, and you ask to see a draft lease.

The hypothetical town manager, is keen to see your project get approval, the hypothetical local authority arts department give you funding for your proposal. But you still haven’t seen a lease. You chase up the hypothetical lettings agent, he tells you vaguely reassuring things, you go away reassured.

Time passes.

You start to worry about how long you have to make the hypothetical premises suitable for your project, you are on a tight to non-existent budget, and you are working many hours on the project unpaid while you do your dayjob to pay the bills.

The hypothetical lettings agent lets you know that a draft lease will be forthcoming in 10-14 days, he is wry but pleasant, local authority legal teams are a little slow it seems.

10-14 hypothetical days pass, still no lease is forthcoming. You bring in a friend with relevant experience of commercial leases to give you advice. She writes to the agent, suddenly a hypothetical draft lease arrives.

You are disappointed that the draft lease appears to be written by hypothetical monkeys with typewriters, you are even more dismayed when you realise that you are paying the hypothetical legal fees, and therefore you have basically paid a bunch of hypothetical cretins to draft some loo paper, and take over a month doing it.

Your hypothetical friend takes issue with the draft, (thank god for her!) And gradually and slowly an appropriate lease is written, your friend is invaluable.

Just when you think you are about to take possession of your hypothetical premises the local authority announces that you cannot until certain tests have been carried out.

You wonder why this wasn’t bloody done in the whole hypothetical year the premises have been empty.

The delays are becoming excruciating, frustrating and unfathomable, you wonder why you, who are working unpaid to produce cultural and community activities which will benefit local residents, are able to act in a timely professional manner, and yet various hypothetical local authority departments and personnel, and their representatives, are unable to do the same, despite it being their only job.

It seems ridiculous to you, that the project that is funded by one part of the hypothetical local authority, is so cavalierly jeopardised by another part of same authority.

Hypothetical rant over.

Artists are ridiculous, discuss. And sometimes a pencil is just a pencil.

Junk shops seem to be a source of inspiration recently, firstly for the Seventies Romance Portraits I made last year which celebrate the melodramatic cover art of pulp romance novels, and began my current obsession with tiny brushes and gouache paint, and now my new love, Finding Out magazine. I found a stack of these magazines at my local antique market (pleasingly called ‘The Emporium’) and simply couldn’t resist them. Trying to work out what this irresistible pull to objects consists of is all part of the fun.

Finding Out I, Still Life with Cowboy Boot (A Portrait of Angus McBride) was the first I completed. McBride was a prolific and talented illustrator of children’s books, text books and magazines, and just as with the romance novel illustrations, I found the skilled lightness of touch of these artists compelling for reasons beyond the image. These are largely lost professions, with the possible exception of SF/Fantasy, book artists of this kind, once ubiquitous, are no longer common.

Finding Out itself is an anachronism, a pre-internet weekly encyclopedia filled with seemingly random articles intended to educate young adults, strapline ‘The Modern Magazine For Young People Everywhere’.

McBride’s compositions for Finding Out are complex still-lifes which gather together the subjects of the contents of each magazine in order to inspire the young reader. A cowboy boot on a martian landscape, with a piece of bamboo, a picture of a canoe, tubes of paint, gold doubloons and a blue pencil. Or a chinese lantern, moths, a bat, a picture of Tower Bridge, an x-ray of a skull, a book written in arabic and a red pencil. Or the latest of my paintings, Native American Indians racing across a plain on horseback, huge cumulus clouds, a cricket bat, a model boat, William Caxton’s makers mark, ants and a blue pencil. There’s always a pencil.

Brought to mind for me is a quote by Isidore Ducasse under the pseudonym Comte de Lautreamont, “Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissection table.” From Les Chants de Maldorer, a text which was influential on Symbolists, and Surrealists alike, including Andre Breton, and was also referenced by Man Ray in his piece, The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse. I always think of Giorgio de Chirico when I remember that quote, with his strange, cold juxtapositions. They always seem so blank faced to me, coded and inaccessible, yet troubling.

The juxtapositions on the magazine covers are more arbritrary but share a language of visual connotation with de Chirico. When looking at McBride’s illustrations I find myself using the same attempt at decoding symbolism as I do the De Chirico, except for McBride, there is no hidden agenda, no manifesto and (apparently) no ambitions to high art. Only an attempt to engage a young reader in learning about subjects as diverse as mathematics, social history, inventions, drawing, zoology, myth & legend and so on.

I don’t think the pencil has any symbolism other than that of being a drawing implement.

These magazines are defunct and obsolete in the digital age, out of date in their information, and outmoded in their manner, just as the book artist no longer has a role. As obsolete as the misogynist and somewhat ridiculous manifestos of Breton and his friends.

Obsolete and ridiculous, like the artist painstakingly gridding and drawing out a life size still life copy of a painting from an old magazine no one cares about any more.

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It takes an unbelievable amount of work to start a new art organisation. More than perhaps we realised only a few months ago when we had a Fame-like “let’s put the show on right here” moment.

We’d decided that there wasn’t anyone doing what we wanted to do, that there was no studio provision that matched with what we needed, and that the opportunities we wanted to see were not being provided, so we thought.. “Let’s do it OURSELVES! How hard can it BE?”

Several reams of paper worth of forms, days worth of meetings and gallons of coffee drunk and it was, I can tell you, pretty hard.

However:

Our first pre-launch event Sex Death & Cocktails (Desire and the Death Drive) is a night of fast and furious presentations by artists such as Sharon Kivland, Alasdair Duncan and Holly Stevenson. It bodes well to be fun, informative and drunken, with happy hour cocktails and an art raffle. Join us at Cho Chos Bar and Restaurant, Streatham Hill on February 21st, to see what the fuss is about.

www.artlacuna.org

We are crowdfunding in order to offer our community based programme and artist opportunities, and will be launching an Open Submission Art Prize, for which the prize is a month long residency and soloshow at our new site at Clapham Junction. For more details of what we hope to offer and how you can take part visit our Sponsume page.

http://www.sponsume.com/project/artlacuna

I’m really excited about the space, and can’t wait to get started!

So it’s a shiny new year, just unwrapped from it’s packaging, much like the new desk diary just delivered to me by the postman. I already know it’s going to be a busy year, with a meeting scheduled for tomorrow, and leases, legalese and the like already swimming around my brain.

But I have at least managed to be a little productive this holiday season, working from home to avoid the deathly chill of the studio, and the ever increasing price of my commute.

Headshot I and Headshot II are digitally manipulated found photography printed to c-type. I was fascinated by the effect the anonymous collections of studio portraits had on me, they are obviously efforts toward self-promotion from the sitters, now anonymous. I post them here for you to see.

Let me know what you think.

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I attended one of the ICA Friday salons last week, the topic was professional development, the target audience young artists just leaving university and blinking fearfully in the harsh light of the real world.

As I wasn’t the target audience perhaps I shouldn’t judge the quality of the advice, which seemed variably to be “get another job” or “opt out and don’t mind if you never have a pension, sick pay, enough money for the rent or your own home”.

There are various reasons why it doesn’t pay to be an artist, and they have been written about by many others before me. The culture we inhabit where the only value is financial, the equation of creativity and the arts as a labour of love and therefore not something which rewards with income, pensions, sick pay and job security, and the reliance of the art infrastructure on the labour and creativity of artists and interns willing to work for free.

So are there any solutions? Is it every man for himself?

It certainly seems that way when big name artists earn megabux for their international dealers, shady business practices abound and fleecing young artists out of their (or their parents) savings for “mentoring” and exhibiting is de rigeur.

At the meeting at the ICA I ventured to suggest that pooling resources with your peers is your best strategy, this was dismissed. “Other artists are your competition!” I was told. And they are to a certain extent, but only if you consider that art is an interchangeable product, where if only the buyer saw your product, they’d drop the art they are holding and buy yours instead. That’s taking your cue from the market, and we’ve already seen how well that works socially, long term.

There is a feeling in the air, austerity, desperation, a need for change. These poor schmucks graduating from art school are already being called ‘a lost generation’ because their prospects for paid employment in their chosen field is virtually nil. They have been sold a pup, their employable skills are poor, their debts are as high as their expectations, and the art colleges and universities aren’t doing enough to prepare them for the reality of living on fresh air and enthusiasm, the way the rest of us get by.

My solution for myself is work collaboratively. A group of friends, pooling our skills, time and talent to create an arts organisation. The way I pitched it to someone last week was to suggest it is better to be a small fish in a big pond, than be the tadpole, or the fish food.

Can we run something on ideas we believe in, on finances we raise ourselves, for the benefit of ourselves and others? Can we pay artists for their contributions? Can we avoid the trap of employing those only able to work for free as interns? Can we set an example for other organisations in this regard?

Alastair Gentry writes some good stuff on this

http://careersuicideblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/the-other-art-fair-a-correction/

http://www.axisweb.org/dlForum.aspx?ESSAYID=18192

And of course Emily Speed on getting paid

www.a-n.co.uk/p/497389/

Footnote:

A friend tells me he accepted a commission to provide paintings for a new sheltered housing scheme for the elderly. He is a talented painter with a masters in Fine Art, he has won prizes and sold his work regularly. He met with the residents, and the PR firm working as middle man for the commission in the space, he met the interior designer(!), and they discussed the works he would make. He even agreed to use a colour palette that would fit the decor. He was paid £100 per painting INCLUDING FRAMING. When I asked why he accepted the commission, he said it was work, and all work is good. But he wouldn’t be doing it again. I wish I knew how much the interior designer was paid, or the PR firm. I’m sure we all have stories like this.