Engage South East Area Group meeting at Royal Academy.
Show: ‘Child Hood – the real event’. A powerful and moving show with Kids Co – a charity working with vulnerable children. All work made by the children was included in the show, presented as a journey. Great to see and hear the unadulterated words,voices and images, complete with mis-spellings. ‘Wearing my emotions’ is a film made by 8-13 year-old girls, who made dresses to represent a particular emotion they feel – feelings not often ‘allowed’. The girls celebrated their emotions and outfits on a catwalk – looked fantastic and proud! In another work the older kids worked with a shoe designer, and used the idea of a pair of decorated shoes to represent where they’d come from, alongside where they wanted to go in the future. There was an overall sense of hope despite their ‘situational’ lives/histories. Artistic excellence – high quality work throughout. Well-received by the kids, funders and public (no complaints to RA) and a great opportunity to express the transformative power of art in real lives, contrasting ‘regular’ RA shows. Involved working flexibly on a well-established relationship and shared ‘faith in art’ – allowing the project to evolve, without a fixed end-point. RA is independent of external expectations, so no big evaluation. Kids co had an evaluation with the kids and artists they worked with.
Space Station Sixty-Five www.spacestationsixtyfive.com
Aims to ‘democratise art, without instrumentalising, infantilising or shaping it to fit.’ Opened in 2002 in a shop-front building in SE22. Projects with artists (and others) near and far. Directors: Rachael House and Jo David.
I submitted a drawing to the Open show, which accepted all works – very democratic and a simple sticky label for signage (no forms nonsense). A very welcoming, critically informed and authentically active space.
Critical friends at Peckham Space www.peckhamspace.com
I’m so happy to be a member of this group. An eclectic mix of local people who are interested in Peckham Space and it’s development. The chair is Sarah Rowles of Q-art fame, a brilliant listener and communicator. The aims of the group are: audience development, raising awareness of the activities/links, to encourage young people’s participation in FE and HE, to provide a forum for open critical, discussion about PS and input into future activity.
So, what is Peckham Space? It commissions location-specific art with high-quality artists and local communities. It is an iconic position in the middle of a busy shopping area, which hosts exhibitions that have meaning to locals. It’s a community resource building social capital in Peckham.
Its partner networks include: University of the Arts, Southwark Council, VAPA (Visual & Performing Arts), Harris Academy (Peckham), Tate Modern and others.
The next event is Peckham Space Peace Month (8 Aug-2 Sept) with a programme of free public events www.peckhamspace.com. Critical Friends will be going out onto the street and asking people ‘What is the role of an art space in Peckham Square?’.
Out of many, one (Art Monthly Jul-Aug 12, 358) Mark Wilsher
Mark thinks that the model of participatory practice in some of the large-scale Olympic projects in the UK, is conservative and tokenistic. He questions what the audience is meant to experience through participation.
Lone Twin’s: Boat Project. People of the South East are invited to contribute wooden objects. The stories associated with each object are recorded and documented to form an archive of the area’s history. The artists then take this group of over a thousand objects to construct a seaworthy boat that travels around the coast.
So participants contribute objects that are bought together in one clear image or symbol that is provided by the artist. Anyone is invited to get involved, no special skills required or big investment in time. Similarly, Yoko Ono’s SMILE at the Serpentine invites people to upload photos of themselves smiling – to form an online film.
These projects require a defined end-point (imposed from the beginning) that unifies the contributions – a powerful visual symbol: ‘easily exchanged conceptual singularity’. But does the individual’s participation matter? In Antony Gormley’s Waste Man (2006) he provided a strong final image (a man) and asked people to donate furniture that had special meaning to them. The burning process could be considered to be transformative, as memories were released and people set free of past pain.
But the whole organising structure might be criticised on the basis of its top-down, hierarchical imposition of order. If the end result is preordained the specifics of an individual’s participation are meaningless and tokenistic, an illusion of power. No one is permitting people to have a say in how things evolve.
Does this matter? If the public get to take part and see their contributions add up to something, and the artists get to open their working practices to wider participation, what’s the problem? This model has the negative effect of obscuring more progressive alternatives; genuinely collaborative works involving the public. The emphasis on materiality is a retrograde denial of social relationships. Other models and processes of more nuanced collaboration or alternative systems don’t stand a chance among the official programme of crowd-pleasing spectacle and public showmanship
Marina Abramovicz: The artist is present
A moving film, great theatre and contemporary artwork. Documenting her MoMA show, the build-up, love/life and the experience itself. She’s a heady mix of vulnerability, will power and spiritualism – a sort of living-day Guru. Her strength and beauty is electrifying, not only in her performances but in everything, a pure elegance. I was genuinely touched and left the cinema feeling human, pleasantly sad and a bit slowed-down. Feeling open, I found my eyes resting on the many faces I don’t usually see on my way home. This is definitely art as transformation. With the true generosity of a great artist, she gave people the simple gift of attention; connecting to a fundamental humanity that unites us all.
