Artists Newsletter #3: The 2000s
With a nod to the Noughties, Guest Editor Shy Bairns explores collectives and how artists work together to build their own art worlds.
With a nod to the Noughties, Guest Editor Shy Bairns explores collectives and how artists work together to build their own art worlds.
Laura Yuile is a London-based artist whose practice is concerned with issues around domestic and urban space and how changes in the built environment and technology affect our everyday lives. This profile includes a video recorded at a-n’s Assembly Thamesmead event in October 2019.
In 2017, New Contemporaries, an annual exhibition of emerging artists from UK art schools, opened up its application to include artists from alternative learning programmes. Director Kirsty Ogg discusses this decision, the changing climate for emerging artists in the UK, and what artists really need to develop and challenge their practice. Interview by Michaela Nettell.
Colin Hambrook provides an introduction to the history of, and current practices in the field of disability arts, including an overview of key organisations that support disabled visual artists.
Dundee-based project Dain’ Hings was initiated by Duncan of Jordanstone fine art students Jek McAllister and Saskia Singer as a way to invite fellow artists to ‘just dae hings’ This profile includes a video interview, recorded at Assembly Aberdeen, in which they explain how they got started using readily-available resources, including their local pub.
Formed in 2016 in the run up to the EU referendum, Keep It Complex: Make it Clear is a loose collective of London-based artists and cultural workers. Its members aim to challenge apathy and fear by providing people with ‘tools and ideas to get involved with everyday politics’. Lydia Ashman reflects on the ways in which the group use their skills and networks as artists to facilitate conversation in a divided world.
Visual Arts in Rural Communities hosts residencies in the remote hill-farming area of Tarset in Northumberland. In August 2018, the organisation piloted its first residency for a disabled artist. Lydia Ashman speaks to Project Director Janet Ross and artist, curator and disability advocate Aidan Moesby about the development of the pilot and its impact on the organisation’s programme.
Originally from Germany, Glasgow-based painter Cornelius Quabeck first spent time in the city during a two-month artist residency in 2011. He talks to Dan Thompson about living and working in Düsseldorf, London and San Francisco, and the reasons that brought him back to Scotland in 2016.
In 2015, Scottish artist Paul McDevitt set up Farbvision, a project space in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district that presents solo exhibitions and is also home to the INFINITE GREYSCALE record label. He talks to Dan Thompson about his reasons for relocating from the UK, and the artistic freedom and financial reality of life in his adopted home.
An artwork by Kevin Hunt created as part of Signpost that aims to draw attention to some of the most superb activity being facilitated by emerging independent artists and curators right now in the UK.
This Research paper forms part of a series that looks specifically at the nature and value of openly-advertised work and opportunities for visual and applied artists. Drawing on data published on www.a-n.co.uk/jobs_and_opps, this series set out in 2007 to track on an ongoing basis the key categories of awards/fellowships, academic posts, art vacancies, commissions, exhibitions, residencies and competitions/prizes, and by doing so, to identify any trends arising, and provide commentary and contextual evidence and analysis from other related sources, to contribute to arts and cultural consultations and policy.
Whilst public art is distinctly ‘out of favour’ with Arts Council England cutting agencies as part of making savings, it’s interesting to see Creative Scotland taking a rather different tack.
For one evening in October, Edinburgh’s Collective Gallery brought together six artist-led studio groups and galleries for an Artists’ DIY Soapbox.
Explores the affect of the economic recession on the livelihoods of artists in terms of access to employment and career opportunities and raises concerns about how artists’ practice is likely to fare in this period of arts austerity. [HTML format]
AHM (Sam Ainsley, David Harding and Sandy Moffat) presented the second of three one-day symposiums across Scotland in April.
Kathryn Campbell Dodd of Bird in the House reported in her blog on going to the ‘On Collecting: Transactions in Contemporary Art’ symposium at The National Gallery of Wales in December. The event was chaired by Gordon Dalton from Mermaid & Monster, facilitated by g39, and was part of the Contemporary Art Society’s National Network programme for their centenary year. The event’s purpose was to “investigate the market for contemporary art in Wales”.
Well done Renos Lavthis for your letter in support of John Nutt’s December letter with regard to the debate on art today.
Kristina Johansen reports on her multiple visits to Glasgow International 2008.
Emilia Teleses opening essay offers analysis of the markets for art in the UK highlighting the contradictions and idiosyncrasies of the relationship between artists and money,
Guyan Porter talks about the socio-economic dynamics of art markets and deconstructs notions of the art market in the UK.
Charlie Fox on what networking means to artists.
A Code of Practice takes commonly-agreed principles of good practice and demonstrates why and how they should be applied.
Francis McKee describes a cross-pollination between art, craft, design and architecture.
A partnership between Glasgow School of Art and Chinas Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing has generated a new course starting in September, enabling 100 Chinese students annually to begin studies at home and complete degrees in Glasgow. The […]
Aimed at public sector arts employers, commissioners, consultants and arts trainers, Good practice in paying artists addresses the context for fees and payments for artists’ residencies, workshops and community commissions.