Whilst world economies stall and arts funding in England at least awaits the next government axe, the art market seems to be a model of sustainability.
In the mid 1980s, the annual value of UK art sales was estimated at £40million –equivalent to £101million today. Nowadays, it’s said to be more like £3.08billion – about 30 times greater. Conversely, many publicly-funded galleries are wondering where their next grant will come from – more artists report having to pay all their production and development costs, even for invited or commissioned shows. Notions of exhibition payment right – a fee to artists for showing their work in public – are a distant memory.
The pyramidal relationship between bankable artists whose work is the fuel for the art market and the energies of artist-led and practice-led initiatives is well documented. For example, Tacita Dean, whose FILM was Tate Modern’s 2012 Unilever Series commission, has said of London’s Four Corners: “My first cutting room was at Four Corners. There I would work with an intensity I can recall vividly. I cannot know what I would be doing now had I not cemented my process, as I did, at Four Corners.”
Clearly, galleries need artists, although the relationship is not always an equal one. Artists Ayling and Conroy, who conducted a survey of gallery perceptions about artists for the a-n publication Trade off: Markets for art in the UK, said: “The most interesting point gained from our research into their perceptions and habit is the ‘hunter and hunted’ approach galleries use when finding artists. In that, artists should be in the forest, so to speak, but not looking directly at the hunter’s gun.”
In the UK in 2010, pitifully small amounts of money went in grant aid to artists for research and development, through which they can build their tacit knowledge and artistic capacity, towards making ‘great art for everyone’. Such budgets are unlikely to increase as public and arts funding is further cut.
How else could artists finance their futures? Perhaps a mandatory one per cent levied from the £3.08b art market ‘assets’ annually, that they helped to create?
Frieze art fair runs 11-14 October, Regent’s Park, London. friezelondon.com
More on www.a-n.co.uk:
Realising the value: how practice-based organisations will fare after ACE cuts.
A fair share: direct funding for artists from UK arts councils.
Also see:
Are there too many artists part II: Susan Jones on Market Project.
