- Venue
- Art Party Conference
- Location
- Yorkshire
(GP – PLAY hat)
The buzz of the C side. Bacon sarnies and buddabuddabooom honey monster grasp trials of Celia. It’s the joy and thrill of taking part in the process. Unity of people, unity of Artists. Jubilation in relation. An encouraging perspective.HOPE. No? A career where silliness and PLAY is encouraged. The therapy/ quiet or LOUD expression of PLAY, free-ing our inner wild and raw spirit at a lovely human & social level. Bigger learning in our failures. Representing something vaster. The Value of ART, without money. Pencils and paper: a tool or a toy?.
Empowered lady circle, “pink ladies please take that twerker off the stage before she embarrasses herself!”. Significance of the PINK hats? A navigation tool, a combination of action words, the iconic uniform accessory of the Spice Girls of the art world , so we have something to initiate this discussion with.
Good art practice and good life practice: it’s all social.
(NR – HARD hat)
Conversations in creativity. Exercising the mind. Getting Away With Things. Where is the ‘A’ in stem subjects? How should schools be? What kind of appetite do you have? What other ways can you arrive at the station? How do you find out what you are good at (as a child)? I find a needle in my bum. You should take more care sewing over speedbumps. We talk about the Artists Placement Group and Cat tells us she met the woman who ran the project the other week.
Celia is teaching her primary class how to sub-divide. She used papier mache cabbages from one of our performances during her last maths lesson. We agree after 4 bottles of white wine that art is bigger than art, it is who we are and how we live.
There is no Spa in the Spa and it smells like hot re-cooked cooked breakfasts mixed with dusty heavy fabrics. Just the way we like it. The organ player welcomes the parade into The Grand Hall. A few of us get out soles read by an artist with a Ford Car Manual and enjoy drawing a couple of local surfers with charcoal before the bigger discussions in the Ocean Room. Catrin gets on tv twice, once on the beach and another time with Kevin Hunt as part of The ‘O’ Show with Oriana Fox. Provocations are made and it’s almost teatime. We be scrapping surfaces and I had my spade out all ready to dig deeper.
The seven of us could reach the middle of the earth together. Roll up the sleeves!
(CJ – BE Hat)
As artists we are in a very luxurious position because we are entitled to play(we be playas?). Our roles within education should be to encourage more to play. By education I mean lifelong learning.It isn’t art education that needs the overhaul, it is the whole education system. Richard Wentworth made the suggestion that children’s classes should include learning how to make fires outside. This engages children maths, chemistry and art in a practical way.
Why at art conferences does the visual aspect suffer? Albeit the grand hall with its banners, podium set and funfair organist certainly was a spectacle. Bob and Roberta Smith successfully created a visual brand for the hub of the conference but beyond that it fizzled out. I was left feeling (and not for the first time) that artists shouldn’t always resort to words, and stalls with words – it isn’t their forte. The point of the conference, from my understanding, wasto get like minded people together to rally up against the government as a collective power. I didn’t believe in the APC’s intention. Bob and Roberta Smith consumed the APC as his own artwork.There was no room for the discussion or the rebellion to organically grow – instead I felt like ‘a participant’ or even ‘a prop’ in a staged and decided outcome.
Cherry bakewell ice cream: incredible.
This outing was fabulous. A It was a good time. B it was informative, art and politics wise. C It allowed us time to discuss our artworks and work as an artist to our peer group. In particular we learned the value of talking about our failures and noticing the repeating factor we suffered.
What I learned at the APC: you should always know when to leave the stage.
(CW – MORE Hat)
A trip to the beach with beautiful artist friends: irresistible. I liked everyone’s signs and banners. Solidarity in expression. The free cakes were a lovely treat. “Artists need to be paid”. Michael Grove’s speech tickled me nicely, especially second time round. “Even Churchill only painted at the weekends”. Bob & Roberta Smith pushed me out of a door. I wonder if he would’ve done that if I’d had very expensive looking shoes on. But it’s okay, he’s an artist. Pavel Buchler <3is my new hero. I wonder where he lives.
The monetary value of gold is infinitely more interesting than that of Art™. I want my police officers and taxi drivers to be able to employ/enjoy lateral thinking and abstract visualization.It’s not about feeding the arts industry, it is about feeding all industries. Art and creative development is a line of enquiry, encouraging the pursuit of applicable and irrelevant knowledge (and the ability to differentiate between the two) , as opposed to remembering facts just long enough to regurgitate them onto an exam paper.
New education policy is not just misguided. Our leaders would prefer compliant children who will grow into weak, confused, disempowered adults over inspired stimulated children who will grow into articulate, energized and powerful adults. Cannon fodder is very important.
Group activity is key. I am seriously committed to preserving for myself an area of life that is in no way serious, If it hurts you’re doing it wrong. More play, more dancing, more conversations, more laughing, more lunchtime gins, more group excursions to the beach, more sweatshops in the car, more is more. The act of doing is a success beyond which anything else (money, acclaim) is a superfluous bonus. Working, playing and conversing alone too much is dangerous for the ego.
(EM – DO hat)
APC hosted in a Spa. Salus Per Aquam. Health through water; a cleaning, a purge and a hot steamy end. By the sea and for the health of Art. Grand statements to be played out, although the hardest question I answered was what to order after the crab. I did want more challenges. I wanted to be questioned, not just used as a brush like tool.
Plump the skin ready for new action. Its people that make this all happen; activity, integrity, exposure and purpose.
NOW NOW I’m totally hooked. People are so so important. The hats were fitting –a unit.A proper social support, questions and challenges.Fun action and proper educated artists. The value of working collaboratively is enormous. It is too boring alone, we all needed this.
I was DO
Always DO
DO Alone?
DO what?
DO remove the cling film.
DO give MORE.
DO talk, act. DO.
DO take these deep breaths, and big laughs.
DO if you have done.
DO the left, the right, the up, the down.
DO it Now. Now!
(RP – BOLD hat)
A breath of salty fresh air filling up the lungs. We are on a cliff edge peering down at the flashing Coney Island of the North Sea. The spa floats below like the Marie Celeste, ghostly. I look down to see an alluring giant hole punched perfectly into the concrete, inside there is a green door, a blue door a red door. Is it a trick? All doors leading to nowhere? Or somewhere underneath the tarmac? Take a chance. Pick a door. You might win. You might lose. I later realise that all those lovely doors lead to public toilets. An inside out roundabout housing the public bogs. Genius.Cars whizz round the polomint-public-pee-hole, oblivious to a thing of such beauty. Artists notice things QUICKLY.
Gringo’s at the villa serves up the tenderest beef skewer i’ve ever eaten. Surprise and delight shared with CW (MAKE hat).
An air of childhood and nostalgia comes over me in the grand hall. “What is your first and happiest memory of making art? ” I instantly get annoyed at myself for not remembering clearly what this is. Then the first thing I think of is building a boat in my back garden from my Dad’s old surf board, a brush, and a cardboard box. I sail across the lawn. Art makes children powerful.
ART. WORK. LIFE. A man holds a bunch of these three big words on balloons ready to be released into the sky over the beach. It’s all about the balance and the freedom to let go. Float into the unknown. Its a risk. Embrace the possible and the impossible. And its about playing as much as possible in your life before you go POP.
You’ve got to wear many hats in this game. Why is art important? Imagine life without art and what that would look like. A load of big BLANK bits with a lot of grey and a bit of beige BUT there would still be the sky and the sun and the moon and the trees and the sea and the birds and the hills and the entire animal kingdom. Maybe thats enough and we’re just being greedy.
Human beings have always made art. It is an innate need.Maureen Duffy tells us that they used to form orchestras in concentration camps and write poems down in their own blood on stones. Hearing this makes me believe that art really can free the soul in miraculous ways, at the darkest of times. Art breeds community, a social entity, a passionate unity of will. A sensation that is rapidly becoming forgotten and all too unfamiliar in this day and age. Artists notice things QUICKLY. Their intuition leads them in the front rank of social change.
Listen to the children’s voices – what do they want? The government and entertainment industries encourage people to be stupid. Stuff the curriculum, get us back to nature, learning to build fires, becoming friends with the wilderness again. Play hide and seek with our old pal, The Primitive. Get lost. Get found. Stamp in the mud. Robert Barnes at the APC offered me the opportunity to do just that and read my sole. Encourage others around you to do the same. We are here to openly and boldly resist and invigorate in beautiful and outlandish ways.
This trip was made possible with the kind support of a bursary from a-n The Artist Information Company.
With Thanks!
