- Venue
- Art Party Conference
- Location
- Yorkshire
Our journey from Cornwall started at 6.30am Lands End the Friday before the Art Party Conference, with a pick up from the CAST studios in Helston we finally made our way on the long trip to Scarborough.
And here began the importance of such events, discussions on our practice, exploring old projects and exhibitions and plans for the future were talked about with passion for the nearly the whole journey. Despite working together on ‘happenings’ in Cornwall and meeting up at social gatherings, private views and studio visits, this luxury time of indulging in art talk is rare.
The Art scene in West Cornwall is exciting at the moment, for us at least and the many artists who crawl out of the solitude of their studio spaces to throw themselves into exciting exhibitions with gusto. This usually involves emptying filthy, near derelict buildings and turning them into exhibition spaces suitable for installation, paintings, sculpture, performance and other site related works, which are well attended.
We are acutely aware though that being so detached from the rest of the country we can feel disconnected, insular and even if we’re not careful a little clique. Not only did we want to share with other artists what we’ve been up to in far west Cornwall we wanted to engage with other artists, curators and galleries to make links with a view to collaborative work that didn’t just depend on the artists in Cornwall.
On arrival at the Spa Conference Centre on Saturday morning we had a lovely welcome from Crescent Arts and were quite blown away by the scale of the building, that every nook and cranny of it was gearing up for the Art Party Conference. We were placed in what seemed a quiet part of the building but soon realized the Ocean lobby was to be a busy thoroughfare and ‘holding bay’ for attendees of interesting talks by artists such as Cornelia Parker, Jeremy Deller and Richard Wentworth throughout the day, not to mention the life drawing classes with surfers as the subjects.
Our stand consisted simply of 2 slide shows of our most recent projects (DarkRooms, Suspended Sentences and Limbo/Fiat Lux) putting them together was not only an enjoyable process but a very good wake up call for us, apart from the Revolver shows, properly documenting and evidencing the projects as a whole is an area we could do with improving. This means formulating a concrete core group, more admin and more structure. We worry this will take away from the spontaneous energy of our shows. This is definitely something we will be sharing with the rest of the group and considering ways forward.
We had Revolver books, images of the artists (who couldn’t be there in person) and some copies of articles about recent shows, however it was more important for us to connect with passers by in person then to hand out a business card.
Meeting with other AN bursary people wasn’t as easy as we had hoped (would’ve been great if we were all together) though we connected right at the beginning with the enthusiastic ‘Art on the High Street’ attendees, sharing similar issues of feeling ‘cut off’ at times from the rest of what’s going on in the country, namely the big cities. We were very grateful though being positioned near Castlegate Gallery– such a positive connection and a reminder that there are galleries out there who genuinely put artists first, their development and opportunities for experimentation being of paramount importance.
There was so much going on it was difficult to see everything and connect with everyone. If we were to do it again we would attempt to approach the conference in a more ‘organised’ fashion ensuring we had all managed to explore as much as we could, leaving no stone unturned between us.
It was a long journey back on the Sunday but still we managed to share our highlights with each other of the conference and talk of future plans (an Art Party Conference in Cornwall perhaps?!). We were all in the knowledge that the trip wouldn’t have happened without the bursary and really thankful to A-N for allowing us the opportunity (and the cakes!).
