Sitting on asses
May 11, 2012 in art
“I am for art that is political- erotical- mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.” Claes Oldenburg, 1961.
… and then later of course a lot of his work sat on its ass in museums.
The Other Art Fair
Cross-posted from my own blog because it’s relevant to Market Project, you know the drill.
http://careersuicideblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/the-other-art-fair
Market Project, Aid & Abet at the next a-n AIRTIME event
May 11, 2012 in art, event, notice
Members of Market Project will be at a-n’s latest AIRTIME networking and advice session, which takes place at Aid & Abet in Cambridge on Thursday 17th May, 3-5pm. Come and say hello, ask us about working as an artist-led research group over the past two years and our plans for the next two, our careers as professional artists, our dealings with the art world, why flaccid genitalia or brown paintings are commercial suicide, or anything else that’s on your mind. Free to a-n subscribers, but you need to book a place.
Blackpool Illuminations
May 8, 2012 in art, exhibition
ON: a re-imagining of Blackpool Illuminations
|
| Grundy Art Gallery has commissioned artist Brian Griffiths to respond to the town’s famous Illuminations for their 100 years anniversary.Exploring the idea and uses of light, Griffiths has created an exhibition that will be a unique presentation of a selection of actual or fragments of illuminations from the Blackpool Illuminations department and archive.It will showcase the diversity of lights and the breadth of imagination that takes the viewer effortlessly from ancient Greece to science fiction future, from human-sized teddy bears to gigantic Tiffany lamps. Read the rest of this entry → |
Tainted Love
May 7, 2012 in art, exhibition
Annabel Dover’s Tainted Love hero is Anna Atkins, a Victorian botanist and devoted daughter of the scientist JG Children. Atkins made over 200 drawings for her fathers translation of Lamarck’s Genera of Shells and went on to use the Cyanotype method she had learnt from royal astronomer Thomas Herschel to document the flora of her native Kent. Unfortunately Atkins work like that of so many Victorian women was undervalued in favour of a male relative. Atkins’ albums of cyanotypes are charming, illogical and poetic, yet she is remembered as an assistant scientist rather than an artist. For Tainted Love Dover has painted images from Roger Phillips Wild Flowers of Britain (1977), which sought to rekindle the botanical zealotry of Victorian naturalists. The paintings capture the domestic and amateur look of the photographs; some of the plants look half dead and picked and are displayed in an illogical and unscientific way.
Two sides of a (artworld) Coin
May 1, 2012 in art, event, exhibition
Back from Berlin:
Gallery Weekend Berlin was an intense few days where the majority of Berlin’s commercial galleries opened their new exhibitions simultaneously – like a city wide art fair – in the hope of pulling in the BIG collectors. Just like an art fair each participating gallery paid for the ‘privilege’. It certainly had a feeling of being buzzy but not sure if much business was being done. From what I saw (and I pretty much covered most of the establishment spaces) the work was 2-D painting oriented and conservative in content. This was very much tailored to an art market driven audience and artist – think BMW and Vogue.
On the flipside and as its antithesis the Berlin Biennial was very much a different proposition.
In his foreword to the Biennial publication Forget Fear, curator Artur Zjimjewski condemns the fetishism of art objects, even those of a political nature, and, alternately, advocates the potency of authentic activism practiced by artists. “Objects,” he writes, “perform certain work, the work of aestheticizing reality, changing ideas into spectacle, and transforming the political into a call that no one follows.” The KW institute for contemporary art was transformed into a political playground with protest films, alternative education, Slogans and rogue gardening. The atmosphere when I was there on both days was chaotic with a grungy aesthetic and almost (because it was still being presented in the ‘safe’ context of an art space) anarchic attitude.
Zjimjewski laments the “overwhelming institutionalisation of artists”, saying that the need for “material survival” by art institutions endangers the radicalism of art. With this damning critique of the state of the current art world, Zmijewski sets out the goals for his biennial, which will attempt to answer the question what impact can art have on society and consider whether art can bring about positive change.
“What we need is more art that offers its tools, time, and resources to solve the economic problems of the impoverished majority.” He points out that he is not calling for all art to pursue this cause, but politically engaged performance art is decidedly at the crux of this year’s Berlin Biennale.
Economic relationships between artists and insititutions
April 26, 2012 in art, discussion, research
New York’s W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy) has released some excellent research about how much and for what artists have been paid by a range of galleries, compiled by Sherry X. Xian of the Survey Research Institute at Cornell University. The slideshow is particularly informative, but all the material is worth going into in detail; although this survey covers NYC, many of the principles at stake and the bad practices that need to be tackled are commonplace and global in the art world.
Several particularly unpleasant revelations of financial injustice and exploitation:
Big hitters with lots of money, sponsors and patrons are no better (and often much worse) than small galleries at paying artists. The Metropolitan Museum of Art gave some form of payment (which may include expenses or a token honorarium rather than actual fees or anything resembling a living wage) to only 14.3% of the artists surveyed. Rhizome made payments to only 16.7%. MOMA and the Whitney Museum made some form of payment respectively to 50% and 52.9% of the artists who worked with them and were surveyed. Performa failed to pay a whopping 92.3% of the artists who provided work for them and took the survey (i.e. Performa gave fees or expenses to only 7.7%).
26.6% of all the respondents who had a solo exhibition received no payment whatsoever for it.
Bizarrely, 50% of the men who had travel expenses received partial or full travel reimbursement of them; only 10% of the women who had travel expenses got the same treatment.
Lots more incredibly informative stuff at the link below:
How to make it in the art world
On the occasion of Frieze arriving there next week, New York Magazine has an extensive suite of articles and information about what they call “the Art Death Star and the Rebel Forces… battling to the quick.” Lots to explore at the link below, but I particularly liked some of their rules (obviously in some cases tongue in cheek, in some cases perhaps unfortunately too true, all joking aside):
“Make art that’s difficult to collect (so only museums will collect it)”, “stay on trend”, “get born into it”, “pretend you’re an art world outsider even when you’re at the center of everything.”
… and I liked the sharp observations of what is self-consciously “on trend” and not necessarily any good or very interesting in art right now, things I’ve noticed myself recently: trash, Cindy Sherman pastiche, neon signs, candy colours and video game aesthetics are all, for no apparent reason, flavour of the month with curators and gallerists… just as other random things will be on trend a few years from now, providing opportunities for cynical artists to exploit or gifting sincere ones with some ephemeral attention before fashion moves on again and discards art and artist alike.
There’s also Jerry Saltz’s perfect analogy regarding the international commercial gallery scene and the artists they work with: “Like oil wells, once these operations are turned on they have to keep pumping product. Lots of it. Most of it crude.”
Market Project book
April 24, 2012 in art, books, event
Thank you very much to all the people who came along to our book launch at the Contemporary Art Society last night. We hope you enjoyed it; your interest and support are greatly appreciated. The book will be available soon from art book shops.
COMMENTS