Thursday, 30 June 2011
That sinking feeling
Had my photo taken this week by Fran Turner for a project she's working on with Jo Talbot Bowen called Artists' Sinks. It will include a book to be sold for Wateraid. Looking at some of the other images, I think I win the prize for grottiest specimen - both me and the sink.
Friday, 24 June 2011
Some alarm and no surprises
I note that the fee for an individual artist to enter Exeter Open Studios 2011 is £120.00 and ask myself what kind of event it's becoming.
With the entry fee plus other expenses to cover, participating artists have to be confident of selling their work. And that's a pity, because it makes for quite a static event, with the same kind of art and artists appearing every year. Ultimately that's not good for anyone.
I took part as new graduate in 2006, when the event was still supported by Exeter City Council. I didn't sell a thing but it didn't matter because registration was only £50.00 - for a group of six. We had a good experience and so did many of the people who visited us. Since then, artist registration has continued to rise in price and I've considered it but never committed again.
Perhaps Exeter Open Studios could consider an annual 'bursary' to cover the entry fee for a selected newcomer or more experimental artist? As these artists probably wouldn't otherwise participate, there's no loss of income and it's a win-win situation, introducing new art and artists to the event. It could provide a much-needed element of discovery and surprise.
With the entry fee plus other expenses to cover, participating artists have to be confident of selling their work. And that's a pity, because it makes for quite a static event, with the same kind of art and artists appearing every year. Ultimately that's not good for anyone.
I took part as new graduate in 2006, when the event was still supported by Exeter City Council. I didn't sell a thing but it didn't matter because registration was only £50.00 - for a group of six. We had a good experience and so did many of the people who visited us. Since then, artist registration has continued to rise in price and I've considered it but never committed again.
Perhaps Exeter Open Studios could consider an annual 'bursary' to cover the entry fee for a selected newcomer or more experimental artist? As these artists probably wouldn't otherwise participate, there's no loss of income and it's a win-win situation, introducing new art and artists to the event. It could provide a much-needed element of discovery and surprise.
Exeter Open Studios takes place at venues across the city - Friday 4th - Sunday 6th November 2011.
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Notes for a response to The Recipe Exchange
The Recipe Exchange
Spacex, Exeter 14 May – 9 July 2011
1. This is an exhibition that raises far more questions than it answers – and that’s no bad thing. It documents the results of a project by artist and researcher Helen Pritchard that involved the residents of Farringdon, a village near Exeter.
2. The Recipe Exchange expands the idea of recipes to include shared instructional texts for a whole range of practical activities. Pritchard encouraged residents to take part in skill-sharing events and to establish an online archive of practical knowledge at www.therecipeexchange.org
3. What initially looks like a rather gentle excursion into the domestic knowledge of a quiet Devon village (how to clean a Thermos, how to make nettle pesto, how to say hello to a horse) becomes something else altogether – once you relinquish your position as spectator and join in.
4. From the inside, The Recipe Exchange resists description but, as I’m determined to try, I’ll call it a practical demonstration of how knowledge and meaning can be distributed, rather than located in just one place. By attending the gallery events and talking to each other about this puzzling exhibition and the issues it raises for art, we share in its ongoing creation. None of us, however, can grasp the whole picture.
5. Drawing on references from open source technology development, Helen Pritchard challenges the top-down development and dissemination of information by authoritative ‘experts’ and champions a model of collaborative, networked knowledge production.
6. These are big and exciting themes, but the tangible outcomes of this project – or at least those that appear in the gallery - are relatively insignificant: three videos, a board of photographs, a database of ‘recipes’ and some books and papers. With so little to see, the question has to be asked – why install it in a contemporary art space for eight weeks?
7. This problem wasn’t evident at the opening of the exhibition, as the gallery was a sociable space, full of people from the village and the Spacex art audience. The artist and Martha Crean of Spacex both spoke about the project, and participants had their first opportunity to see themselves on film. For artist, commissioning gallery and participants alike, it was clearly an opportunity to step back and reflect. A point - not of completion exactly - but of focus.
8. The exhibition has also worked well as a setting for sociable learning events, such as Graham Dean’s Arduino workshop, Magda Tyzlik-Carver’s discussion of ‘the commons’ and David Gauntlett’s talk on the social meaning of creativity. But for visitors who came when no events were taking place (and this was most of the time), the content must have seemed rather sparse, rather thin, even rather inward-looking. By its very nature, social art isn’t really a spectator sport.
9. The gallery show suggests there's a second phase of the project that extends the collaborative community to Spacex and Exeter. Because in other, non-art, non-research contexts, what happens in the community hall at Farringdon isn’t of much interest to me. And it’s probably none of my business, either.
10. The Spacex show is also necessary because research demands documentation, arts funding demands outcomes, and art needs an audience to examine, reflect and debate. Which is what I’m attempting now.
11. So, how do you judge the project’s success? One could look for social benefits: if you surveyed the people of Farringdon they might say they’re talking to each other more, less litter is dropped, they have a useful new footpath. But this isn’t the job of art, it’s a useful by-product. We head off down a bumpy road if we expect artists to stand in for community workers.
12. Perhaps it’s created new knowledge? Not always from the recipe contents, which reveal uncertainty as well as knowledge. But we do learn quite a lot about the preoccupations of the communities involved, and also that writing meaningful instructions isn’t as easy as it might first appear. Perhaps instead, exchange is the key word here. The ‘recipes’ that are swapped are, in many ways, tools for self-definition and social interaction.
13. Just as knowledge is dispersed across the community, so is the meaning and significance of this project, which sets out to reveal and reinforce connections, but not from an omniscient position. The artist herself is just one agent among many - a significant one, but not the aesthetically privileged individual of the popular imagination, shaping materials to represent her vision. Instead, Pritchard seems more interested in setting unpredictable processes in motion.
14. Similarly, I can’t adopt the traditional privileged position of a critic, surveying something complete and self-contained, like the arrangement of work in a gallery. At this stage, I can only get stuck in and take part in the event, have the conversations, debate the issues. As a result, this blog entry is only part of a compilation that will include other voices talking about the project and talking about social art. Read the bigger piece here soon.
Spacex, Exeter 14 May – 9 July 2011
1. This is an exhibition that raises far more questions than it answers – and that’s no bad thing. It documents the results of a project by artist and researcher Helen Pritchard that involved the residents of Farringdon, a village near Exeter.
2. The Recipe Exchange expands the idea of recipes to include shared instructional texts for a whole range of practical activities. Pritchard encouraged residents to take part in skill-sharing events and to establish an online archive of practical knowledge at www.therecipeexchange.org
3. What initially looks like a rather gentle excursion into the domestic knowledge of a quiet Devon village (how to clean a Thermos, how to make nettle pesto, how to say hello to a horse) becomes something else altogether – once you relinquish your position as spectator and join in.
4. From the inside, The Recipe Exchange resists description but, as I’m determined to try, I’ll call it a practical demonstration of how knowledge and meaning can be distributed, rather than located in just one place. By attending the gallery events and talking to each other about this puzzling exhibition and the issues it raises for art, we share in its ongoing creation. None of us, however, can grasp the whole picture.
5. Drawing on references from open source technology development, Helen Pritchard challenges the top-down development and dissemination of information by authoritative ‘experts’ and champions a model of collaborative, networked knowledge production.
6. These are big and exciting themes, but the tangible outcomes of this project – or at least those that appear in the gallery - are relatively insignificant: three videos, a board of photographs, a database of ‘recipes’ and some books and papers. With so little to see, the question has to be asked – why install it in a contemporary art space for eight weeks?
7. This problem wasn’t evident at the opening of the exhibition, as the gallery was a sociable space, full of people from the village and the Spacex art audience. The artist and Martha Crean of Spacex both spoke about the project, and participants had their first opportunity to see themselves on film. For artist, commissioning gallery and participants alike, it was clearly an opportunity to step back and reflect. A point - not of completion exactly - but of focus.
8. The exhibition has also worked well as a setting for sociable learning events, such as Graham Dean’s Arduino workshop, Magda Tyzlik-Carver’s discussion of ‘the commons’ and David Gauntlett’s talk on the social meaning of creativity. But for visitors who came when no events were taking place (and this was most of the time), the content must have seemed rather sparse, rather thin, even rather inward-looking. By its very nature, social art isn’t really a spectator sport.
9. The gallery show suggests there's a second phase of the project that extends the collaborative community to Spacex and Exeter. Because in other, non-art, non-research contexts, what happens in the community hall at Farringdon isn’t of much interest to me. And it’s probably none of my business, either.
10. The Spacex show is also necessary because research demands documentation, arts funding demands outcomes, and art needs an audience to examine, reflect and debate. Which is what I’m attempting now.
11. So, how do you judge the project’s success? One could look for social benefits: if you surveyed the people of Farringdon they might say they’re talking to each other more, less litter is dropped, they have a useful new footpath. But this isn’t the job of art, it’s a useful by-product. We head off down a bumpy road if we expect artists to stand in for community workers.
12. Perhaps it’s created new knowledge? Not always from the recipe contents, which reveal uncertainty as well as knowledge. But we do learn quite a lot about the preoccupations of the communities involved, and also that writing meaningful instructions isn’t as easy as it might first appear. Perhaps instead, exchange is the key word here. The ‘recipes’ that are swapped are, in many ways, tools for self-definition and social interaction.
13. Just as knowledge is dispersed across the community, so is the meaning and significance of this project, which sets out to reveal and reinforce connections, but not from an omniscient position. The artist herself is just one agent among many - a significant one, but not the aesthetically privileged individual of the popular imagination, shaping materials to represent her vision. Instead, Pritchard seems more interested in setting unpredictable processes in motion.
14. Similarly, I can’t adopt the traditional privileged position of a critic, surveying something complete and self-contained, like the arrangement of work in a gallery. At this stage, I can only get stuck in and take part in the event, have the conversations, debate the issues. As a result, this blog entry is only part of a compilation that will include other voices talking about the project and talking about social art. Read the bigger piece here soon.
Monday, 6 June 2011
Uncommon Practice
The Recipe Exchange continues at Spacex with a packed programme of talks and events. I am having a great deal of pain - and fun - getting my head round this kind of research-based, social practice. This often consists of me asking lots of stupid questions and blathering on until someone puts me right. The artist who initiated and nurtured the project, Helen Pritchard, has been particularly patient and helpful in this respect.
Last Thursday, a fascinating talk by Magda Tyzlik-Carver on her research project Common Practice. It involves people spending several hours at a time Skyping each other and rearranging/amending bits of text, and concerns the critical use of online networking tools in the context of ‘the commons’ and knowledge production. I only wish we could have had a go, rather than just hear about it after the event. (It's not really a spectator sport.) It has, however, given me an idea for a possible approach to my review of the project for the Spacex Review Group.
The Recipe Exchange runs until 9th July 2011. For details of the exhibition and the related events, visit http://www.spacex.org.uk/ To join in the project itself, visit www.therecipeexchange.org
Last Thursday, a fascinating talk by Magda Tyzlik-Carver on her research project Common Practice. It involves people spending several hours at a time Skyping each other and rearranging/amending bits of text, and concerns the critical use of online networking tools in the context of ‘the commons’ and knowledge production. I only wish we could have had a go, rather than just hear about it after the event. (It's not really a spectator sport.) It has, however, given me an idea for a possible approach to my review of the project for the Spacex Review Group.
The Recipe Exchange runs until 9th July 2011. For details of the exhibition and the related events, visit http://www.spacex.org.uk/ To join in the project itself, visit www.therecipeexchange.org
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