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| Images from TOAST magazine |
I have great faith in artists as seers, attuned to the coming storm. So what are we to make of the absolute deluge of art that seems to be a rehearsal for post-apocalyptic life? Here we all are weaving, basket-making, hand-building clay vessels, making plant dyes, drawing with natural pigments, growing food, seed saving, fermenting, preserving, sewing banners, making totems and charms, and inventing new 'folk' rituals. Artists have become makers; craft is the new contemporary art.
I went to the Exeter Contemporary Open 2026 this week and it took me a while to realise that the space felt so calm and inviting because it contained only silent images and objects. No speakers, no screens, no flickering lights or moving parts: a survey of contemporary art practice that had completely sidelined digital.
I don't blame the selectors. AI is like a plague at the moment, tainting all that's joyful and original and human about art. To turn away from digital and a life dominated by screens feels quite radical. But digital is also part of our current human condition, and rejecting it to focus on creating on some imaginary rural idyll seems a little naive.
Because there is also something painfully privileged about all this. It's all chore jackets and waffle knits and £10 artisanal loaves. You can't grow and preserve food or mess about with buckets of dye or operate a kiln while working a zero hours contract and living in a bedsit. Slow living is for people with the luxury of space and time. It's also for when we need to turn away from the state we're actually in.
I love a bit of tactile textile or a spot of punkish Morris dancing as much as the next person, but I don't kid myself that it's going to be much help when the tech bros have extracted all the money and we are left fighting over the (contaminated) land.
