The dream (not quite) in ruins

It's tempting to see the demolition of 4 Red Lion Lane (pictured) as somewhat symbolic. After all, I spent two years (2006-2008) working very very hard as a founder of the Exeter Studios Project to get shared workspace up and running in this semi-derelict building. And I now have nothing to show for it. Or do I?

Having secured the building in September 2007, we had it fully let to around 30 artists and makers in a matter of weeks, with an official opening in November 2007.  It's true I didn't get to benefit from the studio space for long (I left after my fellow directors repeatedly insisted that things such as health & safety and company law didn't apply to us and our 4000sq ft workspace because we were "only artists"). But the legacy is still there - in the shape of EVA Studios, which grew out of the original project.

Now based in a shared building on the city outskirts, the project has strayed a long way from its original vision, but there is at least ongoing large-scale studio provision in Exeter. It was a tough getting there and even tougher having to walk away.  But I'm hugely proud to have made it happen.

A 17-colour logo? Because we're worth it.

Last week a rather surprising communication dropped through my letterbox. Arts Matrix was announcing its relaunch by sending me three publications and a letter - all of them printed in the fullest of full colour:  two oversize-A2 folded leaflets (one a networking calender, the other an events calendar), and one on folded card with foil blocking telling me about its general all-round brilliance as a skills development agency. 

The whole package was contained in a full colour, large-size envelope and cost 72 pence to post (to me and thousands of other creative professionals across the South West).

Given that Arts Matrix went into voluntary liquidation just 12 months ago due to the“very challenging financial and economic period for development agencies in the sector”, you'd think it might have approached its relaunch with some caution. And possibly shown a little more sensitivity to the hundreds of creative professionals across the South West who are in the midst of making very hard choices about the future of their organisations, their work and their personal livelihoods.


www.artsmatrix.co.uk

Beyond the closed shop

Peep Show - Project Space 11 (Exterior view) October 2010

I've written about Plymouth's Project Space 11 and how it demonstrates a possible way forward for artist-led projects in Devon. You can read the article on the Art Cornwall site here.

Good and bad art - who decides?

Another meeting of the Spacex Review Group has left me pondering my approach to critical writing. Do I have to make a value judgement about every piece of work I see, or is it enough to analyse the work's form, effect and meaning? Does an unwillingness to find fault indicate a spineless lack of critical position or an open-mindedness appropriate to the diversity and sheer slipperiness of contemporary art? 

One member of the group described an exercise she was set during a school gallery visit where she was required to spend 20 minutes sitting in front of the piece of art she hated most. Of course, after 20 minutes she felt completely differently about it.

This is often my experience of visiting a show: the work I struggle hardest with can ultimately be the most rewarding. So, any judgement of its value it would depend very much on how long I spent with the work and when I decided to commit my thoughts to paper.  And speaking of value - value to whom exactly?

What criteria do we use to decide if something is good or bad? We could judge work against the artist's or curator's intent (if we know it), but creative people are usually open to the possibility that, by setting out to do one thing, they may well end up doing something else that's richer or more interesting.

In an overcrowded art market, we do need quality control. Artists need feedback that tells them what is and isn't working. We also need critics who are prepared to burst the self-important bubbles of artists, curators and collectors who have lost their way. An art world in which everyone just walked around congratulating each other would be truly stagnant.

The real question for me when looking at art isn't "Is it good or bad?" but "Is it interesting?" I have lots more thinking to do on this subject, but I really do believe that my first duty when writing about art and artists is to try to understand.

www.spacex.co.uk

(Not yet) famous five

Ben Langworthy I took it with me 2010 (work in progress)

"In 2001, six friends attempted to capture Drake’s Island...." Ostensibly offering five responses to a significant "coming of age journey" centred on an iconic landmark in Plymouth, 'The Sutton Youth Initiative' is an exhibition that looks at myth, narrative, adventure, memory and history.

A visit leaves you feeling a little unsure of your footing - and that's almost always a good thing in art. The work seems to occupy a state between playfulness and seriousness, as if contrasting carefree youth with the responsibilities of adulthood.

I hope I'm not giving anything away when I say that the story of capturing Drake's Island is a bit of a red herring: the group didn't even know each other in 2001. The narrative that is offered, then withheld, and that ultimately turns out to be fiction, lends the show an air of furtiveness, guilt and secrecy. And the gap left by the absence of facts seems to have allowed each of the artists to reflect on something personal and resonant.
 

In the days leading up to the show, Ben Langworthy completed a feat of endurance by dragging a small sailing boat attached to a length of rope across the city from Sutton Harbour to the gallery. I took it with me suggests a memory that he was reluctant or unable to leave behind as he made the transition to a new state (sea to land/youth to adult). Lucy Brennan's 180 drawings of different views of Drake's Island suggest a similar inability to let go, this time enacted in an obsessional, repetitive activity.

Bryony Gillard takes a lighter approach, playing with the idea of adventure and endurance as she trains to swim the distance to Drake's Island and back in a specially designed 'codskin' swimsuit. Meanwhile, Scott Daniels' Ducks and Drake's is a grainy film (imbued with the nostalgic feel of old home movies) of the friends skimming stones towards their unreachable destination.

I was particularly taken with  Beth Emily Richards' Skipper, which manages to be both intensely local in its content and universal in its themes. A recorded interview with her grandfather - in which he talks about the unreliability of historical accounts, the importance of adventure, his grief for his dead wife and his love of bowls - is set against a video of a match at Plymouth Hoe Bowling Club. (It was, of course, Sir Francis Drake, who insisted on completing a game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe before engaging the Spanish Armada in battle.)

This mellow voice of experience provides a rich context for the whole show, contrasting the satisfactions of an ordinary life well lived with the vaulting ambitions of explorers and adventurers.

The Sutton Youth Initiative, until 27 November, Plymouth College of Art Gallery, Tavistock Place, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AT.

See also www.e-leven.co.uk for a partner exhibition by Jonty Lees.

Modernism - gently mocked

My review of Dean Knight's Modern Sculpture at Plymouth's Project Space 11 appears in the November issue of a-n magazine.  You can read it here.

Magpie madness

I am at that mad point that always happens when I'm researching a new piece of work. Suddenly everything in the whole world is linked somehow to the theme I'm working on. I have a wall full of stuff that will soon need editing - diagrams of bird dissections, E J Marey's photographs of air currents and a pair of wings made from old umbrella parts. To name but a few.