Publications

Helen Sloan looks at changing opportunities for UK artists in the current cultural climate.

The Close proximity event looked to see how the visual arts culture based around London has shifted.

In terms of art markets, little seems to have changed in that time. London still remains at the centre of the Art Market (second to New York) with Switzerland close behind.¹ The look and feel of the work, the location of the galleries and some of the people may have changed but it still operates from more or less the same values, and emphasis is placed on a saleable object rather than a brief ephemeral happening, event or time-critical piece of work. There appears to remain an almost irreconcilable difference between object-based work and the more transient ephemeral work such as video, software art, happenings and live events. In a climate in which many artists and theorists are embracing non-object-based work² , and even galleries that reflect the market seem to be commissioning work of this type to some extent (see for instance ‘East05’ curated by Gustav Metzger and also Tate Modern, ‘Time Zones’, 2004), it seems a paradox that the art market itself is unable to shift its culture significantly in order for artists to make a diversity of work. Even though artists who use moving images in their work or create complex installation pieces are represented, this is all carefully monitored for the marketplace and the large-scale gallery system. It is difficult for most artists working in a more radical³ and social context to survive in this sector.

The art market in terms of commercial galleries and dealership is of course only one strand of the visual arts. Over twenty-five years, there has been a shift to the regions in terms of public funding. Broadly within the visual arts, large-scale galleries and initiatives have been established in the regions such as Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Newcastle, Turner Contemporary in Margate, the regional Tate galleries, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool-based FACT Centre and Lowry Centre in Salford, to name a few.

Education and outreach is integral to most public galleries’ and organisations’ programmes today (this has been a major shift in the public sector over the last twenty-five years and something we take for granted today) with levels of community involvement being constantly reassessed to ensure that approaches are no longer paternalistic and/or patronising. Community access organisations have struggled to sustain themselves historically and as community arts has experienced a downturn in popularity and credibility over the last fifteen years, the situation has been further exacerbated for these organisations. Major exceptions are young people’s centres often funded for their activities through funding from the Creative Partnerships initiative for education and art.

When the Heritage Lottery Fund was set up in 1994, it was intended to revolutionise the way in which the arts was supported in the UK. At its inception, Lottery Funding only supported building projects. It gave rise to a number of initiatives that did not have the resources to fill them with artworks or to sustain their operations. The National Centre for Popular Music, Sheffield and The Lux, London are interesting examples. The former turned from a Museum into a Students’ Union for Sheffield Hallam University and more generally a community centre, and the latter now has various proposals for its function while the organisation has managed to continue its operations in another venue. Regardless of The Lux managing to sustain itself on new premises, what was a strong dedicated space to media arts in London now lies redundant in terms of its original function.

Clearly it was not sustainable to continue to fund buildings without increasing the level of project and revenue funding so the lottery was extended to funding beyond capital projects. The resulting funds were RALP (Regional Arts Lottery Programme), which has now amalgamated with other funding schemes to form Grants for the Arts. One of the most encouraging developments of this programme in the last two years is that individual artists may apply for their own grants. Whilst many organisations may help the artist to produce their grant applications, it allows the artist some control over their finances and a greater degree of dialogue with arts institutions and the Arts Council England.

Significant opportunities for artists have come out of regeneration projects, particularly in the regions. Public art flourished in the 1980s and 1990s and continues to have a significant input into production of art work in the regions. Whilst the UK has never fully operated a Per Cent for Art Scheme, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) among developers, and public art schemes within Local Authority Planning has enabled artists to produce a variety of work, particularly outside London. This aspect of art production is arguably a growth market both in terms of the development of new buildings for the arts and public art – Regional Development Agencies too are recognising the value of art in this context⁴. Corporate Social Responsibility is being actively encouraged by the government across a range of scales of business. It is an integral part of government legislation. Although CSR is not exclusive to the arts and covers a broad range of community initiatives, it does provide a good source of support to artists particularly in the context of regeneration.

In a recent government paper, it was acknowledged that the art market accounted for £3,500 million income in the UK.⁵ The arts are being seen as having some economic and political value (the economic value of arts in regeneration and development is not included in the total sum of the value of art in UK above. The amount also does not take into account the roles of the arts in other focused regenerative projects such as the Olympics and City of Culture initiatives). On the surface, this looks good but is there a cost to the artist? In the context of urban redevelopment and regeneration, artists must respond to a brief. They can be creative but only within certain parameters and the kind of work that can be produced is limited. For some artists, this does not present a problem as the criteria fit their work, but for others the paths that they can choose to follow are increasingly narrowed. Much of the work around regeneration involves public art pieces which again, like the art market, are reliant on a physical object in the environment. The content of the work in these contexts also comes into question – the work should be challenging but not contentious.

Jeremy Moon argues cogently that since the early 1980s, governments in the UK have used CSR as a way of working alongside business in order to enhance and endorse government policy (particularly policies of working with ‘corporates’ in terms of defining legislation) and also to compensate for “deficits in governance”.⁶ If art is used in this context, experimentation and challenge will be difficult. It is commonly understood that radical art is difficult in a climate where it is meshed with government legislation. Some projects have managed to traverse this route adeptly such as Urban Tapestries, Mobile Bristol, Fluid’s Neighbourhood Consultation work in Hackney and Kings Cross and Wireless London, all of which place as much on the process and audience engagement/participation as the outcome.

Process-based work (particularly in my own field of work – media arts) has rarely been so prevalent and yet the opportunities to platform it are few. Changes in academia with the Research Audit Exercise (RAE) in the last ten years have allowed artists to develop their research and process in higher educational institutions. However, there is a pressure for outputs rather than quality of research in order to achieve status in the RAE context through the need for exhibitions, publications and delivery of conference papers. Few arts organisations exist that allow for the dissemination of work in this way – notable exceptions are Huddersfield Media Centre, spc, Access Space, iDAT, CARTE, PVA, OpenMute, SCAN and PAL Laboratories, many of which are London based. The processes of art are often the most interesting part of the work, and the approach of the artist has provided much for people from other disciplines to learn from.

Keywords like ‘creative’ and ‘risk-taking’ are prevalent in strategic documents but what actually is the outcome of this? Some of the larger publicly funded galleries will only endorse work already validated by dealers or high profile curators. Opportunities for the emergent artist are few in these contexts let alone for artists who want to platform process-based works. Where emergent artists are supported is in the context of professional development with agencies like a-n, Artquest, ETA, New Work Network and various artist resource centres doing important work to help artists to promote themselves. The exhibiting sector, however, remains largely unwilling to endorse an artist without validation from a number of key nominated individuals – in short, few organisations in the sector are prepared to take a risk.⁷ Terms like ‘creative’, ‘community’ and ‘risk-taking’ are used freely in press campaigns but they are claims from the curators or publicists rather than true critical appraisals of the work being shown.

Perhaps a notable exception to this was Mike Stubbs’s ‘City Strapline Industries’ at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, Spring 2004, produced by Forma.⁸ Stubbs, an established international media artist, combined socially contextual art with media-making, particularly video. Over a period of five years, Stubbs has worked collaboratively with a social researcher and psychologist Murray Anderson Wallace, with each bringing their own particular backgrounds to one another’s projects and disciplines. The resulting collaboration has produced a body of work which sensitively and critically engages with communities at all levels to get to the centre of the issues faced within various geographical and cultural environments. In ‘City Strapline Industries’, a skilfully-edited video of actual happenings on the street less than a mile away from Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art were juxtaposed with edited interviews with key figures in the bid for Newcastle/Gateshead as City of Culture, 2008. The exhibition, which also incorporated pieces made in Hull and a generative ‘netartwork’ creating a marketing strapline for a regeneration project on the basis of answers to a series of questions, demonstrated the contrast between the outlook of the developers of the bid and that of the communities that resided in its deemed catchment area. It was a clear demonstration of the lack of communication and understanding that can often exist between individuals and policymakers. Indeed many of the individuals involved are exactly the kinds of people that the developers do not want in their regeneration zones – it is more convenient to get them to leave than to try to improve or analyse the existing problems. Stubbs and Anderson Wallace have been important in developing some of these dialogues between authorities and individuals in a positive way and they continue to develop their approach through a number of ongoing projects.

The techniques and approaches used in ‘City Strapline Industries’ along with some of the work outlined above such as Fluid, Urban Tapestries and Mobile Bristol not only produce an aesthetic body of work which can be called art but also provide the tools for lobbying and/or conveying a message. In a climate where single issue politics provides one of the few arenas where the individual can actually make a difference, these media tools and techniques of approach are important to any individual or group who wishes to make a difference and/or express themselves.

Meanwhile, the art market continues along a familiar trajectory which is further being endorsed by government papers. Regeneration and art in social context projects are recognised, but they are currently given a lower status than other forms of the visual arts even though this is where the genuine creativity and risk-taking often lies. As long as the arts maintain their old value systems, things will remain in stasis. Like so many other disciplines (see some branches of science and history) it remains constricted by the limits and traditional values it places on itself.

Notes
1 See Taste Buds – How to Cultivate the Art Market 2002 – 2004, research by Morris Hargreaves and MacIntyre for ACE followed by Market Matters, Louisa Buck, ACE publication, October 2004.

2 It is over 30 year since Lucy Lippard’s seminal text Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object 1966 – 72, 1973 was published and other important texts such as Douglas Crimp’s On the Museum’s Ruins, 1993 and Nicholas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics, 1998 have followed since.

3 The term radical is used in the context of this article a couple of times. It may not be of value to readers if taken in its political context. I am using it deliberately as a reminder of its political usage but also more generally in its literal meaning of ‘innovative and progressive’.

4 For instance, see Art Plus Public Art Awards, a joint scheme between Arts Council England, South East and South East Enterprise and Development Agency initiated in 2004.

5 From The Market for Art, House of Commons, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Sixth Annual Report 2004 – 5, April 2005. This report includes the sale of art and antiques in the auction houses, commercial and public sector galleries and does not directly relate to regeneration and other cultural initiatives. It does however provide an indicator that the government is looking at the economic value of the arts in the UK.

6 Jeremy Moon, Government as a Driver of Corporate Social Responsibility, No 20 –2004 International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility Research Paper Series, University of Nottingham.

7 Some public sector galleries are using the approaches of dealers through representation of artists usually in mid-career. Some examples are ArtsAdmin, Locus+ and ArtSway. It is early days for most but ArtsAdmin have done this successfully for Live Art over twenty-five years.

8 It is interesting to note that this body of work was largely overlooked in the UK. It is being viewed with interest in Australia. Stubbs has shown elements of this exhibition at Museum of Brisbane, Spring 2005. One of the few reviews of the exhibition can be found by Paul Brown in Realtimearts Aug/Sept 04.

Contacts
Access Space
www.access.lowtech.org
ArtsAdmin
www.artsadmin.co.uk
ArtSway
www.artsway.org.uk
Artquest
www.artquest.org.uk
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art
www.balticmill.com
CARTE
www.carte.org.uk
ETA
www.eta-art.co.uk
Fluid
www.fluidoffice.com
Forma
www.forma.org.uk
Huddersfield Media Centre
www.the-media-centre.co.uk
IDAT
www.i-dat.org
Locus+
www.locusplus.org.uk
Mobile Bristol
www.mobilebristol.co.uk
New Work Network
www.newworknetwork.org.uk
OpenMute
www.openmute.org
PAL Laboratories
www.pallabs.org
PVA
www.pva.org.uk
SCAN
www.scansite.org
SPC
www.spc.org
Strapline Generator
www.strapline.org.uk
Urban Tapestries
www.urbantapestries.net
Wireless London
www.wirelesslondon.info

This article is part of a specially commissioned set of writing resulting from Close proximity, a NAN event devised by Jonathan Swain and Helen Sloan that took place at New Greenham Arts in Berkshire, 21-22 May 2005.

NAN facilitates exchange, dialogue, and collaboration amongst visual artists, whatever their practice and location. It offers a focus for critical exchange and feedback and through research and mapping seeks to develop greater awareness of the value of artists’ initiatives and of their changing professional needs. For more information about NAN go to Networking networks or contact emilia.telese@a-n.co.uk

Helen Sloan

Helen Sloan is Director of SCAN (Southern Collaborative Arts Network).

First published: a-n.co.uk September 2005