As cuts continue to bite, arts organisations are plugging the funding gap by replacing paid staff – such as gallery invigilators – with unpaid volunteers. We look at three galleries in Liverpool and Bristol that have done just that, and assess what this growing trend could mean for both individual artists and the UK’s arts ecology.
Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery has responded to widespread criticism from artists and withdrawn an advert for unpaid volunteers to help install a forthcoming exhibition by Glasgow artist Jim Lambie.
a-n’s Artist + AIR membership continues to grow, with over 18,000 ‘professional and well-networked’ UK artists now signed up.
In her provocation for the Art Party Conference in Scarborough, a-n Director Susan Jones argues that while it’s widely stated that artists are the main menu in the gallery and exhibition process, new approaches are needed to provide the financial support they need. Here, we publish an edited version of her full presentation.
Speakers and delegates from the spheres of music, the visual and performing arts come together in London this December for a day of talks and discussions on how the economy is affecting the social ecology of the arts. We find out more from symposium organiser Third Ear Music, and offer a ticket giveaway exclusive to a-n members.
Exhibitions and events from a-n members, plus other major shows.
Influential Director of Wysing Arts Centre, who was made an MBE in 2020, has died after living with lung cancer for the last two years.
The Leeds-based arts charity is hoping to raise £15,000 to commission artists to populate its relocated Art Hostel with new artworks.
In Brief: news briefing featuring national and international stories including: high court rules that £10m Giotto painting was removed from Italy unlawfully; OMA wins approval for revised plans for £111.6 million flexible art space on site of the former Granada TV studios; plus Scottish Government announces £5m fund to help businesses affected by Glasgow School of Art fire.
The recent Brexit Conference organised by the Creative Industries Federation gathered together Leavers and Remainers, political journalists and politicians, and a wide range of delegates working in the arts and culture, in an attempt to make sense of what Brexit will mean to the sector. Dany Louise reports.
The £150m Creative Industries Sector Deal supports the development of creative clusters and the roll out of a creative careers programme but prioritises digital businesses over culture. Arts Professional’s Liz Hill reports.
What does 2018 have in store in terms of exhibitions, art fairs, festivals, conferences and other events? We take a month-by-month look at what the year ahead has to offer.
Hull-based artist Clare Holdstock is this week’s featured a-n blogger on the a-n Instagram feed. She talks to Richard Taylor about her practice and where she places it.
Highlights for the week ahead with exhibitions and events in London, Margate, Swansea and Newcastle upon Tyne, all selected from a-n’s Events section.
Talks, tours, seminars, workshops, DIY building, chopping, cooking, eating: just some of the activities undertaken by artists at a-n’s Assembly events throughout May and June 2017. Here we pull together a collection of images from the events in Margate, Liverpool, Bristol, Newcastle and Leeds.
One half of the London-based performance company There There with Dana Olărescu, Bojana Janković argues that the economic pressures more and more artists face are ultimately shaping the kind of work that gets made, especially by emerging artists, with profound and long-term consequences.
Market Gallery’s recent Free Market symposium – supported by an a-n Artist Led Bursary – brought together thinkers and doers to discuss issues around ‘cultural resources in crisis’ and was in part informed by the Glasgow gallery’s own precarious situation. Chris Sharratt reports on three days of thinking beyond the usual.
The 20th edition of the Mostyn Open in Llandudno features a broad range of international artists working in a variety of media, including painting, video and metalwork.
Dave Beech’s book Art and Value was the subject of a recent symposium at London’s ICA that raised important questions about such diverse areas as the role of arts organisations, corporate sponsorship and paying artists. Laura Harris attended and found pockets of insight in an incohesive day.
In February 2016, London-based artist Emma Hart won the biennial Max Mara Art Prize for Women, the prize for which includes a six-month residency in Italy and a solo show at Whitechapel Gallery in 2017. She looks back on a year in which she “almost cheered up”.
a-n’s Executive Director Jeanie Scott reflects on an incredibly busy year for the organisation that has seen the publication of the Paying Artists Exhibition Payment Guidance, wide-ranging support for artists through a-n bursaries, and membership reach a record high. And, despite an increasingly messy global situation, says there’s much to look forward to in 2017.
Newcastle-based artist Kathryn Hodgkinson believes that the city council’s planning decisions are having a detrimental effect on the area’s creative community. In the wake of the recent decision to demolish the creative space Uptin House to make way for ‘yet another block of student flats’, she argues that local authorities need to embrace the true value of artists.
Under the banner ‘Whose Art? Our Art!’, this year’s engage International Conference in Liverpool explored gallery education through the lens of art activism with two days of speeches, discussion and debate. Laura Harris reports from the city.
The arts community in Scotland and beyond has responded to the shock announcement that Edinburgh’s Inverleith House gallery is to close, with a petition calling for the decision to be reversed.
This week’s selection includes figurative work in Eastbourne, cyanotype prints in Bradford and drawing in London.
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