During this year’s Glasgow International, artists Ailie Rutherford and Janie Nicoll presented In Kind, an action research project using the festival as a case study in order to chart the “hidden economies of the visual arts”. Fellow Glasgow-based artist Jessica Ramm finds out what they discovered and ponders where to go next.
For over 30 years, New York’s Guerrilla Girls have been the feminist conscience of the art world, exposing sexism through protests and original research on posters, stickers, billboards and artwork. Fisun Güner spoke to two of the founding members about their new Whitechapel Gallery show, ‘Guerrilla Girls: Is it even worse in Europe?’
As a-n/AIR’s Paying Artists campaign prepares for the launch of its Exhibition Payment guide on Wednesday 12 October 2016, we take a look at some of the key moments in the campaign’s history, highlighting the rich and varied dialogue with artists and the wider visual arts sector that has informed its recommendations.
The Islington Mill Art Academy in Salford has been providing a free alternative to mainstream art education since 2007. Sara Jaspan speaks to its co-founder, Maurice Carlin, and gets the views of artists who’ve taken part in the Academy’s ever-evolving investigation of what art education can be.
When a change of government in the Netherlands reversed years of generous state support for the arts, Rune Peitersen got together with other artists to challenge anti-artist rhetoric and argue for fair pay and support for artists and arts organisations. He talks to artist and AIR Council member Joseph Young about Platform BK, the small but dynamic organisation he co-founded five years ago.
It’s been a busy and fruitful year for a-n/AIR’s Paying Artists campaign, with plenty of activity across the UK and internatioanally. Paying Artists Project Manager Julie McCalden looks back over 2015.
Open exhibitions are becoming an increasingly common aspect of the visual arts landscape, with high-profile big hitters such as the BP Portrait Award and Royal Academy Summer Show joined by a growing number of smaller-scale shows. But with most charging an entry fee and with no guarantee of being included, are artists simply being asked to subsidise the sector with their own money? Jack Hutchinson investigates.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
Last year, artist and curator Emma Sumner took a research trip to India which saw her visit an extensive network of organisations at the heart of this vast country’s contemporary art scene. Here she highlights three of them and explores what can be learnt from their approach to art and funding.
The Curating the Campus symposium, held to mark the launch of the University of Leeds’ Public Art Strategy, brought together speakers from across the UK to discuss commissioning and presenting public art on campus. Amelia Crouch reports.