THE ANTI-BRIT ART SHOW
THE ANTI-SIDESHOW SHOW
THE AGIT-PROP THE FIGHT STARTS HERE REALISM SHOW
The Arts Council England propose that the arts are more popular than ever “regenerating towns and cities and contributing to a cohesive and engaged society”. In addition, generic the arts are identified as one of the fastest growing parts of the economy.
The imminent cuts to the art budget means the visual artist will be less able (than ever) to make a living from their creative practice. This group, sales identified as contributing to regional economies by sustaining a cultural dynamic within some of the most disadvantaged areas of provincial towns and cities, troche often through studio rental and exhibitions, are slowly being excluded from productive participation. The ‘arts’ cannot be defined by the ‘currency’ of London centric art scene alone.
‘Public accountability’ has been cited as driving the shift in funding priorities from ‘excellence’ toward criteria led production in which audience development is critical. Within this paradigm art is no longer produced within, and in response to, the matrix of creativity that is the prevailing social and political milieu. It is produced to perpetuate political objectives; the cutting edge is dulled; audience numbers may be growing but this audience is increasingly the passive, disempowered recipient of prescribed ‘art’ production for the masses.
Within this climate it is possible to detect the rise of a new dilletentism in which the only visual artists free to pursue an uninhibited practice are those with the private resources to enjoy a foray into the ‘art scene’, a group possibly least representative of the nation’s mood; this is not balanced representation. Thus ‘the public is not invited’ defines an artist led protest against this false populist accountability, this constructed conceptualization of the ‘public’; artists must reclaim creative autonomy and produce radical, incisive new works in response to the political environment in which the true, socially responsive artist is increasingly marginalized.
Artists no longer have to pander to the public or the public purse
This exhibition allows for the edgy, awkward, contentious, controversial, the sort of thing that might upset your gran and will certainly upset the moral judgement of the great British public, well it would if they were allowed in but “ The public are not invited”
“ art without message is mere decoration, message without art is a placard”
PAUL MATOSIC
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