Yesterday we had a lecture by an associate of mine Chris Lewis Jones. It was enlightening and frustrating in equal measure. Chris had been a 0.5 Foundation leader at Broxtowe before the meltdown into Castle College that removed much of the arts teaching ( my Derby Landau Forte College hours included) from the map. Because Chris had been an employee he had received financial help in paying for ADAP course and by a fluke as he admitted the end of the course coincided with his receiving a pay-off for taking voluntary redundancy two years ago.
With this ‘launchpad’ he redesigned himself post-connect as a ‘Community Artist’ and has survived since. All power to him but what has he ditched with the bath-water? The first alarm bell rang when he suggested that his previous abstract mark-making was left behind because of the post-modern ‘death of the author’. This is very trendy way of saying (in my opinion) that the avenues for that kind of work were fast disappearing come the millenium and Chris being sharp and able ‘retrained’ as a semi ‘conceptualist’. Thankfully he has enough skill to never wander totally down the sillier byways of the conceptual concensus artworker but there still points I have issue with.
Firstly being skilled in self-promotion he soon found that his chosen subject-matter – ‘exploring evolving notions of identity’ as a white middle class male were not flavour of the month at a politically correct Arts Council. No surprise there. Since my period at the South Bank Centre in early 1990’s ( pre Labour arts ‘boom’ ) the PC issue driven agendas pretty much backed only ‘agenda-driven’ material and output. When Chris met an ACE administrator who prepared to take his ‘polemic’ seriously he probably realised the time ripe to push his ‘Englishist’ agenda. No problem with that…entrepreneurial spirit and all that. In fact it seems he has a neat match between artistic intentions and wider agendas which prepared to ‘allow’ his type of work back into the artistic ‘ring’. The end reult has been a fair degree of self-driven funded community artwork and a growing artistic output. Everybody wins then……BUT…..
Whilst the new work (Albion Series) is interesting and well produced (echoes of Peter Blake and Royal College early 1960’s pop art mostly) it is still a world away from the ‘authorial’ output he once produced. His rejection of one art historical ‘ pathway’ for the postmodernist ‘many’ has left him playing to many artistic gang-masters…..his artistic self and the agendas of disparate funding/art council/ promoters. It can be a dangerous game to play.
For me this lecture was a turning point but not in the way I expected. I thought I’d enjoy Chris’s journey and see myself as fitting into pretty much the same mould. As he said before the talk I too could now ‘sell myself’ rather than the artwork.
Instead I found myself increasingly frustrated and embarrassed by the whole shift he has made. I do not condemn him for it he is one of many artists who have had to cut their cloth to suit the present situation. Art funding is the only way many artists can now survive but as it dwindles many will come undone in the process. I simply do not believe that it produces consistently high quality work….publicity..yes….shows on ‘themes’ and funding fron administrators bent on pushing their own agendas yes…but quality? I have had a minor tussle with the world of ‘Community Arts’ at several levels and found it generally speaking to be full of role playing, recipe funding chasing and general lack of true commitment. There are committed artists out there working with the ‘community’ but a majority are cynically using a middle-class white dominated system to pay their mortgages and maintain their lifestyles…from administrators to artists to clients…in fact client abuse of the system to avoid confronting their own very real problems is perhaps the most frustrating aspect….an intolerable opinion in the higher circles that run and profit from this ‘industry’.
Having removed myself pretty conclusively from that world I am left with only two options to pay my way. Teaching and web design. The all round reduction in spend on arts projects and related activity means my web design ‘business’ has fallen off dramatically hence my return to teaching. However as all further and higher education teaching hours are ‘bums on seat’ driven the opportunities and rewards there too have shrunken considerably. Twenty years ago I could have expected at least a 0.5 post after teacher training but now I will be lucky to scrape a day a week in sessional hours. Being the minnow in a tank full of sharks would be a better long-term prospect.
So here I am as said in previous entry. 48 years old. Flat broke. Unable to pay way through web design…scraping at present two hours a week teaching and setting out on the ‘Connect’ journey to the stars.
Hey Ho let’s go as those profound cats The Ramones sang…….