Miss a trick?

She said "Are you working today?", to which I replied that yes, I was working on some stuff at home, as it was a bit embarrassing to go out of doors looking at total mess. It's embarrassing when others stare but it's not worthwhile changing out of workwear. "No", she says, "you're stared at because you have two heads. It has nothing to do with your trousers."


She has quite a dry sense of humor and we know each other quite well. I nip out to the shop regularly. For some, this kind of contact is what oils the wheels of a day. Small talk, banter; that's what makes up Facebook, a different kind of contact. Alan Yentob commented on 'digital making the private public' in his lament for the paper codex: "Books - The Last Chapter?"

Yentob holding a small industrially-produced espresso cup

I wanted to have a look at Grayson Perry online. Would I get a better experience of his work, looking at a range of digital sources, rather than the publication I was looking forward to seeing this weekend. The crux of his matter - the personal, wrapped around the body of large pots, made public, a direct reference to the stories told on Greek pottery, eloquent and sophisticated in its form. It always baffled me as to why the Greeks would want to wrap a story around a pot that is quite beautiful in it's own right, without decoration. Are their pots stories, or functional objects? They could hardly be both: the taboo of 'don't touch' with artworks, versus the inherent tactility of pottery - art and function don't sit too well together. It can work with a few forms: the vase, never to hold a flower; a teabowl, in it's vitrine, and to a certain extent, the bowl, an object of philosophical contemplation.

Either functional or narrational - they are stories of a culture. Are Perry's stories that of a culture, or are they of personal experience, or of cultural experience as defined by the individual? Is the 'private made public' an acceleration  - a viral mushrooming of the cult of the individual?

Grayson Perry

We've Found the Body of Your Child, 2000, Earthenware

lifted from saatchi-gallery.co.uk

It really really bothers me that some of Perrys pots are wonky. What is the place for craft values?  Bob Stein (Institute for the Future of the Book) remarks that books as a physical object will become an art object for the rich. Right back where we started with Gutenberg. I think Yentob missed a trick.  The book as art object is on the rise, explored as a historical and contemporary object, as an art object, a commodity. And it's not just for the rich. A lot of these works are very accessible. The desire for the real experience, for narrative, for the tangible object, the trancendent object, objects that embody craftsmanship without entering into the self-indulgence that craft can have: to be about itself. Truly, an art object.
 

Stub

I couldn't believe it!!! The ticket stub I cherished as priceless, where I got to stare at half a cow was now worth nothing. I had loved it, cherished it and framed it, and hung it next to Great Aunty Mabels photo from 1632, having left me her priceless egg cosy collection and a handful of Spam recipes.

Never mind your Steak Diane, a '70s concoction once lauded at the now White Wall Space, a hip and trendy (n'est pas?) commercial art gallery in Leigh On Sea. The re-purposed tertiary unit has received much press locally, which always helps with public perception. Can I take Christopher Mayes opinions as any kind of consensus? He traces the recent purposes of this building (aside from the fact that it has a very long and interesting local history) from restaurant to gallery. The menu, which he describes as "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" (Prawn Cocktail, Steak Diane, Black Forest Gateaux) having been made extinct by Nouvelle Cuisine, was lamented. Clear values: Get Stuffed.

"The majority would like to return home with a work of art that they can enjoy rather than a ticket stub for viewing half a cow." So there it is. The consensus, given to us. Is it true? Judging by the current businesses which outnumber galleries 10:1 in this area, it seems cushions and silk flowers, anything with crystal and faux diamonds is actually what people are taking home. A good argument for any gallerist. Anther aspiration for a good gallerist (oops, free advice from a non-gallerist) is possibly representing artists who have a national and international profile who live locally, but it's darn hard to find them if you don't know they're there. They live in nice terraced houses like the rest of us, go shopping at the Co-op and have a vision and appreciation of the world in languages that can remove the veil from one's eyes. As much as "local lads" are to be applauded, rooting out - headhunting - negotiating and curating is a journey that makes most gallerists intensely private, and most critics intensely loud. Let's throw in a few big names to give it that extra cachet (that's a '70's word too, is it not?)

Let's not. Not a consensus, but an observation: festivals are heaving, performance art is back in swing, flash mobbing has been an event near you since 2003; video art; under and overground the integration of artist, performer, participant and viewer: live events are where we're at, contrapuntal to the virtual world we live in, which is why flash mobbing exists at all. What reality is painting? The singular view of the painter, the vision as it stands, only of any merit through the craft values in which it is executed as the clarity of communication regularly hinders the message. So, not what it is, but how it's done. Lovely, but people want to live it, experience it... but like those strangers in the Co-op, only if you know it's there. Go and get it.

How much?

I usually park in that road - one hour gives me time to nip round, do all the bits I need to do, and head off. I came back, and there was the yellow and black plastic envelope fluttering under the windshield. I couldn't understand it, I hadn't been that long. I then read the signs on the street. In January, March, May, June, August and November, park on this side. All other months, parking prohibited. On the other side of the street, February, April... and so on. You get the picture - depending on what month it is, you park on this side or that. Just goes to show how long I'd gotten away with it.

£35, an expensive mistake, a cheap deal considering I'd always parked wherever I liked, or money lost down the drain, depends how you look at it. Either way, I think my money goes towards new library books - dream on, I say to myself, a bit like believing there's a heaven. Does money change in value depending on what we send it on? The concept of money is, to me, like gold - it can be micromillimeters thick, and sheet a building, can be rolled into a hairsbreadth tube, strong but soft, heavy and solid. Magic. Shines, never tarnishes, unlike money, which can be too easily tarnished. Who we accept money from, and for what, is a very personal thing.

To bring the personal into the public, putting a value on work, and one's own work - in my case, artwork, can be difficult. It's not regulated by the FSA but there are market parameters, and all the basic considerations like materials and overheads, simple enough to work out, but there's that elusive, mystical property that artwork can have, but so much of it doesn't. That's where a conveyor or purveyor - or curator - and in the commercial context - gallerist - steps in and tells you where to put your money after you've been told why. And if you still put your cash on the table, we all know that investment is something that takes a commitment to knowledgeability, taste, style and impartiality, and to trust your gallerist.. well.

There is regular conversation about selling work - how to? How much? I can understand only too well Saatchi trawling the Degree shows, and looking for himself, trusting in his own instinct - and the process is fun, and addictive, and the work is cheap as chips, because it's student stuff - totally and utterly undervalued, mostly because a shortsighted educational establishment quite often doesn't uphold it's own value - education is for life, and the investment they make in their graduates doesn't always reflect back well if it's been mismanaged. Either way, new graduates are churned out like hot cross buns - fluffy, lightly spiced, straight out of the Research and Development hothouse. That's what Universities are good at - stretching the capability, belief and capacity of an individual, to take steps beyond where they themselves thought they could go. Provided they have the right ingredients in the first place, of course. Pigs ear and silk purse, they lament.

The University of Life teaches very different lessons: how to lose your shirt over a bad deal, underestimating time to produce work, dealing with from difficult clients, internet business banking, and how to reorder paperwork in the most inefficient and time consuming way, so that it would have been more effective to send a toilet roll as your tax return. Deep Joy. The question is, where is that lesson to be learned? How to value and hence put a price on one's own work? Universities wash their hands, and as soon as you're out the door, it's pain or pleasure, or quite often both. The answer for me is in myself. I reckon I have a fair idea of my own value, and what I produce. Question is, does the rest of the world agree? And that's only the start of another conversation.