Pin the Tale on the Donkey

We're on the phone arranging to take work to a show in a month or two, and he voiced a concern about a fellow practitioner. What was contemporary about the work he had seen just recently?

For craft practitioners, the material and it's expression comes first, quite often in a functional way, and to defunctionalise that crafted object is a breed of "art" that has spawned the 'neither this nor that' offspring, but we are made to contemplate aforesaid offspring, because if we don't, we're heathens. No wonder at some of the dumbstruck silence that pervades. The pursuit of beauty has many poor relations, cruelly and unfortunately. Cristín Leach, the eminent Irish critic, recently wrote an article about the Summer Degree shows at NCAD, and to her, it's maybe a matter of marrying craft skill to concept: few of those artists will survive, breed, but we'll have a new landscape in which to wander. For those with skill and no concept, as Bill Bryson ignominiously commented on Norwegian television "It gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience", as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty, that Scarlet Pimpernel, elusive and undefined. And for those with concept and no skill, pass the planks and hammer.

But it's easy to get bogged down in the craft of the matter, for those who are so inclined. Rather than raise one's head above the parapet, and comment on the wider arena, in the same way that one raises a wet finger to see which way it's blowing, it's far easier to stick it in the mud and Carry On Regardless. Is it important to create new art that is relevant, refreshing, innovative and engaging? To carry on the conversation of art, an artist's practice within the big picture, the vista, the landscape...?

I went to Rainham Marshes recently, and I know nothing of birds, at all. Still a fabulous sight to see, and I can understand the endless enthusiasm for spotting and classifying birds, albeit through a long lense: give me that long lense and I'll happily spot the lesser warbled artist stuck in the grassroots or feminist '70's, the glam '80's glitteriness of style without substance, and then the conceptualisation of the artist (by merit of signing their work) to the hastily bashed together planks of wood with the indescribably poetic yet fundamental profundity of hot air. The Emperors clothes. That's pretty scathing: all of this art is known to have validity, but I'd like to open the newspaper and then look at the stuff on the wall and imagine these things have a knowingness of each other. But this isn't fashion, for me, it's about animals, and to pin the tale on the donkey, we need prior visual memory of aforesaid donkey, aim for it's arse and give it the Tale it's asked for.

talking of reviewing - Cristin Leach

My father retired from his honourable profession, and then promptly went to Art College. His outlook and perception of art, the world, art and the world, the art world, the world and art, radically changed. He still lives in Ireland; I left nearly twenty years ago and I now live in the UK.

He recently pointed out an article 'Long Live the Critic' by Cristin Leach, an art critic for the Sunday Times Ireland. I was interested in what she had to say, and the pertinence of her points were delivered with a refreshing clarity.  I was also interested in the cultural differences of how effective communication is hampered or enhanced by cultural norms and expectations.

There is one thing that I wanted to pick up on. Leach says "No one enjoys receiving criticism, but most artists will admit that, once out of college, honest assessment of their work is rare and valuable." There was much gratification for me in this comment: that critical debate about art, in the flesh, is a rare and valuable thing; that a critical debate about one's own work with another person is also a rare and valuable thing, and that I had invested myself wisely in co-directing a new, small non-profit peer artist group, artistsmeet.co.uk, but there was a lot of me that sees the potential in a level playing field, as it were, of a range of artists of differing disciplines (that is, if we're at all defined by a discipline any more), experiences and aspirations, coming together to discuss whatever is put on the plate on that evening each month.

I was delighted that during the first year of artistsmeet, or MEET, that www.accessart.org.uk, based in Cambridge [The Studio Project provides provides an opportunity for museum and gallery educators (and teachers and practitioners) to network and share practice], and www.firstsite.uk.net in Colchester also set up peergroups, with differing intentions and outcomes - but the trend for an open, critical platform is expanding. 

But to commit to the written word is another thing altogether.....