Starting Point

Welcome, and thank you for visiting this site.

What is it - and why have I set it up?

The first question is the more simple, but that's not to say I have a fixed idea of how it will work or evolve. Although blogging is an established part of the communication landscape, this venture is, for me, a new experiment.

The starting point is to create an online space which is part artists studio, part gallery, part forum. A place where work is shown - work in progress and work completed - and, just as important to me, at least, a place where ideas are tested and shared in words. A big part of this is to find a new means of distributing work - and maybe even upsetting the conventional selling/dealing apple cart just a tiny bit. I hope it will become a dialogue between me and anyone curious about the ideas or work contained in this space, as well as a network for exchanges and references to relevant work and the like-minded - or, who knows, even the downright hostile – in a way such as only blog technology allows.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be posting images from my studio work as well as texts exploring the nature of this endeavor (the studio work and this blogspace) and hope to throw up questions about how, why and what kind of value art acquires. If that sounds like a charter for navel-gazing, then I need to explain the motivations behind starting this, which brings me to the more difficult Why? Question.

A few years ago I began to paint – oil on canvas – for the first time since art school (almost 30 years ago). Perhaps it was the symptom of a mid-life crisis (though it seems more sedate than the desire for a sports car and closer to a SAGA activity), but it began to release passions about art, wealth, status and society – not all of them positive passions – which had been dormant if not suppressed in the intervening years. Being, let’s say, more mature these days I had shrugged off the insecurities about what I was doing – looking back it’s easy to see a continuity of interests, but more of those in later blogs – and felt much more certain about the loop of creative expression which binds maker and viewer (these terms are all loaded but, hopefully, will serve for now). The trouble for me then, as now, lay in the outside world.

The art market – an emergent super-force in the neo-capitalist boom of the ‘80’s – seemed to distort the relationship between viewer and artwork. Art acquired status through cost and only seemed relevant to insiders, the informed or the educated. Again these are complicated arguments and I’m over-simplifying here - but rather than engage with them, my choice, at the time, was to shun them. The desire for some sort of relevance in the work I did took over, and led me on a journey through the so-called applied arts – set design for theatre and TV; interior design; photography and video-making – fulfilling work all of it, which developed and tested skills to high levels (these things still do and are a mainstay of my paid work to this day). But there is an expressive force in pursuing questions through a medium, without a brief or application in mind, which communicates itself to others – art for art’s sake(?). This thought has never left me, and now I’m back in the hunt.

How this fits in – what it achieves – who cares about it – these questions are not the interesting ones; the work is validated in the sharing – whatever the response. The real questions are about how that sharing is achieved.



The return to producing artworks, and the desire to share them threw up an opportunity about 18 months ago. A painter friend had booked space for a week in a for-hire gallery in Cork Street, London (the Carnaby Street of London’s Art Market? – take that how you will). She was worried about filling both floors of the shop and offered me the basement space. Eventually, I decided it would be a good thing to do – even though the hire cost to me was about £1,500. In the end, through sales, I covered my costs (framing, publicity, private view etc), but more importantly the experience tested many deeply held ideas and set in motion an exploration of how the art market works and how one could make a sustainable if not meaningful art practice.

The ongoing global financial crisis, and the screeds of analysis on it, has provided clues to the answers to many of the vexing questions I was confronted with as I looked into and became involved in - through this one small show - art as business. It's been as if massive marketplaces were crashing to the ground behind me while I stared, puzzled, at the immaculate little cottage of the art market. But, when the dust settles - although the art market shares many of the same characteristics as the financial markets - it remains to be seen whether the art world will suffer similar traumas as the banks or the stock markets. Certainly, the symptoms of excess and over-valuation seem to echo. An irrational confidence in the viability of its own structure – based only on the confidence of those inside – is also a parallel. But again, to argue this out fully is too complicated for now. However, two human characteristics seem to have been laid bare in the financial market which are also exposed in the art market – greed, especially – and the pursuit of status.

And money is behind both.

In a newspaper article recently a journalist quoted from an American economist from early in the 20thC. (or was it late 19th?). He identified two ways to value things – a company for example. The first way he called a Class 1 valuation, and it’s pretty crude – add up the value of something’s assets, its buildings, its stock, its cash reserves, and then subtract its debts. A Class 2 valuation however is based on what people perceive a thing to be worth. When there is a disparity between the two, then there is a chance to make money.

It seems plain, that in our material-obsessed, celebrity-dominated society, Class 2 valuations predominate throughout not just the consumer economy, but in almost all aspects of life. And as the financial institutions come under intense media scrutiny there is a brief sense that things might be about to be different – might even be better. After the implosion of totalitarian Communism in the 90’s, now the unstoppable business juggernaut of Capitalism has, for the moment, pulled in to the lay-by. In the meantime words like ‘nationalisation’ and ‘socialism’ (particularly in Europe) have been revived in not altogether negative terms. In contrast the dirty words are now ‘capitalism’ and ‘profit’. I don't expect there'll be a utopia round the corner, but there is a correction going on – and with luck it will empower communities and individuals.

To me – a grumpy old lefty – it feels as if an occupying force has been dealt a major blow. Not that I want a revolution to come (well I do – but when was the last revolution that worked?), or that I expect things to be so very different over the years ahead. But one resistance-thought remains – big business and global finance has lost it’s almost unquestioned right to make money at any cost. Greed and the unrestrained pursuit of profit have been – for now – checked. Ordinary people are reassessing their values. There is change in the air – the financial collapse has demanded it in part, but there is an undeniable sense of a ship turning in response to new conditions: climate change; the rise of the so-called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies; energy ownership and production; the conflict between faiths and the change of government in the United States. And there are plenty of ideas around about which direction we should steer.

It’s in this atmosphere of change that I’ve begun this experiment – and it’s through taking up studio practice once more that I’ve found a vehicle for engagement.

So, as well as hoping you’ll drop in to this open studio and as well as hoping that it will develop in some kind of interactive way – please forward a link to anyone you think might be interested - I’m also launching, in tandem to this blog, an online showroom space which adheres - controversially, perhaps - to a Class 1 valuation of its stock. Everything in the showroom will be valued according to the time it took to develop and produce, plus the cost of materials. All works displayed are for sale – framing can be arranged, as can viewings of any works if you are able to visit my studio in Hackney, London. My aim is to make the whole process transparent and provide the possibility of revenue that will compensate me for the time invested in each work sold and therefore allow me to continue with studio-based work.

For me, this is a revolutionary and liberating change - there is no pressure to produce for, or maintain a market. I'll only be listing work which I consider finished or to have succeeded in some way that I was aiming for - the matter of quality or desirability is left entirely in the eye of the beholder. This will mean, I hope, that the relationship that emerges between me and anyone who expresses an interest in the work will be all the more valuable.



I have no idea if rejecting the market in this way is a radical idea, foolhardy or counterproductive. But, as I plan to explore in future blogs, it sweeps away the burden and questionable politics of Class 2 values, raises philosophical questions about value if not art, and fills me with a rather satisfying sense of mischief. I hope you'll join in, in some way.

You can find out more about the work and pricing at transparentgallery.blogspot.com

GSJ
November 2008