You need big hands

Café Artistique in Leeds aims to get conversations going about art and art making - see www.axisweb.org. Artists in discussion is becoming of a bit of an end in itself, practically ‘the work’. This one is in a pub and is aimed at being a conversation started off by me – my week had been fraught and my time strained so I hadn’t written anything (so ashamed) – although I think such strategies don’t really work to stimulate conversation - probably better, (which is what I ended up doing) to ramble incoherently about various of your current ‘ideas’. So a mini diatribe from me against freedom, dishonesty in art practice (especially language – please no more hyperbole for events in far flung corners of nowhere Ville – no more use of words like major, innovative, pioneering, ground breaking, international for events in backwaters attended by a local pebble artist and a bored council officer). Also touched on a new moral code and artists becoming embedded useful members of their home communities - no more roving art star ambitions. It all ended up a bit me, me, me, a kind of audience with Dame Adam Average, in an extended question and answer session – mainly courtesy of me holding the only mic and rumbling into it at every opportunity. Actually I would like to have know more about the people I was talking to and to have initiated more discussion with the crowd – it’s a hard one to make happen, we all easily revert to the norm, i.e. one person going on a bit.

During the discussion Laura Quarmby from Artist House suggested that Grizedale favoured the underdog and why was it we did’nt work with the over dogs, these in Leeds being the sublimely happy property developers and their friends, maybe these people are just the truly functional people of the world – it was a poin. I have to say I am drawn to/identify with the underdog, it is such an ingrained component of art culture, all in there with the romantic notions of being an artist that I so abhor, but on the other hand working for the powerful and happy is normally called the luxury goods sector and how would a publically funded organization rationalize that sort of behavior.
After the talk another of the questioners raised the point again with more reference to the notion of well being, to reinforce wellness/happiness. I admitted that at heart, the ambitions I am too embarrassed to express publically are pretty much those of a Miss World contestant - to make everyone happy, end war and world poverty, unfortunately I could not reasonably expect to achieve this by wearing a bathing suit (might start somthing though). It’s hard to find a comfortable way to be positive, to sustain that direct forward propulsion of wellness without the odd caustic aside. There seems so little complexity to happiness, so little opportunity for wit - Feed the greedy not the needy.

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 13/04/07 at 15:40 : 0 Comments