Editorial
The Rise of the Artist-Led Group - an Administrative Practice?
In the UK today it seems that the artist-led initiative is thriving. Although its history has been said by some to go back as far as the gallery that William Blake’s set up in 1809 1, in recent years the related and interchangeable terms artist-led, artist-run, artist-initiated, artist-centred seem to have become the byword among funders and policy makers as well for artists themselves. In many quarters it has become the norm to automatically associate the notion of artist-led with positive, cutting edge practice and it seems that merely attaching the term artist-led to any project or organisation is enough to imbue it with import and significance. 2
In the last nine years since it was set up, alias has worked directly with over 120 artist-led groups and initiatives in the South West region alone. These initiatives have ranged from the single-project collaborative pairings of graduate artists to established studio groups such as Flameworks or large network organisations like Bath Area Network.
What is it that motivates these and the many other different artist-led initiatives across the region and is it right that they are all considered under the same heading?
If we consider the range of activities that come under the banner of artist-led and look at the reasons why artists come together to form groups I think it is possible to divided them into a number of broad, if simplified, categories. These are not mutually exclusive and activities may often involve working in more than one area, but I would argue that the principle motivations for artists forming groups are:
1.To secure space - to enable the production and/or presentation of individual artists practice.
2.To organise exhibitions or events, generally involving those artists in the group.
3.To develop networks for mutual support, information exchange and the development of opportunities.
Although there are clearly many practical advantages to group activity, such as the pooling of resources and the spreading of workloads, I would also argue that one of the overriding motivation in all the above models is the need to secure funding for the activity. I believe there is a strategic understanding among artists today that when it comes to raising funds a group - i.e. a entity that looks and behaves more like an organisation and less like an artist - is far more likely to secure funding than an individual working alone.
As an artist who has worked in groups for over ten years I can say I have been involved with projects in all of the above categories without regret. But there is something about the continuing enthusiasm with which funders and policy makers embrace artist-led activity that should raise suspicion among the critically conscious.
Simple economics is one reason for institutional and political interest. Organisations like a-n as well as ‘official’ governmental researchers have spent years proving the economic case for what are now called the creative industries. But it has also long been recognised that artist-led activity can be extremely cost effect and good value for money. It is this cost effectiveness calculation that has won over many funders and politicians, certainly on a local level. In this scenario the artists’ group is seen as tool for saving public money rather than generating it. When an artists’ group, run by a half dozen mostly voluntary workers, can deliver 60% of a local authorities arts policy for a few thousand pounds input, why spend the 20 thousand or so needed for a full time arts officer, or the hundreds of thousands necessary to have the local public “arts institution” run “professionally”. In this pragmatic cultural accounting system the main aim of supporting artist-led activity seems to be the transformation of artists into efficient arts administrators at minimal cost. 3
The localised exploitation of artist-led culture has been coupled with the redirection of national arts funding towards the area of artists’ Continuing Professional Development (a heading under which alias officially operates). With the specific aim of professionalising the artist, much of the initial impetus for a raft of CPD schemes, with their accountancy training and sales and PR seminars, was built on the idea of creating economically productive micro-industries for the cultural service sector. While many artists have undoubtedly benefited from these schemes the most obvious outcome so far has been the invention of an entirely new layer of arts management in the form of an Artists’ Professional Development industry. 4
The other major factor in this (relatively) new positive approach to artists-led activity is the regeneration card. It is now the official line that Culture is good for business and in particular the way cultural activity and facilities are now seen as an incubator for urban and economic renewal. Although this agenda has taken on an apparently new evangelising tone in the UK in recent years, as a strategy for economic growth and business expansion it can be traced back at least as far as the 1964 New York State Multiple Dwelling Law, Article 7-B and its application in the South Houston Industrial Area, or as it is known today - SoHo.5
New governmentally driven instrumentalist policy in arts funding has compounded this move toward the professionalisation or ‘administratorisation’ of artistic practices. Now, not only do artists have to administer the arts, but they are also expected, along the way, to take on board and tackle a raft of social issues from education and health promotion to crime prevention and racial inequality. So here we have the model of the artist-led group as the underpaid administrators and managers of local cultural activity, instigators, planners and fundraisers for urban renewal and economic growth, and providers of cultural band aids for the deep seated failures of society and politics. 6
As artists though we have to acknowledge that we are a least partly to blame for this situation. A rejection of the institutionalised mechanisms of power within in the art world and a desire to take control of those mechanisms led artists to set up their own exhibitions, galleries, studios, commissioning agencies and, ultimately, their own institutions. The artist as entrepreneur was not something devised by external powers. As Andrea Fraser pointed out in 1999 “ artists… no less than institutions, have come to see themselves as competing with commercial entertainment and commodity culture…. I would go even further and say that we are the very model for labour in the new economy.” 7 And likewise the notion of a socially engaged and transformative practice developed originally, not from some government think tank, but from a long tradition of artists who have sought to erase the line between art and life.
By criticising the move towards the professionalisation and administerisation of artistic practice I am not calling for a return to the romantic isolation of the studio where the socially dysfunctional creator awaits the discovery of his singular genius. I would, however, agree with Dave Beech’s call for a re-evaluation of the idea of autonomy in art when he says, “If autonomy means self-determination rather than apartness it must spread its wings… How else are the forces that determine art to be wrested from external agencies and ulterior motives.” 8 And as pointed out above this desire for self-determination has invariably been a prime motivation in the development of all sorts of artist-led initiatives.
There is, however, one motivating factor that brings artists together to form groups which has been largely ignored by official research and policy making. This is the motivation to collaborative practice and production - artists coming together in a spirit of critical dialogue to actually make art together. It is a model of practice that goes to the core of what ‘artist-led’ might mean by rejecting the romantic and market driven construction of the individual creative genius in favour of the far more complex, interesting and difficult idea of creativity as an extension of the intrinsic social and interactive character of human nature.
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As the first guest editor of the new alias web site I would like to try and look beyond the mechanics of the administrative role of artists’ led initiatives to focus on the idea of the artists’ group as a platform for critical and collaborative practice. I’ll be looking at some recent grassroots activity that has been happening in the South West and beyond. There will be a range of open discussions on forum pages relating to collaborative activity and groups as well as links, and references to further reading opportunities.
Notes
1. Seona Reid in report from Artist-led study day: building networks and capacity, Scottish National Gallery for Modern Art and British Council
2. see John Beagles and Paul Stone: Shifting Practice, A-N Collection
3. purely anecdotal information based on personal experience. DT
4. See also Simon Poulter's Artists Professional Development on this site
5. Article 7-B 'recognised artists as an enhancement to urban life and they deserved "special Housing" specifying that artists, and only artists, had the exclusive right to live in manufacturing lofts.' Pamela M. Lee, Object To Be Destroyed - The Work of Gordon Matta-Clark, Mitt Press
6. see Cultural Policy Collective’s Beyond Social Inclusion -Towards Cultural Democracy for an expanded critique of current arts policy.
7. Andrea Fraser, A Museum is not a Business. It is Run in a Business-like Fashion, in: Nina Möntmann (Ed.), Art and its Institutions, London 2005. Fuller quote here
8. Dave Beech, Autonomy v Barbarism, Art Monthly No. 309 September 07