Art Surgery
(Cont.)
Unless your work fits into the saleable object bracket, St Ives can be a difficult place to succeed as an artist. Artist/curator Andy Whall explains how Art Surgery could help.
As a geographically isolated region St Ives has a number of specific advantages and problems in regard to practising as an artist and curating projects. Stunning coastlines and an all year round ‘holiday environment’ mean artists enjoy coming to work in St Ives, but opportunities can be limited, particularly for those involved with live art or new media.
The ongoing aim of Art Surgery is to establish a platform for performance and avant-garde art forms in the region. Intrinsic to this is the development of projects from a theoretical basis with the aim of dissolving the boundaries between theory and practice and opening up an expanded, communicative realm where key concepts such as the ‘real’, ‘poetic’ and ‘site’ can be explored through challenging new work. Art Surgery’s activities include a wide variety of curating, commissioning and project work with a diverse range of artists including past collaborations with well-established practitioners such as Bobby Baker and Andre Stitt.
Art Surgery sits within a context of artist-led groups, an area of the arts which is gaining an increasingly high profile. Yet our project seems quite different. At first the differences seem intangible, but whereas other groups really are groups of artists, our collective seems more dispersed and conceptual. Whereas many other groups have buildings, exhibition spaces, workshops, we have none. We work using the internet, websites and temporary interventions in commercial and public art spaces. Our collaborations mean that the Art Surgery project is flexible and hydra-headed. The latter metaphor seems appropriate; Art Surgery can remain as slippery and elusive as a snake yet emerge potent and ready to catch an unsuspecting audience unaware. Most of the time it is no more than an email or web address, or a residue of print matter from an old project, a review or a file in a funding body’s in-tray. An interesting communication, an enquiry, a magazine article such as this, a successful funding bid; any of these incidents could kick-start a project into life. It is this flexibility coupled with a core set of theoretical concerns and ambitions that gives Art Surgery its identity. Not being tied to a building or an annual funding strategy seems to be an advantage and has allowed the organisation to develop a position of strength in marginality.
One important thing that emerges is that as Art Surgery develops and as more people become involved with its projects, the organisation really does start to achieve the claims made for it. With this in mind, Art Surgery is always happy to receive proposals, comments and enquiries from interested artists.