My Case Study of Koestler will not be a summary or report, but more a journal of findings and insights sparked by my involvement, and my thoughts inspired by processing the works. On a fairly tight budget and reliant on volunteers, the Koestler receives over 6,000 works, all of which are processed, displayed, and given a chance of an award or to be exhibited further in nationwide gallery exhibitions. The 6,000 includes writing, music and other crafts. I don't know as yet how much is visual art, but I know I have already handled hundreds of pieces.
The processing and hanging is necessarily swift, efficient and brutal. We price, we hang, we overlap if we have to. We damage the edges because at this stage most things are hung with pushpins on the wall. Things are hung floor to ceiling, with no gaps, and in order of the processing number.
Occasionally I unwrap a piece of work in several parts which comes with instructions for its installation, a numbered plan with hanging details. The best I can do is at least approximate it by cramming them together. There is no possibility of arranging work with any sense of aesthetic outside of these constraints. And yet, it looks great. The eye is given a feast, drawn to the best and to the awful by juxtaposition and comparison.
So all at once, while I'm sorting, carrying, hanging, I am thinking about the same issues as they are replicated in all sorts of galleries, museums and art fairs at all levels and all budgets - the practical and pragmatic considerations which take precedence over aesthetic judgements. Work is not always shown to best advantage, artists wishes are not always realised - I've turned up at shows where I have moving image installations showing to find it in overlit situations, or even not switched on.
http://static1.unlike.net/system/photos/0030/2593/unlike.koestler1.jpg?1225406001 (accessed 9th May 2011)
The contemporary way of showing art, or at least the late 20th century way, of singularly spaced out in a white cube, so that each is paced and considered, is not always possible. Perhaps work is often made assuming it will be shown in this way. I guess most artists would not choose their piece to be part of a random collage, where it may end up near the floor, overwhelmed by something inappropriate, yet floor to ceiling gives alot to the viewer if not the artist. Perhaps there is something to be said for forgetting about careful placing and balancing work. It reminds me of earlier years in my life, in bedrooms as a teenager and a student, when I would make a flat a home by placing and adding to my collection of postcards and pictures in a vast cloud on walls, especially at my bed. I still remember many of those images, and how I would gaze at them, study them and look into them while thinking about life and everything. We relate to images we collect and become familiar with. And when they are rearranged in a new place, new relationships emerge between them.
I often look at exhibitions with an eye to how they are hung, the solutions used, and how they could be other. It's so interesting to see a non ideal solution which is still effective - perhaps it's a collective aesthetic.
And then there are the works themselves. Obviously artists and people with art training go to prison too, so there are pieces here with evidence of mastery alongside therapeutic outpourings. Again, as I am hanging these works, I think about the time involved in the making. What offenders have to give to art is time. Often the hallmark of someone who decides to be an artist is that they have gone through a process and commitment of time to their practice. And so what is the difference? There cannot be a true distinction made, since not all art in Koestler is naive, unschooled outsider art, not has all art school art gone through such a rigorous critical and educational process one might expect. I don't expect to come up with an answer to this, except that it is a question. I don't know what sort of art experience and training is possible within the prison system for those that may want. At the Koestler stage work is more at the level of adult education or foundation level, where there are a few notable exceptions who have self taught or developed their talent. Many artists would approach an art school with such pieces in their portfolios.
Some of the work is outstandingly beautiful and intricate, truly pieces to live with, expertly executed and ingeniously resourced. The subject matter tends not to be the concerns of contemporary practice, but are retrospective or self expressive. There is censorship in that works are not submitted from prison if they glorify violence or would cause offense in other ways to victims. Some are a little racy or gruesome, but alot of works seem like windows, either in, to an inmate's current situation, or out, to a form of wish fulfilment. The range of forms, ideas, materials, media, images, is as diverse, interesting and impressive as one would hope for. There is alot invested by the artists in these works, and for some, it may be an opportunity not just for self expression and creativity, but for hope.
Again, another thought that recurs while dealing with these pieces is the impulse to make art in the first place. We don't need to be incarcerated to need an outlet. We all have situations of immobility and frustrations in our lives. Creativity in itself can become like a therapeutic drug, perhaps more refined and specific as one gets further involved in the profession. Creativity and making art is a form of self medication. It is more than a pastime or employment, but a psychological necessity. This is true for myself, for artists, and surely for people in general. There are many outlets and forms - partaking as a viewer is a form of participation which can be as satisfying as making. There are political aspects to this. The position of the arts as a human necessity has recently been debated in the UK with recent Arts Council funding cuts. The talk against has been very much about elitist opera and seemingly self indulgent individual artists making irrelevant tosh. The case for funding was often made in commercial terms, arguing the importance of the Arts in how it makes the country so many millions. Nowhere is said the small quiet voice that art and creativity is part of human nature, and essential in a fundamental way to the way we think.
The Koestler office seems generally staffed with highly qualified people - many have MAs, and who started as interns here or in other organisations. That seems similar to other arts organisations with over qualified, underpaid workers. It is often hard to "get into" such jobs or professions without a period of unpaid experience or lower level jobs, such is the level of competition. However, this makes the staff knowledgeable, although mostly specialists in areas such as Art History rather than Fine Art. The artworks are necessarily commodities to be dealt with - it is a numbers game set against deadlines, but there is a curiosity and interest in seeing the art, and an appreciation of what passes through. I have been struck with the sense of fairness which prevails. All artists are equal, all work is equal and anomalies are ironed out with a sense of fair play to participants. I think this contrasts strongly with other arts organisations and the hierarchical ordering of artists according to invisible rank.
While working at Koestler I have been reading Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thorton, quite a horrific account in my mind to the extreme opposite of a place like Koestler in the art world . The dealing, the comodification, the positioning, the networking I find extremely offputting. Really, as an artist or an individual, it is hard to image wanting to be anywhere within that cyclone. The examples were so extreme, the lives so extraordinary and imbalanced, that it seemed completely outwith any reality. The artist chosen to profile, Takashi Murakami, was not so much artist as head of some conglomeration or media empire, fully implicated in every aspect of commercialisation and merchandising to the extent that there was being planned at his exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York a functioning room of his luxury range design products, as a reflexive comment/installation on his brand. I was exhausted, horrified by it all. If this is what it takes to be shown in these exhibition venues internationally, and more, if this is what it is, then who would want to be part of that? It may be a larger canvas, more about the decisions, and dealing with culture and contemporary concerns as a whole as one's studio, but most of the artists I know are much more at the coal face of art, making their own work hands on. These artists at Koestler are putting on paper their expressive notions. In order to speak on a larger scale, to effect more people, to be part of culture, must one really walk away so much from hands on practice?
It's a constant internal debate. Artists have often worked with assistants over the centuries. Today the singular and hand made has a value and significance which is different in the age of reproduction. Does it get diluted by mass production, even if that is controlled? Does it matter if the hand of the artist directly touched or made a piece, even a painting? Some works would not be possible were it not for manufacturers and processes. The world would be poorer if Anish Kapoor were not such a master of project management. Artists need not be experts in all fields in order to fulfil their ideas.
http://www.spoonfed.co.uk/system/images/16099/default/Anish_Kapoor.jpg (accessed 9th May 2011)
But how far removed can an artist be from their work for it still to be theirs. Is the only way to become well known to delegate the very processes through which art is developed. Art may well have things to say about commercialism, but are there not other things for art to say? If I buy a Damian Hirst piece, am I happy that it is not his actual handmade work, but an elevated piece of branding?
http://likeithateit.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/artwork_images_139_204851_damien-hirst.jpg (accessed 9th May 2011)
These are questions because although answered by different artists and art professionals, they remain questions for others. Perhaps if massive funding and opportunity presented itself to me I would think differently about my work, and disseminate my ideas in the most pluralistic ways possible. Perhaps it is a step up, a different form of creativity and a bigger way of thinking.
Not everyone can be a multimedia mogul, and certainly not every artist. At Koestler there is a loose pricing policy based on how much time and effort is reckoned to have gone into producing each piece. In this context there is a point to that - there must be some way of judging. However, as anyone with an inkling of sensitivity may agree, one gesture in a drawing, a spare expressive suggestion, may be the culmination of years and decades of artistic endeavour, and high in that elusive art value. Takashi Murakami's every thought and decision is worth money. It is given a financial worth based on cultural value by those fully at the top of the gallery and exhibition industry.
9th May 2011
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