why?

Having found the market driven critical discourse of contemporary art to be at times both distorting and arbitrary (though at times it does seem to provide a certain symmetry: with openings feeling something like an illegal dog fight: bloody lino and hand licking.) and having seen the opportunities that art may provide for paradigmatic transcendence confounded at the point of its proliferation; I must now attempt an autonomous dissemination of my own work.

As the amount of information increases beyond the capacity of individuals to comprehend it, any single part of the data available can be accessed and analyzed instantly; the problem we now face is that we have reached such a saturation of information that specific information is subject to so many possible relations within the data stream that it immediately losses any autonomy of meaning (google etc) and so we find ourselves forced to integrate artificial or spurious peripheral relationships when considering any single area of data. Rather than triggering a reductive process whereby we mine the pool of data for comprehensible specifics whole areas are taken together and summarized by engines powerful enough to link these abstract families of disparate information. Any specialization losses the possibility of a dialectical opposite as huge tracts of knowledge are integrated into larger and larger webs of information, the mechanisms whereby these fields might be made useful move further away from the skill set of the human mind. As the amount of accessible data grows we approach a state of binary dependence, but one in which the code is lost, we may comprehend the referent but we can no longer conceive of that which it signifies. Knowledge must be made palatable for an increasingly plural and superficial cultural paradigm.

Ideas lose currency in a society obsessed with production. The longevity of concepts is inextricably linked to the time given to their consideration, not to their production. It is the duty of the artist to create the idea; it is the duty of the society to preserve it. Galleries should act as repositories for artistic truth. The market should function as a tax system levied on the willing for the maintenance of a shared cultural legacy. The artists’ only consideration should be the proliferation of their truth. It is the artists’ position in society that provides the paradigmatic base for the work: at times detested, adored, but always at odds with the governing ethos of wider society. The critical establishment should exist to catch the windfall of those who create

Why produce?

Why work?

Why live?

The market dictates the modes of dissemination of our work. This is not a new development; it has always been so. That is not to say that the market inevitably directs the nature of the work, but I can sight its influence from top to bottom so easily and extensively that it suffices to mention bubble wrap!?

The artists’ investment ceases once the work is completed; at this point the work is surrendered to the viewing world. It is seldom sentimentality that drives parental obsession on the artists’ part but the desire for adequate remuneration. (Documentary artefacts may be manufactured as a possible means of subverting sentimentality)

The ‘value’ of the consumer is no reflection as to the value of the art?

It has become impossible for art to compete with other media as a reflection of our society? This is not an indictment; anthropologists also find their talents surplus to the mass of information present.

Art may only depict the subjective truths of individual artists.

Artists are paid to be artists: not to create art.

Rebellion is mute. Traditional notions of freedom have been shown bankrupt:

Freedom to work

Freedom to spend

It has been argued that life’s only viable revolt is suicide. This is erroneous it is a refusal of life that remains to us. Only theft can secure liberty. Paradoxically this will often lead to imprisonment.

Art has created a paradigm that though intricate is completely comprehensible within its own terms. Art only functions in relation to its own system; opposition and subversion are only continuations of the dialectic. The art world would have us believe that the criteria by which work is judged conforms solely to aesthetic and conceptual considerations; the truth however is that more often it is nepotism and money are the key driving factors. Moralising is pointless as in this sense art ‘does’ genuinely reflect wider society. It is often these incidental aspects that most effectively throw up a mirror on our condition, far from being unique to art this is a pattern repeated in any microcosmic system. The challenge for the artist aware of this fact is how to maintain motivation.

Discredited philosophies and dysfunctional nostalgia. My work lies somewhere between scepticism and atonement; a passion play for the faithless. Sweeping statements and hyperbolic generalisations are something of a habit for me: tools for communicating truth, my truth: erroneous and deceptive, though well intentioned and honest. If you tell me I am wrong I may well change my position I have very little loyalty to ideas. The world viewed over the shoulder of those taking part. Seeking to neither influence events nor elucidate them, rather to reconstitute, remodel and recreate: placing myself at the head of a new history. Utopian visions may only be safely administered post-mortem.