Trends: everyone's doing it
A quick bit of surfing revealed that I was just one of many of the wrong kind of artists being given the frieze in a little pogrom. I will say no more, as The Jackdaw puts it so much better. I reproduce David Lee's diatribe in full, with his kind permission:
What follows is another brow-raising example of how in the visual arts the Arts Council dictates who will benefit from public money; that is, according to their own in-bred prejudices. Over the years The Jackdaw has documented how the Arts Council decides who are, in the Council’s own terms, “the wrong kinds of artists”. The following example is only the latest in a long-running inventory of damaging prescriptiveness which always results in the Council giving the thumbs up to the usual suspects. Whatever your views of the Arts Council, you can’t dispute that they know what they don’t like and what they are not prepared to allow us to see. This is, of course, an unfair perversion, a justice, what is more, which is dispensed here by third-raters.
Axis is an organisation in Leeds, originally founded by artists in 1991 under the auspices of Leeds Polytechnic. It has since become bureaucratised to the extent that Axis is now a de facto subsidiary of Arts Council England. It functions as an online artists’ directory, a resource, it claims, for curators and collectors. Their original aim was stated as follows: “We want the Register to be as comprehensive as possible: entry will be open to all professional visual artists, craftspeople and photographers.” This began as a free service but later charged a modest annual subscription. In the context of so much other Arts Council bigotry its openness was exemplary while rendering it dangerously vulnerable to coercion and blackmail.
Axis is now among the Arts Council’s major clients in the non-gallery sector and has so far cost the taxpayer millions of pounds. It is, nominally at least, a charity which states its function on the Charity Commission website as follows: “Our vision is to lead the digital presentation of contemporary practice in the UK, creating opportunities for exchange and interaction that benefit a wide constituency of artists and art professionals and strengthen the contribution of the visual arts to society.” It has ten employees and an income of £536,000 per annum against expenditure of £519,000. £384,000 of its revenue derives from the Arts Council, as well as another £33,000 from the Arts Council of Wales and £55,000 in subscription fees from artists. £447,000 goes on the “charitable expenditures” of staff costs. It is run by one Sarah Fisher whose previous job was head of the visual arts section of the Arts Council’s North West division. As you will discover below and *, ACE and its derivatives operate strict codes of exclusive internal nepotism.
What does Axis actually do? Principally, it helps artists sell work and get selected for mixed exhibitions. In the last year for which there are figures, artists on the register sold £185,565 worth of work at an average price of £1,459 – 127 works in total. Each of those 127 sales cost the taxpayer £3,283.
Currently the organisation is undergoing what they call a “thorough re-consideration of our selection process for artists”. This means cutting out the artists whose work they don’t like. This is the process by which “the wide constituency of artists” referred to in their statement to the Charity Commission becomes not quite as wide as it was before.
In 2005 Axis decided to expect artists on their roll to meet certain criteria – this was called “a quality threshold”. Alarm bells began ringing. Whenever an organisation funded by the Arts Council starts mouthing about quality and adjudication it usually means it will accept only those it considers “Challenging” and “Innovative” – two criteria the Arts Council has never had the ability to define clearly. The remainder will be unrepresented. More recently this “quality threshold” has been retrospectively applied to those who have been on the database continually since it started.
The Jackdaw understands that the reason why Axis is implementing this crude apartheid is a result of pressure from its paymasters. Unless it is seen to be helping only “the right kinds of artists” the Arts Council might see fit to remove the money, which is the only reason Axis can survive and furnish its ten staff with pensions. Doing the Arts Council’s bidding is the price you pay for being nominated as what the Arts Council call a ‘National Portfolio’ organisation. This is code for a rock solid three hundred and eighty grand a year every year. For which, in return, you are expected to behave like a performing seal balancing balls marked ‘Contemporary’, ‘Challenging’ and ‘Innovative’ on the nose whilst vigorously clapping flippers in gratitude.
The criteria used by Axis are below. More generally Axis have stated what they expect: “... the criteria also place an emphasis on distinctiveness, innovation and enquiry, so that our directory can offer users an insight into the ways in which contemporary artistic practice is changing and developing. This is increasingly what our audience and opportunity providers expect Axis to provide.” Lucidity of expression is, by the way, never the strong point of any ACE subsidiary. For “opportunity providers” we assume this is a euphemism for ‘Arts Council England’, who provide the opportunity in the form of a large cheque.
What follows is Axis’s definition of those qualities constituting ‘the right kind of artist’: “our selection criteria emphasise innovation, enquiry [those two again!] and awareness of current debates and issues in visual arts practice. It’s also why we sometimes decline artists whose points of reference we judge to be ‘modern’ rather than ‘contemporary’.”
Will someone from the Arts Council please tell us, in precise terms of artistic style and medium, what is the difference between ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’. And is it right for a publicly funded body whose job it is to nurture all artists of note to be discriminating in any way at all, let alone by using this nebulous criterion? And while you’re at it, why are wanky little ornaments by your selector Katy West* considered anything other than souvenir shop tat? And why do they qualify her to adjudicate upon the work of others?
We are sure the literary titans who penned the Axis drivel can be a little more specific. It is only fair that artists know what they are dealing with ... and more particularly at what stylistic juncture they become ineligible for support from the state; that is, the point at which they apparently regress from being ‘contemporary’ to ‘modern’.
The criteria are applied by five external moderators, though it required some arm-twisting for The Jackdaw to discover their names. They are *(and below) as third- rate a collection of nonentities as you would find in any Arts Council satellite.
Axis is no longer acting in the best interests of all contemporary artists but only those approved by the Arts Council. Artists rejected by this process have been invited to toddle away and join “more traditional” websites, which presumably don’t receive public subsidy and are therefore not nearly either as effective or as swanky.
The uniqueness of Axis was conveyed to The Jackdaw by one former member who refused to submit her work for ‘moderation’: “The importance of being a member of Axis was that it was open to all professional artists and the database could be searched by galleries or critics or others, which might lead to opportunities to exhibit or sell work. It was a good showcase for work, especially for artists without their own websites. Being removed from a register like Axis means that an artist becomes invisible to anyone looking at the database who has an opportunity to offer ... So why does all this matter? Because, bit by bit the Arts Council is rendering invisible the majority of contemporary artists who do not meet their selection criteria.”
Two artists, formerly on the register but now rejected have reported Axis to the Charity Commission for making arbitrary decisions and going against their remit to help artists. The CC’s response to this features below.
At the time of going to press, a third of the artists have been removed leaving 2,800 on the register.
Reply Received from the Charity Commission as we went to press:
“While I appreciate the distress this decision may have caused, unfortunately it is one fully within the discretionary powers of the charity’s trustees. It is certainly not something that the Commission could legitimately question or challenge, as we would have no legal basis or authority to do so.
“To explain, it is important to understand that the charity’s objects are to advance the education of the public in the visual arts and to promote and encourage the visual arts in various ways.
“Within those objects, the trustees have total discretionary authority to establish whatever criteria they see fit in selecting artists/works – and to define ‘visual arts’ in whatever way they think best suits the charity’s purposes.
“Trustees are by definition not ‘answerable’ to anyone in making such decisions, provided only that the charity’s stated objects are furthered and charity law complied with.
“We have received similar correspondence from another source and have replied in the same terms. The charity is not obliged to showcase any particular artists, or any particular visual arts. It is up to the trustees alone to decide.”
Axis criteria
When assessing applications, we look for the following:
In your work
Distinctive visual qualities
A meaningful subject or concept
Technical accomplishment or successful realisation of ideas
Evidence of enquiry and reflection
A critical framework that is ‘contemporary’ rather than ‘modern’
In your supporting material
Good photographic documentation
A CV showing evidence of your professional activity
Awareness of current debates and issues in visual arts practice
A clear and informative statement about your practice
Axis People:
SL
Among his research interests are “Publishing as a strategy for distribution and a medium for practice.” Or ‘Publishing’ for short.
“For me teaching forms a seamless whole with that of my own practice in that the latter is increasingly concerned with exchange, collaboration and distribution. I am working with colleagues to refine and develop the way in which Practice is taught so that it reflects as its starting point the idea that Art is fundamentally a social and collective activity. This is being done through the introduction of group-based practice and a range of project work and assessment models which emphasise intense peer involvement and an engagement with sites and audiences outside the university right from the outset.”
This gibbering ‘practicer’ is in charge of educating art students. How frightening is that appalling fact?
Emma Geliot (writer/curator based in Wales)
She is a former Senior Visual Arts Officer at the Arts Council of Wales so don’t expect any independence of insight or spirit, or even-handedness from such a jobsworth, let alone a broad knowledge of art and its history. She writes with the finesse of a sub-literate teenager ejaculating enthusiasm over everything that moves. None of her scribbling shows any developed sense of criticism. Here is a sample: “I was always going to be a writer. Then I wasn’t and went to art school. Then I was going to be an artist. And I made things and showed things and thought of things that I might make and sometimes I even sold things. And I went away to Germany to be an artist, but when I came back I was something else – an arts administrator – a title that suggests the administering of art.”
In short, yet another example of a total fuckwit holding down an important position of influence and decision-making.
Katayoun Dowlatshahi
(Artist and Vice Chair of Axis)
She has a doctorate in philosophy ... which would have been impressive indeed had it been conferred by virtually any institution other than one called The University of Gloucestershire.
“I am currently exploring the theme ‘liminal’ in my studio practice... I was recently awarded an Arts Council England Award for research and development to aid me in the production of new work based on the theme ‘Liminal’ for forthcoming solo shows in Northampton and Portsmouth.”
Yet another person who performs limitless quantities of ‘practicing’ with her hands comfortably deep inside our pockets and who has the best of all possible reasons – cash – for doing the Art’s Council’s bidding.
One meaning of liminal, by the way, is the threshold below which nothing is visible; i.e. doing as little as you can get away with.
Gill Hedley (Independent Curator and ex-Director of the Contemporary Art Society)
In her position at the Contemporary Art Society (and please note it was called the ‘Contemporary’ not the ‘Modern’ Art Society) she received an annual grant from the Arts Council to buy works which were then donated to museums. ACE could rely on the CAS to buy stuff of which they approved. We are reliably, rock-solidly ‘contemporary’ and not in the slightest ‘modern’, aren’t we dear?
*Further details in Jackdaw 103
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