Where there is no gift there is no art. -Lewis Hyde
If there’s not one, there are thousands of artists’ stories in which they talk about the meaning, the feeling, the why and how of their art work. An artist who uses various forms of materials to create different forms of art, whatever that means?
Artists have been both instigators and beneficiaries of the arts’ revolution. But the delicate ecology that sustains that revolution is at risk of being overwhelmed by the business of art. In the war brewing over creativity, artists are going to have to choose a side if they want to continue making, and a lot rides on their decision and their bank balances.
This thought came to mind when I visited a talk about how “Art” should be available to all. I thought of the owned art on my walls. Some made by friends. Some are framed cards sent by friends and family but 90% of it I bought from IKEA.
An IKEA gallery is located near most of us. They’ve got giant parking lots to accommodate all the happy shoppers and employ the same strategy that outlet malls do: they pick locations just slightly out of the way so that when you’ve made the effort to drive all the way there, you’re compelled to buy something simply to make the trip feel worth it.
EFFORT. Do we make the effort to buy art? I know artists make the effort to make it but unless you are a collector (£££) do you make an effort to look and buy art and is it really available to all? Or is it that IKEAs job to provide cheap art to all?
Questions, questions… But ones that made me think of my own practices. I spend days and sometimes weeks to create a painting. It then takes months (usually) for it to be bought. I am never going to be famous, my own purse strings won’t allow me to be famous. The cost of purchasing canvases, oils and other materials to create one thing that will be bought by one person for very little money isn’t really worth it. But then that’s not fair, for me as an artist and for those people who want it, as everyone is entitled to art, or are we not?
So I find myself in my studio surrounded by a sort of fragile product whose safe conveyance relies on the material integrity of buyers. So I changed my thinking and that’s where the Metro Artist came from. Make something for free and give it away for free.
I collect the free Metro Newspaper daily. I create a really simple image. Wrap it up and then slide it into a Metro Newspaper for one reader to find a small one- off image. They might not even know what it is, they may throw it in the bin. Or they might think they have just found a free print in their morning’s newspaper. I hope that they will like it and I hope they will stick it on their wall. Art for all! A random find that hopefully they like and will enjoy looking at. Perhaps even one day, when I am long gone dead. It could make them some money, who knows!
In principle, there is nothing wrong with wanting to make a living as an artist. What’s wrong is the perception that our society’s art market will never make that possible for more than a token few of us to either make it or own it.
Margot is currently working in mixed media with a focus on collage work where she interprets daily newspaper photography into unusual compositions to reflect on society through its preoccupation with celebrity and our image conscious world.
Her painting work in the main covers portraiture and political comment. This is communicated through the lens of our turbulent political climate, seeking to critique current policy towards the country’s shift to the right and possible consequences for our society.
- Collage from The Metro Artist - 23rd January 2017
Can you buy these?
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