Lesson 24

I don’t do projects

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A friend once told me to write a project and apply for a grant, I said that I didn’t  do projects. My work is my life, it’s an ongoing enquiry. He said that my life was not a project. Quite true; and neither is my art.

Doctors used to prescribe Valium to people who suffered from anxiety, and later the drug companies started to produce anti-depressants. These anxiety sufferers were then given these anti-depressant drugs, which changed their diagnosis from anxiety to depression. This is the drug companies creating the diagnosis and redefining the illness. The remedy creates the illness.

We now know that the way we test in schools effects the way children learn. Similarly, patronage will define the art. If money is given for projects, artists will do projects. This is a fairly recent innovation; projects were things I did on PreDip at Art School. In those days artists did not do projects. Art students did projects set by their tutors. Artists did their work, engaging with their enquiry. But if funding bodies offer grants for projects then artists will do projects. The Arts Council now refer to ‘your activity’ I find this less objectionable than ‘project’ because it’s ambiguous and less specific. You might say that this is semantics, but I would maintain that a project is a particular thing. A project tends to have a beginning and an end, and like modularisation at art school, this breaks up the seamless development of the artist and their work. Writing a ‘project’ prior to doing it is bound to limit the possible directions the project could take once the artists starts to get their hands dirty. Formulating the project will tend to predict the outcome. Of course, this depends on how good you are at writing these projects, not how good you are at developing your art. There is a way of writing into the project ‘open-endedness’, so that you can make decisions that change the project, but you will still be involved in predicting the outcome which is bound to limit the creative journey. Stuart Brisley famously said that failing was just something else happening, write that into the project. It was fascinating to watch Brisley perform, it was clear he had a plan but I could usually see when he changed his mind – it was clear that Brisley was making decisions during the performance. This was far removed from scripted acting.

I usually work in a series and it is only in hindsight that I see the end of one series and where the beginning of the next series was located. Remembering the sculptor Ted Atkinson, who sadly died last week, he used to tell that he usually had exhibitions of seven sculptures. His gallery was always perturbed that the seventh never fitted in with the other six. However, this final seventh work was also the beginning of a new series. In a couple of years he would have another exhibition of seven works and again the seventh would not fit but was the start of a series of six more sculptures and so on. I have reinvented myself as an artist a number of times [well, it felt like that at the time], activating a profound departure from what I had been doing previously. Once more in hindsight it was never such a radical change, as the old work leaks into the new and there is probably a common denominator that connects all of the different ‘periods’.

The important thing is not to finish anything, or if it is ‘finished with’ you need to be able to move on. I used to tell students not to finish off their Degree Shows too perfectly, and to leave some ‘ragged’ ends in their work, so that when the exhibition is over they can just continue to work. The anticlimax of any exhibition can make it difficult to re start and get back into work after the show. Coming to the end of a ‘project’ can have a similar effect. Always have something to work on. You can finalise the work too emphatically, and there are dangers in getting it right or too perfect. Some artists who do this don’t move on but continue to produce these works ad nauseum; some artists spend all their life painting the same painting, which might be a commendable thing to do if the work got better, but this is rarely the case. They continue their potboilers with the encouragement of their gallery, as the market does not like change if the work is selling. Thus a ‘successful’ artist can find themselves on a treadmill. It’s probably not a good thing to be too satisfied with what you are doing, as uncertainty and discontent are inevitable. To students who said they were confused and not sure what they should be doing, I used to say that this is how they should be feeling, because if they knew what they were doing they did not need to be at art school. Alan Davie described this as ‘divine discontent‘.

The work is not finished in the studio. Looking finishes the work, the gallery will finish the work, the viewer will finish the work. (I will look at “how do I know it’s finished?” in another lesson).

We all work in different ways and writing down your project might be the way you naturally work. Solving all the creative problems before doing the work, and being thorough with your preparatory work, like doing lots of drawings prior to painting the fresco, for instance: you’ve got to get that right first time before the plaster dries. But not everybody works like that; I’d say most artists don’t know what they are doing and don’t always know the direction the work will take or have any idea as to the outcome. The best paintings are made on the canvas, not through preparatory studies, but decisions and changes made during the act of painting. To surprise others you have to first surprise yourself. Writing down the project curtails this process, with the project defining the nature of the work, and thus the funding creates the type of work.

Marshall McLuhan said “the media is the message“, for me, in this case it is patronage that influences the message.

Again and similarly, as Universities get funding for research and with art schools now embedded in Universities, we have ‘art research’. Same pattern as before: funding – project, here we have funding – research. So artists in Universities do a thing called research, outside Universities they do projects, surprise! The difficulty is that nobody knows what art research is, other than its probably not simply practice, that is, say, painting in your studio and definitions vary from institution to institution, from research professor to research professor. In the early days people wrote research papers on ‘what is art and design research?’ I thought this was cheating, too self-referential. It was this ‘Art Research’ that Matthew Collins so effectively joked about with regard to 2005 Turner Prize winner Simon Starling’s Shedboatshed.
Art schools in Universities. Art and research, well that’s another story. The square peg in a round hole. See Lesson 25.

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Lesson 24: Don’t do projects, just continue to work every day. It’s an enquiry, it’s your life. If you need money steal it or teach.

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One Response

1. Heather Davison says:

   September 25, 2019 at 6:49 pm

   Thankyou for these lessons …very helpful advice and musings. I like the idea of always having something to work on and leaving a few rough edges…..

   Reply