[curatorial.net] Tate Debate Art Now Cornwall

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Who: Rebecca Weeks – Curator
What: Tate Debate Art Now Cornwall
When: 26 /04/07
Where: The Mariners Gallery, St.Ives, Cornwall
Who: Chaired by John Aiken
     Panellists included Curator of Art Now Cornwall, Sarah Hughes, Sarah
     Black of Project Base, independent curator Virginia Button, selected
     artists Adrian Piggott, Amanda Lorens, and Andy Hughes.

Foreword:
I wrote this article to record the Tate Debate as I was shocked to find
when I phoned up and spoke to the press officer at the Tate that no one
would be writing it up, that there would be no record of the discussion.
As a local artist and curator I was disheartened by this apparent lack of
organisation or interest in the outcome of this debate, which I hope will
be a catalyst for positive change in Penwith. I have not written a
transcript of the debate but I have tried to select the factors that
seemed most significant to me in writing about the debate. I have posted
this article on the Art Cornwall site and Curatorial Network.

Article:
I was surprised to find that even though there had been such wide spread
discussion and dissent within the art community in Penwith about the ‘Art
Now Cornwall’ show currently on at the Tate St. Ives, that people were to
be charged to attend a discussion and to debate the questions people have
raised about why the artists selected were selected, given that some of
them seem to have tenuous links with Cornwall. Questions have also been
raised over the way in which the selection process was conducted. I would
have thought that if the Tate were genuinely interested in a dialogue the
debate would have been free to attend. I contemplated this and the
discussion I had just been reading on the Art Cornwall site on the
internet about the show as I drove over to St.Ives.

The debate started with the chair introducing himself and the other
panelists to an almost full house, and by framing the debate that was to
take place in terms of the significance of the ‘Art Now Cornwall’ show on
an international level, and by asking the question; “ is Cornwall
important to this work or is the work important to Cornwall?” He went on
to describe the position of Cornwall as a periphery in relation to the
centre for the arts that is London, a periphery that draws experimental
and unrecognised artists. The debate was also contextualised by the chair
outlining the different aims that Tate St. Ives is supposed to meet of
showing the St. Ives movement, showing contemporary art, showing local
practice, delivering an education programme and community events. This
long list of objectives seemed to be being offered as some kind of apology
for not really fulfilling any of the above functions particularly well.

Sarah Hughes began to speak about the show, her manner was tense and she
seemed to feel she was there to defend the show, she stated her intention
in curating the show had been to provide a ‘starting point’ for the
discussion of contemporary practice in the area. The phrase ‘starting
point’ featured on a number of subsequent occasions whenever a member of
the audience enquired about how the show would evolve, or what forms the
Tate’s engagement with contemporary art in the area might take next. The
details of any future plans were not provided, though Sarah Black of
Project Base suggested that the show would evolve around the activities of
artists working in the area, however no specifics were discussed here
either as to what strategies would be deployed by the Tate and Project
Base to meet artists and to ensure this kind of dialogue. Sarah Hughes
discussed the selection process for the show, another aspect that has come
under criticism from members of the local art scene who felt the show was
unrepresentative of the work happening in Penwith at this time. Sarah
Hughes described how the Tate residency at the Porthmeor studios in 2003
had identified a group of artists who had applied for the residency as
potential candidiates for the show. That they had subsequently made studio
visits to artists on that list and had selected works based on that
information. She added that the show was not a survey and the artists
works were a sample of what was being done not a definitive collection.
She also added that there are three generations of artists participating
in the show, so that the notion of contemporary Cornwall was independent
of age. However when Adrian Pigott spoke as one of the selected artists it
became clear that his work was commissioned by an organisation in the lake
district and was filmed and shown in Italy several years ago, and further
that he hasn’t made any work in Cornwall, so he didn’t feel he could talk
about the relationship between this place and his work. Adrian was
selected even though the curator was aware of his work from a completely
different context, a international context. It seems strange to me that
Piggotts work was selected and yet someone like Ray Exworth who is now in
his eighties and has had a long record of exhibiting work in many national
galleries wasn’t even on their radar. Maybe they didn’t have enough time
to research who lives and works in Cornwall.

What I found most interesting and that made the most sense to me, that I
managed to glean from amongst the overly lengthy introductions by the
chair of who people were and what their achievements to date were, and
which may have been designed to limit the panels interactions with the
audience, was what Amanda Lorens said. Amanda one of the selected artists
spoke about what she hopes will come from the show, she spoke about her
experience as part of ‘PALP’, or Penwith Artist Led Project, of co -
curating events in Penwith and of the lack of opportunities here for
artists to make and show contemporary art. She said she has a vision of a
lot of different shows happening under and around a Tate umbrella, of a
fringe show alongside the Tate’s Contemporary show. She voiced what a lot
of contemporary artists here and now in Penwith are thinking which is that
with Newlyn’s expansion, the arrival of Project Base and local artists
groups planning to do events to co - incide with their launches there is a
buzz in Penwith. There is a new energy, at last contemporary art has a
visible profile, a profile set to grow and expand which hopefully will
lead to a better understanding in Penwith of the benefits a vibrant art
scene can bring to an area plagued by poverty and lack of opportunity and
so investment, not only for those outside the arts community but for arts
professionals themselves who are also diasadvantaged. A point that Sovay
Berryman and Andy Whall, both local artists raised in different ways
respectively through discussing the cost of housing here and the
development of an arts infrastructure and the Tates presence in St.Ives
actually contributing to artists being priced out of living and working in
St.Ives. There was no assurance fourth coming from anyone on the panel
that wealth generated through arts related regeneration in the area would
find its way back to artists in some form, that there are strategies being
developed for that such as set aside housing for young creatives or
subsidised studio and exhibition spaces, or even that it has occurred to
the Tate, Project Base or the local council as an issue to address.

I spoke to Sarah Hughes after the debate and said that I felt that the
show has functioned as a much needed catalyst, as a ray of hope for a
frustrated community of contemporary artists, a community in need of
opportunities to develop their practices. I’m not just talking about those
artists selected, although I’m sure the show will have a positive impact
on their options, but for the rest of us who remain on a periphery
creating our own spaces and contexts to make and show work in as best we
can. I said that if the show does evolve to work with local projects and
to include works operating beyond the gallery it will be a great thing. I
still left wishing that how that kind of engagement will be achieved had
been outlined.  To achieve that the curator needs to spend time here, to
talk, walk and be here. They need to be part of the situation.

Just how out on a periphery we are here in the Contemporary art community
in Penwith  can be quantified in these terms, the Tate cannot get the
press to attend its shows and events. There is no documentation as
standard of debates that take place around shows, there is no procedure in
place. I am writing this debate up because as far as I am aware it is the
only written record of this debate, which according to the curator of the
show it was her intent to create all along. It is for exactly that kind of
reason that the debate here could go around and around. I would answer the
chairs question “ is Cornwall important to this work or is the work
important to Cornwall?” in these terms, we desperately need opportunities
for local artists and curators, we desperately need a dialogue with the
art institutions here, who until recently have chosen to ignore
contemporary art in Cornwall, but we also desperately need to engage with
international practice, with international standards within practice and
around professionalising the role of the artist and the whole of the arts
infra structure. The isolated and neglected situation of the arts in
Penwith has led to an unhappy bitter culture of antipathy, of fierce
guardianship and limitation of what it is to make art in Cornwall, a
hostility of the Cornish to art, as distant and privileged activity
imposed upon them and not of them, and a hostility between commercial
galleries and publicly funded galleries. In short there is a culture of
squabbling over pasty crusts like sea gulls. These tensions about what art
in Cornwall should be about are reflected by the list of the Tates aims,
the influence upon the Tate of warring factions is manifested in the aims
that it is supposed to meet, through selling local jewellery and pottery,
dumming down exhibited works for a public who leave knowing nothing more
than when they came in about those works position in art history, and a
contemporary show as a placebo answer to the accusation of ignoring
contemporary art in Cornwall. None of these issues or short comings can be
addressed unless it is accepted that Cornwall is important to the art that
happens here and art that happens here is important to Cornwall, and that
doesn’t mean we all have to paint fishing boats.

We need to create a positive feed between the local and the global and to
understand the local in relation to the global. We will only succeed in
doing this if there is serious and strategic investment in the arts here
that allows artists practices to direct its agendas, and that shapes
itself to meet this place, ‘this situation’ as Sarah Black would phrase
it.