MY OLD SCHOOL

The University of Wales Institute Cardiff, Howard Gardens, Cardiff, circa 2014

This was where I received my arts education between 1993 and 1996. These images were doing the rounds on social media sometime around 2014, and at this time, I would often start my public speaking engagements by showing them, referring to the demolition of these buildings as a metaphor for arts education being ‘in ruins’. Since then, out of the rubble has emerged a new building consisting of hotel-like accommodation for Cardiff Metropolitan University students; clean, sleek and well appointed, this new usage is as far from my own rough, dirty, chaotic art school experience as it is possible to imagine. 

At the time I studied there, the Howard Gardens campus of the University of Wales Institute Cardiff was home to a genuinely unique visual art programme, creating a generation of British artists who did much to shape the direction of experimental performance in the UK in subsequent years. Dartington College of Arts in Devon had a similar status during this period. As a very particular convergence of artists, educators, learners, buildings and facilities, neither of these institutions exist anymore.  

Why should they?, you might ask. Times change.  

But other things have changed too, including the fact that my local education authority paid the entirety of my tuition fees when I began my degree in 1993. By the time I left the UK to work abroad in 2011, the tuition fee cap had just increased from £3,000 to £9,000. The final arc of this journey through arts education found me working for a decade in a private American art school (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago) where yearly tuition cost a student just over $50,000 a year. I soon realised that conversations with my American students about my experience of education relative to theirs were informed by a certain kind of guilt on my part. 

When I first came to SPILL in 2021, I hadn’t realised that the Think Tank, our beautiful headquarters and venue, was housed in a building that once functioned as an art school; even though it is plainly stated as a plaque on the front of the building. Sometimes you just have to look up.

The Think Tank, High Street, Ipswich, 2023 (Photo, Robin Deacon)

Occasionally a guest to an event, or a passer by just popping their head around the door, will tell us that they used to do life drawing classes in what is now one of our meeting rooms. Gazing up at the vaulted ceilings with a wistful smile, they will regale us with their memories of the old Ipswich School of Art, an institution with alumni that include Maggi Hambling and Brian Eno. Luckily, as a listed building, it will not have the same fate as my alma mater, so these moments of reverie will still be possible in the future.

Why am I in such a reflective mood regarding the history (and future) of art schools and education? Perhaps because every other day it would seem there is a new article claiming there to be a devaluing of arts and creativity in school, or highlighting a shift away from the arts and humanities within university education. Of course, such observations are nothing new. I can’t remember a time when there haven’t been portrayals of creative arts courses as being, financially speaking, ‘not worth it’. Add the current high cost of living and a seemingly never ending spiral of inflation and these issues have an increased urgency.

I have been wondering what role SPILL might have in responding to these concerns. How can an experience of arts education be uncoupled from a lifetime of unreasonable debt? How can we question the idea of arts education as an indulgence or extravagance? What might we offer those who are creative, but do not believe a career in creativity is an economically viable path?

Over the last couple of months, my research has taken me to organisations like The Other MA (TOMA) in Southend, The Margate School and Open School East (also in Margate), to learn how others might be addressing these kinds of questions. In each instance, I saw a series of fascinating models for independent programmes of education that function outside of (and sometimes, in critique of) traditional forms and structures of institutional learning. In conversation with the directors of these programmes and some of their students, it was clear that all had completely different financial models and cultures of learning. But what was shared is a sense that something is awry in the way mainstream graduate and post-graduate educational provision in the UK is funded.

The Margate School (Formerly Woolworths), 31 - 33 High Street, Margate, 2023 (Photo, Robin Deacon)

Rightly or wrongly, I had always worked on the premise that artists were generated by educational institutions, whether in BA programmes like Cardiff where I studied, or postgraduate/MFA level at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago where I taught. As a lecturer or professor in both universities and art colleges, I was sometimes guilty of not giving a great deal of thought about what students experience before they reach higher education. In a recent Instagram post, British artist Bob and Roberta Smith claimed that in 2023, 40% fewer children took GCSE art than in 2010. If correct, this raises some interesting questions regarding what might be going on ‘downriver’.

Bob and Roberta Smith, Instagram post, 14 May 2023

Way back in the 1980s (having received utterly mediocre grades for all of my A-level exams), I remember telling my mother I was worried that I had made a horrible mistake having chosen to only take academic subjects, and really didn’t know what to do next. 

History: D

English: E

Geography: U (Ungraded)

In response, my mum went on to do some research on my behalf (probably at the library; these were pre internet times), and came back with the suggestion that I could do a thing called an ‘art foundation’ course and this would be a way to get into art school. I followed her advice, gained entry to the BTEC Foundation Studies course at my local college, and at last, everything made sense again. 

The question I have been asking myself of late is this: if I was now in my late teens or early twenties, would I still consider going to art school? What if my parents hadn’t encouraged me to follow a creative path? If there were other kinds of provision that were not so associated with debt and unstable career options, would I avail myself of them? 

Counterfactuals of this kind can present us with infinite scenarios. But if I step outside of myself and apply these questions in the context of SPILL Festival (and in particular, the work we do at the Think Tank), a bigger picture starts to emerge. Some of the most memorable experiences I have had at SPILL in the last couple of years relate to the work we have done with artists that has opened up creative experiences for children. Most recently, Nottingham artist Bruce Asbestos spent a few days with us leading a series of workshops with Year 5 and 6 children who were charged with creating miniature monsters from clay. Bruce will fabricate some of the characters they created in larger form, to be shown in our October festival alongside his own enormous inflatable sculptures. 

Bruce Asbestos, Ok Cherub, The Bluecoat, Liverpool, 2022 (Photo, Roy Battersby)

Bruce’s instructions to the children were simple and open ended, but he made an interesting clarification at the start. He said that if the task was to make an animal, the children would likely produce a predictable series of dogs or cats. But if the task is to make a monster, then the imagination can run riot. As Bruce pointed out, a monster can have twenty five legs or six eyes. It can be pink, green, blue, or a mixture of all these colours.

Clay ‘monsters’ made by year 5 and 6 pupils, St Matthews School, Ipswich (Photo, Robin Deacon)

Of course, Bruce’s workshops with these children are not ‘art school’, at least not in the sense that I have been writing about here. But what is the line to be drawn from these kinds of childhood experiences of making and the possibility of creativity still having a central significance in one’s adult life? As I wrote this question, I was suddenly reminded of an observation from the late, great British artist Brian Catling. In a 2021 BBC documentary about his life and work, he shared a childhood recollection of making something with clay, mud and sticks at school. As he remembers it, it was a model of a caveman’s house, and his realisation was the following:

‘There was something about getting dirty. You have to let the hands think. You don’t work it out with a pencil, you don’t work it out in your head; you put your hands in the material and see what happens. I don’t think that’s taught anymore. I don’t think that’s even discussed.’

It is important to remember that such creative revelations can also be found in the most unlikely of places. Might there be something to be said for activities and processes that happen outside the walls of educational institutions? All those solitary hours I spent as a child playing with Lego were no doubt creative - building objects, stories and worlds with my own hands. ‘Thinking with my hands’ indeed. In retrospect, I even think the time I spent doing menial warehouse jobs in my teens and early twenties was not unconnected to the kinds of repetitive actions over long durations that my educators in Cardiff would later claim to be ‘performance art’. Paradoxically, I sometimes wonder if not taking A-level art (of not learning how to draw) was what ultimately made me an artist.

Thanks to Leon Clowes, Polly Brannan (Open School East), Emma Edmondson (TOMA), Andrea Cunningham (METAL, Southend) and Maz Stuart (The Margate School) for their generosity and time, and thanks to Bruce Asbestos for his brilliant workshops.

www.toma-art.com

www.openschooleast.org

www.themargateschool.com

WE HATE IT WHEN OUR FRIENDS BECOME SUCCESSFUL

Oriana Fox (Image courtesy of the artist)

It took me ages to get round to it, but I finally wrote a curatorial statement. No great fanfare, no big deal, but the realisation is that writing a statement of intent as an Artistic Director is no easier than writing an artist statement. It has been interesting to see which of my concerns as an artist have carried over into my curatorial role - for example, exploring the relationship between the marginal and the mainstream. This has always been a fascination of mine. Back in 2005, I made a video entitled ‘What is a Performance Artist?’ that compiled instances of uses of the word ‘performance art’ in mainstream television and cinema. My theory was that despite the collected cliches, dismissals and misunderstandings the video depicted, the idea of a marginal art form like performance art did already have a presence within popular culture.

Perhaps there was something else bubbling under all of this. I’m thinking of artists who work in the margins, but who are also interested in a kind of success that means breaking through to a broader public, beyond one’s peers. As an art student in the mid 1990’s (trying to figure out what ‘performance art’ was) I was often directed toward Rose Lee Goldberg’s book, the neatly titled ‘Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present’. I distinctly remember being drawn to a passage where the author  described instances of “…the performance artist dreaming of becoming a celebrity…” and the ambivalence associated with this possibility - “…how to make the crossover without losing the integrity and the protection…of the art world.”

I was reminded of this dilemma when artist Richard Dedomenici came to present at the Think Tank last year, revisiting his experience of adapting his ongoing Redux project for BBC television in 2015. I remember watching the BBC broadcast of this show, ‘The Redux Project Live from Television Centre’, and laughing as Richard (and friends) reenacted multiple iconic scenes from BBC TV history. A particular highlight was watching Richard get beaten up by television presenter Kirsty Wark.

Richard Dedomenci ‘The Redux Project Live from Television Centre’ (2015)

Over the years more than a few of my artist friends and peers have been sighted on ‘reality’ TV, so that sense of delight in seeing a person I know on screen was not unusual. But somewhere in this viewing experience was another feeling I could not quite place my finger on. It was not as simple as jealousy or envy. Or perhaps it was. For now, I will resort to euphemism, and suggest what I experienced was ‘a heightened consciousness of an evolving relationship with my peers (and their careers).’

Richard Dedomenci and Robin Deacon as young artists in 2007 (Photo, Jamie McMurray)

As artists, Richard and I had been fellow travellers of sorts. ‘Back in the day’ (i.e. 2003), we were programmed as a double bill at Fierce Earth Festival in Birmingham – both as young, emerging artists. This was the point in my career where it was still customary for me to apologise to the audience before I began my performances - just in case it didn’t turn out to be any good. Anyway, during that period and in the subsequent years, I remember that mine and Richard Dedemenici’s work would often be categorised together or somehow held in comparison. But fast forward to 2015, and there Richard was on ‘proper’ TV - and there I wasn’t.

Richard Dedomenci ‘The Redux Project Live from Television Centre’ (2015)

This week at the Think Tank, we welcome artist Oriana Fox who will be exploring similar questions, albeit far more directly and candidly than I am. As she writes of herself – 

‘Oriana Fox was once a hot young artist back in the early 2000s. Now fully in mid-career phase, she’s lamenting what might have been and, perhaps unhelpfully, comparing herself with her peers.’ 

With such daily comparisons writ (and posted) large, Oriana describes an envy fueled by social media. This may be something recognisable to all of us in an everyday sense, not just as artists. But it is likely a blessing these technologies were in their infancy when I was starting out in my creative life. In her work as a podcaster, Oriana is grappling with some fascinating questions on how to judge one’s success, particularly from a vantage point of her description of herself as a ‘young hot artist’ in the past tense. 

Oriana Fox (Image courtesy of the artist)

For all the other intersections of identity we talk about, I believe that age (or more precisely, ageing) is too often neglected. This leads me back to another part of my curatorial statement, and another thing we want to do more of at SPILL, namely supporting and remembering the work or artists who may have been passed by or forgotten by bringing them back into dialogue and relevance. I’d like to think this might become a prognostic process, to pre-empt or prevent invisibility.

I remember being interviewed in 2004 for a publication by the Live Art Development Agency that compiled a series of reflections from artists who had undertaken their incredible and life-changing ‘One to One’ bursary scheme. Although this funding had given me the financial support to give up my job for a year to focus on my art making, in my interview for this publication, I remember expressing a concern that even as a young artist, there was this fear of an eventual mid-career malaise, and an associated loss of visibility. I used the term ‘the submerging artist’ to describe this impending state. This was a simple inversion of that ubiquitous category: ‘the emerging artist’. 

A couple of years ago, this term popped up again in the context of a Facebook thread I was following on this very subject of older artists’ loss of visibility. One contributor cited my original use of the phrase, writing that  ‘submerging artist’ was a description she had applied to herself for some time now - 

‘Sinking under the waves created by the speedboats trawling for 'emerging' artists into the quiet pool of middle-aged/older didn't-you-do-something-once? Waiting to see what's there when the water recedes.’

I will conclude this text on this rather poetic image (thanks Rachel Gomme), and another observation/question that came from the same discussion thread, namely, the possibility of formal categorisation or funding category for the support of ‘the re-emerging artist.’

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

Last week, I was helping to tidy up our White Room in the Think Tank. This is the space at SPILL where our visiting artists present performances and talks, or hole up for a few days for a residency. On the huge whiteboard that takes up one wall of the space, I saw these words scrawled –

“I’m not sure I’ve ever been to Ipswich.” (Photo, Robin Deacon)

As I knew that Sonia Hughes, one of the artists who had been using the room had been in Ipswich to perform as part of SPILL Festival in 2021, I concluded that Jo Fong, Sonia’s collaborator for this particular project had contributed this note to self. Jo and Sonia have worked together for a long time, but following a break in their collaboration, their visit marked a return. Jo had travelled from Wales, Sonia from Manchester, both meeting in Ipswich to create something new.

All this got me thinking about my own experience as an artist who for many years travelled to perform or talk about my work - how my usually solitary experience of a city would often be reduced to journeys between hotel and venue, and perhaps a particular café or restaurant I would return to for the comfort of its temporary familiarity. Perhaps this fragmented kind of experience shares a kind of uncertainty similar to Jo’s. In my case, all the places I have been to, but not really visited. Beyond buildings and spaces we pass through, what is an artist’s relationship with a town they visit, especially when brief or fleeting?

Artists Sonia Hughes and Jo Fong present Nettles as part of Think Tank Live, 6 April 2023 (Photo, Robin Deacon)

Of course, every town has differing demographics with needs and interests - sometimes collective and overlapping, other times highly specific to a particular group. Before Sonia and Jo visited the Think Tank, our guests were ‘secret agency’, a German artist collective who are working to create a new work for SPILL Festival in October based on a programme of activities with women in the maritime across Suffolk and Ipswich. ‘Shefarers’ is the delightful phrase they use. One of the secret agency artists talked to me about their interest in convening ‘improbable assemblies’ of people. This phrase has been rattling around in my head as I think about what it means for our visiting artists to be in Ipswich, and what their points of contact are with those who live here – those who are our audiences.

Artists from ‘secret agency’ on the deck of Sailing Barge Victor(ia), Ipswich Waterfront, 13 April 2023 (Photo, Robin Deacon)

As I approach the end of my second year as SPILL Artistic Director, I am thinking a lot about the baggage I bring to the role. As an art student in the 1990s, my education was about the pursuit of individual vision and singular expressions of self. Any idea of art that engaged with community seemed removed from this way of thinking, and was sometimes sneered at by some. In all my years performing, my sense of the audience has remained as an unseen thing lurking in the shadows as I do my thing. Of course, I still value this way of working. But since coming to SPILL something has shifted in this regard, perhaps most of all my ability to appreciate and advocate for work involving a much more participatory relationship with audiences. 

In 2021, (not too long since I had returned to the UK after a decade living in the USA), I travelled to my home town of Bedford to see a performance called News, News, News by British artists Andy Field and Beckie Darlington. Andy and Beckie had worked for three weeks with children from a local school to produce a portrait of Bedford in the form of a live news TV broadcast. As I remember watching their interviews with the mayor, along with interviews and vox pops on streets that I had loitered as a teenager, the question of uncertainty about my relationship with locations returned. Having been abroad for so many years, Bedford had this strange sense of familiarity and unfamiliarity, but my experience of watching News, News, News helped me acclimatise and reconnect with this place.

News, News, News (Photo, Andy Field)

Andy and Beckie will be at the Think Tank on Thursday 27 April to talk about their ongoing projects with children and young people before returning again in the run up to SPILL Festival in October. They will work with the children of St Matthew’s School, Ipswich creating a new version of News, News, News that will see this kind of responsive, topical approach transplanted to Ipswich. 

As the rest of our festival programme takes shape, my conversations with the SPILL team keep returning to this question of audience and place, and how we can work with landscapes, histories and people with more certainty and familiarity. I wonder if this is because of my own outsider status? After all, I had never been to Ipswich before moving here.