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.’