I scratch your back and you scratch mine – why some open art prizes and competitions smack of nepotism

Summertime is usually a fertile period when it comes to art prizes and exhibitions with open submission procedures aimes at artists who are trying to make a name for themselves. Many are quite high profile such as the Jerwood prizes, Threadneedle prize, Discerning Eye, Royal Academy of Arts, Matt Roberts Salon, Depford X, John Moores, New Contemporaries, others are more niche and relate to a specific type of work only.

Call me naïve but I always thought that if you are an up and coming artist and decide enter your work in an open art competitions or art prizes you will be judged by the quality of that work. Of course the result will always depend on the taste and interests of whoever is selecting. Many of these opportunities are indeed ''open to all'' and are a great way to get your work seen and purchased. The selection is often made by interesting artists, curators, art critics who use their knowledge and experience to great effects.

But I have come to realise that in some cases it is not that simple. Time and time again I am seeing artists and gallerists acting as judges selecting the work of people who just ''happen'' to be their mate/close collaborator, no matter how poor the artwork. Another trend seems to be that if you are an artist and are a judge of a particular prize one year, expect your work to miraculously appear in the final selection for the same prize in the following years. Equally some artists seem to be selected again and again for the same exhibition year after year, why? how predictable can you get?

Surely the pool of artists to choose from cannot be that small? Where do the ''coincidences'' stop and you start smelling a rat?

Nepotism and insular thinking helps no one as it result in unimaginative exhibitions and does not follow the reason why most of these prizes were created: to give a wide-range of artist bigger exposure and allow audiences to find new talents. Also as many of these prizes/exhibitions have a charitable organisation behind them they need to remember that they have some standards to maintain.

How about the following:
 -If you are a judge for a particular competition/open exhibition you should not submit your work in the future to that exhibition/prize. Many open prizes/competitions are in my view aimed at artists who are not already established or well-known (i.e. we are not talking Turner Prize here). If you act as a judge for such a competition I would expect you to have achieved some level of notoriety and be already established. Leave the opportunity to others

-Have the decency of not judging your best mates/close collaborators’ work. If someone you have close link with happen to submit and you are judging ask for another judge to consider the work

-If an artist is selected for an open exhibition/prize one year, they should not be able to submit for the same prize/exhibition for a certain period. No one wants to see the same thing over and over again.

Maybe then we will have more exciting exhibitions that do not feature the same people whose main ability seem to be that they are well connected rather than talented. 

post by Artoutlaw at www.artoutlaws.co.uk

A most charming man: Charming Baker exhibition review

Artist Charming Baker seems to have a real buzz going at the moment and his current London show is a sell-out. But is it any good?

I first came across Charming’s work a couple of years ago when I saw a print of his Portrait of Estelle (Pink) work, a quirky image of a girl with a chicken head on a background of what looked like a piece of pinkish wallpaper your granny would be proud of. It was both beautifully drawn and truly disquieting.

These days Charming Baker produces large-scale canvases where whimsical images of furry animals and plump babies cohabit with bullet marks and a sense of impending doom. It is telling that Charming studied graphic design, and not fine arts, as his work borrows from the world of illustration and has a great immediacy and clarity of impact.

When I visited the exhibition in the rather badly lit and cold space provided by Mercer St studios, the paintings sparkled with humour, tenderness and despondency. A strange cocktail that somehow manages to ignite into a credible body of work. Charming titles his work with some lengthy pearls of wisdom such as ‘’One day we will reach a point where our future is all used up’’ and I found myself often as intrigued by them as I was by the works themselves.

Only the sculptures, bronze heads wearing golden animal masks, seemed to me not to match the success of the paintings. Maybe this was because the medium made it trickier for the artist to transfer his combination of wit and angst effectively as it did not allow him to use colours  and backgrounds as effectively as the canvas does.

Interestingly Charming was in the room when I viewed his work. He was busy explaining the meaning of a couple of his paintings to a honking buyer, or art critic?, with grace and openness despite his interlocutor finding it necessary to speak at a volume usually reserved to army sergeants or market traders.

Maybe this is what is so appealing about Charming: the fact that he organises his own shows, does his own commentary and provides visitors with a nice big free catalogue of his work, thoughts and sketches.

My one misgiving about the artists is that beyond all the clever words and ironic statements, we know very little about some of the more personal elements of his work. The catalogue mentions in passing that Charming’s mother is represented as a lamb about to be run over by a train in his ‘’Knowing nothing is under-rated’’ painting. This is probably the only mention of the deeper meaning behind the clever jokes. Maybe Charming could let people a bit more inside his world and give more clues of what drives him. All in all, a great show by an unpretentious artist (that makes a change!!) who could be described as Banksy with pathos. You can view Charming Baker's show, Everything Must Go,

at

16 Mercer St

, Covent Garden, London until 31st July http://charmingbaker.com/

 post
by Artoutlaw at www.artoutlaws.co.uk

Why is most art writing, well, boring and pretentious?

Why are so many artist statements, press releases or exhibition blurbs full of impenetrable jargon that tell you nothing useful or thought-provoking about the artist and their work? It seems to have become a consensus that this type of material has to be as opaque, yawn-worthy and pretentious as possible in order to appear clever and erudite.

Take the latest opus from the Transition Gallery, London . Here is how their ''Working under the system'' exhibition is described on their website: ''This mutinous crew are self aware and capable of double-dealing as they swerve back and forth between organisation and impulse. Many of the artists reclaim systems of production, only to throw the viewer off course by introducing the problematic and employing chance or error. Others defy categorisation by puncturing established processes with spontaneity and intuition.'' A tortuous and round-about way of saying in long-winded sentences what could be stated in a few, simple words: these artists use both intuition and rational thinking in their work. There.

I always believe that pompous statements are often used to mask poor arguments and even poorer work. They do the artist no justice as this type of self-indulging rethoric does not  give the viewers any clever clues about the work and the artist's intention neither are they able to seduce us into wanting to know more. They also do not educate us in any way. I believe them to be a case of the emperor new clothes, where the illusion is maintained that something very very clever is being said and that if you are not ''getting it'' then shame on you. So we all nod and pretend. Simplicity and clarity combined with wit, knowledge, originality and passion within a text are not easy to achieve but this is what we should be striving for. Aimless spinning and so-called intellectual verbiage only patronises and exasperates.

http://www.transitiongallery.co.uk/htmlpages/wats.html

Pinkgate: feminist art show turns fluffly?

Is it still necessary or relevant to have women-only arts exhibitions? this is what I was wrestling with when deciding whether to take part in the women-only I-SHO show. I must admit I was curious about the type of work that would end up being shown and went for it. While dropping my work at the gallery (the piece being an irreverant hommage to Silvio Berlusconi's extra-curriculum bunga bunga activities) any questions about relevance were soon trumped by what I now refer to as ''pinkgate''. As my work was safely parked in a corner of the gallery space, I was directed by one of the organisers toward the branded goodies, mainly bags,  that would help raise money to cover the exhibition costs. ''Hurry up we are running out of pink ones!'' said the grining lady. Pink? Surely this paragon of feminism could not imply that I would automatically choose this gender-coded hue or dispair if they were to sell out leaving me with a boring beige (the only other available option)instead? Maybe I am just over-analysing this and maybe we have moved on so that feminism can now be girly-pink and business-beige and every shade in between. See for yourself and visit the show:
I-SHO at The Gallery, Edwards Lane, off Stoke Newington Church Street N16, London
on 9th to 23rd July, 2011

Visit my website at http://www.artoutlaws.co.uk/