Art Parlour

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This was a day of two halfs;deliciously joyful morning and unnecessarily depressing afternoon.

The day was designed to inject a bit of reality into post MFA life. To explore the different London Art ecologies and perhaps examine how we could manouvre ourselves around them, to best advantage.

I was looking forward to it. I had done my research.

 

In the morning we had a seemingly very playful session wit Rosalie and Anna. This was well researched, planned and delivered,touching on quite difficult realities to be considered but with a light touch which left us all feeling pretty jolly. We explored the fantasies and more likely scenarios of our futures through the use of diagrams which I really enjoyed. I particularly like the work of Jeremy Deller and went to a panel discussion convened by him, with Jon Snow (Channel 4 News), Owen Jones(author of Chavs) and Camila Batmanghelidh (Kids Company) on the theme of "society" at the Purcell Rooms in 2012. His diagrams are very powerful. Indeed Rosalie expertly explained how we can use playful techniques to discuss quite serious matters. It being my birthday, I was given a cake by a friend to produce my Diagram. Great Fun.I drew waves crashing on the beach as ametaphor for our futures...the tide always turns..

In contrast to the morning session came the afternoon. It was unfortunate. I do not wish to do either Holly or Scott a diservice, or indeed I am not going to say anything here that I did not say at the time. It was lazy. It was poorly planned and delivered. Perhaps they had done extensive research but this was not in evidence. I have no doubt they are very experienced artists, but they are patronising and appear bitter about their lack of success(Scott's opinion). They did congratulate each other constantly about their attributes, which is pleasing to see if a little tedious. They did provoke debate on various themes such as painting which was quite exciting, but it did leave a very sour aftertaste. 

 

To be very explicit they did not look around the room and adapt what they were going to say accordingly.It is essential when facilitating any group to quickly get the measure of the demographic in front of you.It takes skill to do this. It was obvious that Rosalie and Anna have this skill but not Holly and Scott.

Finally I will give them some kudos for challenging us to be more critically rigorous, which I agree is essential. I will continue to read as much as possible, and even more!