Its a funny old world…. as I am out here in Spain expecting to post about the nuances of Spanish experience, and away-from-it-all rural niceties. With sporadic internet and therefore a less frenetic absorption of *wider* info.
Only to find East London’s new and cool fashion phenomena Lazy Oaf’s models and photographic team on a photo shoot in the village (look book and details soon!). And after a brief encounter with a number of Spanish plumbers (no that is NOT a euphemism) ; read my unfortunate yet timely connection with an errrrm not-so-rural-nicety and the current exhibition at the Wellcome Foundation London. Which, on similar lines to a number of recent posts here, offers a much closer insight into how we deal with waste from pre Victorian ignorance to our current product rife cleanliness and out of sight out of mind attitudes. To the current reclamation of 50 year old largely unregulated New York Land Fill, Fresh Fields.
So, during my almost internet-monastic few months here ( I did say almost ; ) it didn't come as too much of a surprise to find, out of the blue, an email from Nottingham designer Sarah Turner, pop into my inbox:
Sarah is an old favourite on this blog, having taken part in the Lives of Artists series with her innovative and sculptural re-use of plastic bottles which form wonderful, colourful and ethereal lighting.
Part of Sarah’s range of lighting, Bluebell and her green Sprite table lamp
Lily table lamp and Daisy ceiling adaptation
With Cola 30 (yup! 30 cola bottles used in the making!)
Sarah’s lighting installation at this years London Fashion Week
With her recent exhibition at Maison&Object in Paris AND being enlisted for her special lighting installation at London Fashion Week earlier this year. The following email content seemed a definite par for the course progression;
SodaStream uses eco artist, Sarah Turner’s recycled bottle sculpture in their latest campaign with British super model Erin O’Connor
I can only say this latest venture just totally fits in with the here and now, of what we do about waste and all the wider issues of consumption crisis, the economy and environment.
And, for the uninitiated, when Sodastream was a mere whippersnapper, us youngsters would go round to play at friends houses and sometimes find this latest gizmo of resounding drooling awe. An astute, ever-so-cool acquisition made by various tuned in mums and dads of the day. A glorious array of refillable glass bottles full of fruit syrups with the added bonus of the lava-lampesque design for the water-from-the-tap fizz dispenser The Sodastream!.
A tap water aerated drinks idea first pioneered in the 1920’s taken to todays wide ranging and healthy options.
A child's dream, a dads economical and possibly dental (for the late sixties anyway), fizzy drinks prayer answered. And a mums, how-to-keep-the-kids amused with easy to use 60’s space science all wrapped up in one ever so displayable package. (I know I’m using stereotypes here but it was back in the day!)
And it doesn't surprise me either that Sodastream should want to collaborate with Sarah and her recycled plastic bottles. As they were very much pioneering the idea of the economical use of product containers from the start. The syrups were the first of the super new concentrate concept and, if memory serves me correctly, refill sachets for the bottles to boot!. A great almost against the grain idea during the advent of mass consumer production.
This collaboration has Sarah’s handmade spherical lighting from 562 recycled plastic bottles. And a perfect image to help communicate the message of 'A World Without Bottles' for Sodastream……..
Erin O’Connor with Sarah's creation
British supermodel Erin O’Connor holds the sphere symbolically on her shoulders, recreating the iconic pose of Greek God Atlas, highlighting the burden of the world's plastic bottle waste.
Sodastream’s campaign aims to reduce the amount of plastic bottles people buy, therefore reducing the amount that end up getting thrown away.
And, Erin O’Connor who wholeheartedly supports the campaign, added that, “We take plastic bottles for granted in our everyday lives but it’s easy to forget that plastic bottle overuse and wastage can clog up our landfill sites”.
Fiona Hope, Managing Director of Sodastream UK, also commented: “With so many environmental issues competing for the public’s attention, bottle waste often gets forgotten. Yet reducing the casual use of plastic bottles is one of the easiest, most impactful we can do for the environment.”
And as I said its not the first time Sarah’s bottle creations have caught the eye of the fashion world. Snapped here with her light installation for London Fashion week earlier, in February.
Sarah has a wide range of ‘bottle creations’ as mentioned here before, and all can be found on her website www.sarahturner.co.uk .
Oasis range
To see her work up close, she will be exhibiting her recycled bottle lighting at these two fantastic exhibitions in London this year. First up is Pulse at Earls Court in June Sunday thru Tuesday 5-6-7th and then onto her second year at Tent during London’s Design Festival in September held in the Truman Brewery from 22nd to 25th.
Hmmmm, ok, having had a few ups and downs (and it has to be said some were expected, internet and wifi being one) during my time here in Spain. Another of which I could have seen coming, based on either sods law or the law of averages, was a breakdown in the plumbing. And sparing you the graphics, confronted me literally with the drain-end of this thing called hygiene. Now being a reasonably tidy person who likes to shower and keep scrubbed-up etc., this personal confrontation with a detritus-not-going-away-problem was indeed not to be sniffed at. Plumbers called in and majorly street level… ahem… clearing of apparently years of this. I was left in peace with a clean slate.
It did prompt an idea in my head that out of sight out of mind has become very much a part of my life, if not of most of us?. Of course this being a connected but still fairly rural place in Spain, with added nuances of hill top geology dictating the expedition of drain and bin waste ( it has to be said they do a bloody good job considering). And, with it sometimes being a very particular and inexact science, I think the term is, no mean feat.
So my inner city sensibilities, suitably jarred, I began to ponder the historical context of the current exhibition 'Dirt: the Filthy Reality of Everyday Life': 24 March-31 August 2011at the Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE
“Following anthropologist Mary Douglas' observation that dirt is "matter out of place", the exhibition introduces six very different places as a starting point for exploring attitudes towards dirt and cleanliness: a home in seventeenth century Delft in Holland; a street in Victorian London; a hospital in Glasgow in the 1860s; a museum in Dresden in the early twentieth century; a community in present-day New Delhi; and a New York landfill site in 2030.”
The history of how we deal with it, the evolution of the industry and indeed cleanliness snobbery associated. Have all added to a hyper sensitivity to its existence and our attitude toward it. Cultural differences also with our different geographical and atmospheric conditions dictating.
A Tipping Point
All in all though the one seemingly overriding factor that shapes us today is the fact that disposal is still a taboo subject, no one really wants to deal with waste although money can be made from it.
From the rag and bone men of old to street cleaners in their nifty broom-mobiles, bin men, sewage cleaners to industrial sized shipping containers; the collectors, cleaners and transporters of waste. It is all *sorted* by people and things, and belongs in a place we don’t want to see.
And yet it comes back to haunt us with toxic land fills, mountains of plastic permanence, illness and adversity.
With toxic waste spillages at sea, vast floating Islands of detritus (as with an article here last year on the vortex of plastic collecting in mid Atlantic).
Future Sea of Plastic?
From the kid who chucks a Maccy D’s carton on the high street to the waste being dumped out of sight on the coastlines of fiscally poor countries: As with the Trafigura case the waste ship and the legal battle over its dumping of highly toxic crude oil detritus in a port on the Ivory Coast of Africa causing, (contested by the Oil and waste companies involved) untold long term illness for the people who live nearby and those who also *work* the waste tip it was dumped on.
The permanence and toxic nature of waste is the problem and the industry that has grown up around, for want of a better word, hiding it.
The idea that it is has yet to be shifted in the direction of a clear view as to how to deal with it.The real distance between us and it.
And, hopefully the start of the new project to confront the largely unregulated half century strong Fresh Kills Land Fill in New York and turn it into a park by 2030 is going to be a long overdue and highly visible address to that fact.
In the meantime don’t mention plumbing to me... for a while at least!
'Dirt: the Filthy Reality of Everyday Life': 24 March-31 August 2011 Venue: Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE
'Dirt: the Filthy Reality of Everyday Life' is part of the DIRT season from Wellcome Trust. Look out for online games and events at special dirty locations, including Eden Project, Glastonbury and other summer festivals.
“Highlights from 'Dirt' include paintings by Pieter de Hooch, John Snow's "ghost map" of cholera and Joseph Lister's scientific paraphernalia. 'Dirt' also includes a wide range of contemporary art, from Igor Eskinja's dust carpet, Susan Collis's bejewelled broom and James Croak's dirt window to video pieces by Bruce Nauman and Mierle Ukeles and a specially commissioned work by Serena Korda
A publication, also entitled 'Dirt: the Filthy Reality of Everyday Life', featuring essays by Rosie Cox, Virginia Smith, Elizabeth Pisani, Rose George, Robin Nagle, RH Horne and Brian Ralphwill accompany the exhibition, published by Profile Books, £20, 256pp.”
This was a sentiment given by an onlooker a few years ago on the unveiling of Kapoors Sky Mirror at the Nottingham Playhouse, as headlined in the Evening Post.
Sky Mirror, Nottingham Playhouse
Nothing new there really – public art – anything public is going to have its detractors “and I pay my taxes” is a classic defence in the wake of something unpalatable (or unfathomable).
Sky Mirror with Crane
Sky Mirror in the Sky
A few years ago too, I was having a holiday chat with a Londoner in a small village in Spain – he had just bought a house in the same village. Reluctantly he was trying to intimate that he wished he hadn’t – this was nothing to do with a fault with the house or moving somewhere he didn’t like. No being a London financial worker this was his way of saying he had made an iffy financial decision. And without saying anything concrete he took on the look of a sooth-sayer in a Greek tragedy, looked skyward at the metaphorical dark clouds looming and said “I don’t know what’s going down in the City but something is, something not good is about to happen”. This was September 2006, and I remember that weird conversation every time someone mentions bankers and financial crisis.
Of course many a different rhetoric has been bandied about since then. With the catastrophic and symbolic Lehman’s collapse, Iceland’s meteoric demise, Ireland’s potential double dip and Greek, Spanish and Portuguese tragedies unfurling like so many tales of Dante’s Inferno. The bottom line though blame aside, is we all have to pay (and it’s difficult not to appropriate blame even though in 1920’s Keynes urged to forgive, face up, get on with it economically at least in order to move forward in times like these). We all have to *equally* sign up to the best way of dealing with the mess. And that also includes how to dig heels in with the unsympathetic, unemotional banks demanding their pound of flesh, while societies wither in the process of this extraction.
An open letter appeared in the Guardian this week backed up by the Shrigley Film below and Cornelia Parker's vision of The Angel of The North with its wing clipped. The letter, addressed to Jeremy Hunt, Culture Secretary from a vast number of Turner Prize winners, leading artists and institutions, was exalting the fact that the arts need to be nurtured (in the UK).
David Shrigley sends out An Important Message
Yes absolutely.
So too does health care, education, policing, transport, jobs and housing. In no particular order other than the ones which create the most positive effects on the Economy.
What struck me about this letter was the wording – very carefully thought through, precise and at pains to point out that services and jobs are just as important.
“ We appeal to the government not to slash funding to the arts and heritage. It risks destroying this remarkable and fertile landscape of culture and creativity, and the social and economic benefits it brings to all. We recognise that cuts and efficiencies are necessary, but the 25% or more funding cuts being considered will sabotage Britain's unparalleled achievements in this area.”
” It will have a particularly damaging impact on smaller-scale museums and galleries and those in the regions. Many of us had our first inspiring encounters with art in these places.”
And about the vibrant arts culture in Britain;
“It does all this at a cost that is no more than a tiny fraction of the national budget.”
The overall effect of the letter to me was a well articulated but an otherwise predictable *we need not to be forgotten* in what contests to be the most devastating cut in the UK’s democratic history, right across all of the above.
And because of that this letter drew me again to the question of how do you articulate the value of art? The person who didn’t get Anish Kapoor’s Sky Mirror and had his sentiments plastered all over the local rag, is typical. Art is seen by many as entertainment at best, and is therefore always up for scrutiny on a personal I like it or I don’t level. Mostly art is about change even if it is just creating things again differently. Many don’t like change, and a lot of art by its personal and *abstract* nature can miss the mark of public understanding so widely that *I don’t get it - so don’t like it* argument is reinforced by that fact.
But art more often than not, because of its emotional engagement is a vague and soft topic, even overtly contentious art which touches emotions that wouldn’t necessarily be addressed in the everyday. An enigma of intent which defies general description in societies terms other than *being there* and without it there would probably be *a lot less stuff on the walls*.
This is of course a wide and loose analogy – but important because it is in effect how art as a catch all term comes over: “What do you do? Oh an artist?” usually prompts the follow on question ”and what kind?” and, unless an appreciator or fellow artist, eyes probably begin to glaze over at this point. Art fascinates and yet the detail does not.
This could also be said about scientists in as much as the job description comes over as an undetermined area of work on the peripheries of understanding, so a convenient caricature takes shape of mad scientist or geek in the absence of any *proper job* box ticking. Maybe not, I don’t know, but one profession, springs to my mind as a very good antithesis of the artist’s social persona as warrant of worth.
That of Hedge Fund managers.
Yup those nasty conniving, money spinning gamblers who have had the tar and feathers of blame daubed all over them – the outcasts of a holier than thou banking system – The Hedgers, of course were the root cause of all the world’s financial and social ills of late. Nope I’m not sticking up for them someone is already doing that ; name Hugh Hendry.
And for a profession that has so many incognito or less than omnipresent representatives Mr Hendry is by far the best thing that has happened to them.
Hugh Hendry for those not familiar with his acerbic manner, whether right or wrong takes his own company’s situation (and it is a very profitable one) seriously. Hedge funds are not the stuff of everyday social topics. If it hadn’t been for the mess many wouldn’t even know one if it came up and slapped them in the face. Hedge funds and their artisans work a daily, driven and passionate vocation to do something that does nothing tangible other than make money out of stuff that makes money. Sometimes they get it wrong, but the aim is to *get it right* and of course to make money for themselves and their clients.
As a vociferous defender of hedge funds Hugh Hendry postures in that way that many people who want to make their voice heard have done before. By being at once articulate, gladly not suffering fools, while being antagonistic with a touch of arrogance. An attitude which in the playground could be described as being a verbal bully. People with sensitive and emotional dispositions take cover!, even the hardened, detached and unemotionally engaged have been known to say *Hendry is the Person I’d Most Like To Punch*. Such is the reaction he unnervingly creates. He may be wrong about certain issues and people may not agree with his ethics but the loyalty to his (company’s and profession’s) *cause* is just as unerring.
Interview with Joseph Stiglitz, Hugh Hendry and the Spanish Ambassador earlier this year
In an article in The Independent also this year he described emotion as being a luxury that he can rarely afford but that his business is like a Social Service, drawing on the analogy that if he were to buy into an insurance policy that paid out on the event of your house catching fire, then you would be wise to think that there was something wrong with your house – maybe get your wiring sorted?.
Poul Rasmussen one of Hendry’s detractors in a typically cut-the-air-with-a-knife media head to head accused him of making money out of others misfortune (the Greeks); a vulture picking the bones of the financial crisis, to which he replied – “we didn’t kill the carcass”. He sees the *Service* as more of a canary in a mine scenario.
Yes quite. I still have bristles on the back of my neck when I hear him speak and very, very probably if ever on his radar verbally would be well advised not to engage at all, say nothing, not raise to the bait.
But Hendry’s tell it like it is attitude (as opposed to his antagonistic one), in which he so vehemently and unceremoniously expresses the necessity of his business: The one that buys his Louis Vuitton glasses and private school for his kids, his trendy second hand old-school Land Rover Discovery. The Business That Buys The Stuff That Matters To Him – this is why he is so doggedly focused and forceful in overcoming his and Hedge Fund detractors and mud slingers. And it has to be said that being on the edge of that vagary of *proper job* categories and one that also Makes Lots Of Money to boot; jealousy can’t be far away as a back-up entity – for those who would like to put paid to his business as he knows it.
Why do the arts then, with such a similarly undiagnosed and unfathomable caricature; with its catch all phrases like creative muses, arty farty’s, bleeding hearts, and assumptions like “Oh is film part of the arts? I thought film was Big Business in Hollywood”. To that of the undiagnosed and unfathomable work, world and public persona of Hedge Fund managers with its catch all descriptions like creative-rich-pickings, money-making-money, business as usual for out of control financiers, (and) the-people-that-the-banks-don’t-want-to-talk-about-but-can’t-do-without. So totally dissimilar in concepts yet both fall into this similar oblique public consciousness?.
Maybe it’s the telling line when Hugh Hendry tells it like it is to Rasmussen, former prime minister of Denmark, and pro EU regulation (on people like Hendry). In reply to Rasmussen suggesting that he should be concerned at what he is doing, dismissing him as a vulture and to stop feeding off peoples misfortunes. Hendry replied “He should be worried...These champagne socialists here.... when I travel Business Class I meet these guys – I meet these socialists here who travel Business and First Class through the prosperity created by entrepreneurs and risk takers like me and the people I represent. Now our society today is confronted by a bleak future, from poor policy decisions. The truth today has become so unpalatable and these jokers (points at Rasmussen) don’t want to hear it, they are now afraid because the magnitude of the problem confronting Greece is now greater than these guys and their ability to respond to it. So now they have to apportion blame elsewhere – and I am a convenient scapegoat for Greece breaking all the rules”.
Rasmussen and Hendry on Newsnight
Now, the situation faced by Greece may not be so described as Hendry did here but.....
Hugh’s voice speaks voluminously and singularly for many of his ilk, whether anyone likes it or not. He is good at Sticking to His Corner and making his point.
Art has its Steppen Wolves, its fair share of lonely or diverse groupings, and it has to be said, plenty of its own champagne socialists riding on its back.
The letter and the Shrigley Film (go see it here in The Guardian and support with a signature) are excellent, but art needs more nuts-and-bolts-tell-it-like-it-is. The bullish nature of Hendry’s rhetoric makes good copy, but it’s his practical reasoning, whether you agree or not, that blows away any mystification, it is in that glaring clarity the engagement always takes place.
As much as I want to see this letter making a difference and I hope the impressive commitment by all the artists and art work that follows on will speak louder in terms of support with the whole Save the Arts Campaign.
I can’t see the letter alone having any real engagement following its publication other than maybe the usual politicians reply or a red top splurge “I pay my taxes for That?”.
Art has its myths and lies that are perpetuated as facts.
Public perception of three broad categories of say, Science, Money (the art of dealing with it; Socially through Public Spending, through Banking, Accounting, to Hedge Funds) and The Arts. Are seen through a simplified public lens and ranked accordingly.
Science has made itself universally tangible. It is needed and the majority of people get that. Even if it isn't clear what science does exactly. The *mad professor* image still exists but we know he does exciting things and we get to use them. Stuff doesn't get made without it - even rockets.
Money is universally tangible as either a necessity or a necessary evil, a thing that we need in order to do stuff. We are hooked, if not totally sold. The banker until recently was stereotypically envisaged as a suited, trustworthy methodical man (if not nickel and dime, penny pinching with it). Now they are propped up by the taxpayer their image is slightly different.
Art is seemingly still dispensable, except by those who *get it*. Art is not wholly accepted as a necessity whether evil or not. The typical image of an artist is probably paint spattered, disorganised, otherwise-occupied, even with an air of self indulgent narcissism and getting paid extortionate amounts for putting cows in tanks (is always a good one). Never mind the extortionate amounts coming from tax-payers money.
Mr Hendry, if the hedge fund betting gets a bit slow would you consider another vocational errrm... cause? ‘cos somebody bloody well needs to do it and do it well.
Art not only needs to be heard it needs teeth, the kind of dogged, focused and committed sentiment that Hendry gives out despite the antagonistic flourishes. Not a sense of entitlement, but for the good of all the arts a sense of belief in its necessity by Sticking To Its Corner.
I am really, really encouraged by the Save The Arts Campaign and the commitment of all the artists toward the real prospect of art being seen, being allowed to happen and the livelihood of artists all being stopped by the choking of institutions and galleries by this 25% cut in public funding.
Art is not part of the make it and sell it economy proper, it is not driven by immediate demand, Public funding is one of the bi-partisan ways of enabling art to happen.
But the image that artists are either paid too much by an elite few or as a *victim* starving in a garret (stacking shelves in ASDA actual image) has existed for too long.
Pre-*democratic* times Art had its roots in wealthy patronage, elitism and snobbery (Greece was one of the few civilisations that encouraged art as creative paid for work). Rank-pulling mechanisms within the art world backed up with mystification and snobbery, begins to eat its own meaning as to it's appropriateness.
And a typical Hendry reasoning in The Independent interview earlier this year "Can you imagine having a screen on your wall saying, every minute, 'you're a great journalist, you're a shit journalist, you're a shit journalist, you're a good journalist? I have that. I risk my money and my clients' money every day."
"If I get things wrong, don't worry about me – I'm not going to get bailed out. I'll lose everything and you'll never hear from me again."
You might well not agree with the sentiments of Hedge Fund managers or their ethics but the reality for a lot of artists and would be artists is a similar *out there* connection with what they are doing: The belief that what you are doing is a necessary risk, the risk is not other people's money per-se but the risk of creating something new, either under scrutiny and/or with wildly differing responses. Traditionally without remuneration why!? and certainly without money being the only reason for doing it. But with so much hour by hour personal criticality.
*Just Saying* but maybe a leaf out of a no-nonsense attitude book here. The words Pushed From Pillar To Post and NOT springs to mind.
Long overdue and possibly too late in the light of swingeing cuts but Art needs to define itself into the public consciousness once and for all as a tangible necessity. Not the precocious child of affluent patronage. Nor indeed the bleeding heart, bleeding public funds.
Back with more next Thursday 14th
And also more on the horizon for Lives of Artists which will address less ranty prescriptives! but equally with discussion based issues and solutions found by creatives today.
A few years ago fine art institutions all over were embracing a forward thinking idea of combining yes combining science with art – actively encouraging students to go out there and get scientific with their work.
That did of course lead to no end of highly sensitive health and safety issued pieces being thrown up left right and centre and probably single handedly prompted the health and safety surge and backlash a few years later.
Remember Hirst’s foray to the US with his cow? no pickling allowed without quarantine or no formaldehyde or something, but stopped in its tracks at customs under *was it art or was it food* and subsequent H&S problems with BSE and rotting corpses.
Even the lecturers got confused; one classically curated the final touches to a degree show and was told to take it down – she had blocked the fire doors – well that’s not scientific faux-par more ummm a lecturer-on-a-bad-curation-day, but hey! still pushing at the boundaries if only a door!
Those were some kind of days - it seems as a big planned cut is looming on the horizon for public sector Science in general and the Science Museum in London.
They have just put on a huge promotional show along with The Royal Society and The Arts Council, for Science and the Arts called See Further Festival which is being held at The South Bank Centre until 4th July
images courtesy See Further Festival
Cuts in science – an area that many would say is the main-stay for our economic future.
But hold on a minute. Only a slight observation here but this was collaboration no? a festival where the scientists and creative’s both came up with the ingredients; and have already been doing so for almost all creative and scientific input for most of the museum, if not just the promotional show.
If on a daily basis we were to try and hypothetically remove artisitc creativity from our world (this includes all our senses; taste, visual, touch, smell and hearing, and the creative industries that pioneer them) we are left with the basics. Cuts in Science will mean cuts in design, fashion, art and anything it touches.
Science also has an aesthetic side in application.
I still don’t get the way the arts and sciences are shoved into categories of good, bad, mediocre in terms of economic sense – they all make sense – they all rely on each other.
Not which departments (or museums) are spending more than others. Science and technology do cost – we also have a heavily monetized industry - pharmacy for one, which is basing its future on our trending consumptions – so much so that we now need them – they have made sure the supply and demand is covered.
Is it maybe time that these industries put something back into public nurturing of these subjects, museums and event-interest gatherings ?
Some do; but as a rule when a field of research has so heavily and beneficially affected the economy of one particular industry shouldn’t they have some commitment to re-invest at a grass roots level?
This would be all the more balanced if re-investment went across the *groups* but science does touch so many areas this could only help.
It has a knock on effect both ways and to cut science is to cut design, is to cut art and all visual and aural media.
Liquid Crystal ; Living cells and Flat Screen TV's
It can’t solve all the woes nor balance everything in this public and private sector trauma; but surely a re-investment to the hands on hand-that-fed-it-in-the-first-place, from the industry would make some sense?
And here is a link toSusan Watts blog in which she discusses these and other issues surrounding the future of scienctific research.
Back Sunday.....after an ouch heavy dentist sesh, so I promise it won't be about teeth, even if the next greatest work of art ever is !
