Open Studios Henri Kyriacou photograph; Open Studios Exhibition Angela Findlay photograph; John Street Open Studios Jamila Lamrani, installation
| 'Painting relates to both art and life... (I try to work in that gap between the two)' (Rauschenberg, 1959, p58) |
| When I first moved to Stroud three years ago I
was aware that there were a lot of artists here and that the area
had historical associations with the Arts and Crafts Movement. I
have subsequently come to recognise that the town is, at least partly,
defined by its artists. Certainly, art plays a considerable role
in the life of the town: there is an unusual amount of activity,
the exhibitions, screenings etc. that run throughout the year, with
SVA as a vital focus and the site09 festival as a celebratory high
point. But there is something else that is perhaps more significant,
which is the role that artists play in the life of the town. I seem
to encounter artists everywhere, at the school gates, in the local
shops, generally going about their everyday business, but also
actively participating in the community, contributing, lending
a hand in one way or another. Art theorists have long sanctioned a dialogue between art and the everyday. In the 60's Arthur Danto looked at Warhol's 'Brillo Boxes' and concerned himself with identifying the difference between art and other kinds of things and the 'transfiguration of the commonplace' through art. More recently, Nicolas Bourriaud has proposed a 'Relational Aesthetics', an aesthetic theory in which artworks are judged 'in terms of the inter-human relations which they show, produce, or give rise to' (Bourriaud 1998, p117). However, in all these theories art and the everyday remain conceived as a polarized duality. Living here in Stroud, amongst so many artists, it becomes easier to see art not only as a specialized set of activities and a category of objects that stand outside of normal experience, but as a mode of being. For many artists a sense of integration, in which their practice does not take place in Rauschenburg's gap, or even Kaplow's fluid line, but is rather continuous with all other aspects of their selves, is a central issue. Talking about her practice as a potter Carla Needleman said "A craft is not its objects; a craft is how I am when I am making them (and eventually, one would dearly hope, how I am the rest of the time, as a result of what has been transformed in me through craftsmanship). The objects of the craft are by-products, very essential by-products, of the way I work." (Needleman, 1979, p.123) This reframes Danto's notion of 'transfiguration' and suggests that creative work, leading to a transformation in the artist, has a positive effect beyond the artist themselves. It suggests a continuity of experience in which art becomes "prefigured in the very processes of living" (Dewey, 1934, p.24). This is an idea that has a powerful resonance with Stroud's links with the Arts and Crafts movement, and it is one that has recently been reiterated by Richard Sennett in his book'The Craftsman', where he argues that 'the capacities our bodies have to shape physical things are the same capacities we draw on in social relations.' (Sennett, 2008) site09 reflects this vital context. It is often the case that exhibitions, concerned with selling or with curating artefacts, detach the work from the practice and emphasise qualities that make more sense within the gallery culture. It is a common criticism of open studios events that participating artists feel compelled to use the occasion to give their studios a good clear out and to 'curat'' or present their work in a pristine, gallery-like setting, whilst visitors come to gain some insight through access to the working space, to make some more intimate connection with the work through access to the experience of the maker. The organisers of the site festival encourage participating artists to explore this potential. Open Studios, by pulling the object back in to the context of it's making, makes explicit the way that the practice becomes part of the content of the work and opens up a dialogue about meaning. The studios, shaped by distinctive practices and reflecting something of the occupants personalities, are all different, and yet they are all familiar, human spaces, animated by the presence of the artist. They have evolved on a human scale, everything within reach. They each have tools in common, and a kind of order, linked to action and purpose. There are models, experiments, waste materials, all the detritus of making. There are images and objects that represent reference points for the work, and, always, a radio. But more than these things, they share a sense of intimate introspection. The artists have gathered this space around themselves to facilitate reverie as well as production.
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