Prelude - draft only

This is a draft of the first chapter of the thesis, entitled prelude it is a self portrait of my experience as an artist who works with communities to make permanent public artworks where the community members are involving in the making of the artwork.


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the artist’s perspective:

In the centre of this research, the artist’s practice and experience sits heavily. It began before the research was imagined, the research topic came from the artist’s practice and the artist’s practice will most likely continue after the research is over. The artist's practice is always an organic conglomeration of ideas, actions, physical materials, physical processes, energy transformed into action and dialogue, all organised within the limits of time which is metered out by the sun, and also influenced by the needs of surrounding people (stakeholders) and the place of the artwork, which tug the artwork this way and that. A little tug of war between what the artist would do if she had no limits (the ideas that come into her head in the early mornings), what she will do for money or what she will do to extend her practice within the community, and doing what she thinks will get her more work, more recognition or more pleasure and the constraints of the place and materials and people involved with the work.  These are all intercepted by daily circumstances of family and life, health and money, and the practical considerations when making public art. She must rush off and buy chalkboard paint and organise the cement sheet. She must unpack and pack the car amongst eating, house chores and a social life. The physical self and the mental self also contribute or detract from the artwork. Buzzing around the artwork process and its final outcome - the object, are the ongoing effects of the physical world ready to intervene at whim. And then there is the philosophical approach to the artwork, the why we do things – which exist before it is even imagined, why the artist does what she does, how our culture perceives community engagement in making artwork and how the artwork exists afterwards in the world. 

The history of my practice: I found some tiles in hard rubbish. I had a go at mosaicking. But I was trained as a ceramicist. Clay. I thought, ‘Hang about, could I put the mosaic in between the ceramics to make larger pictures?' I was also a school teacher so I imagined how it would work with students.  So I had a go at it with the art teacher at my children’s school. We made a small 70 X 120cm triptych. The following year they commissioned me to do a larger 20 square metre project. Then another school got wind of it and so on and on it went and a practice and eventually a business grew. Now it is the main way in which I earn my living.

Then I became interested in how to use ceramics in public space as an individual art practice. But when I first began doing it, I also had this feeling that I needed to involve the people who lived and inhabited the area. I was practising in their space. This is an ethical dilemma for me that has continued. But I also alternatively thought that it was as justified as any other artwork in public space which does not have the public’s permission. Most permanent public artworks are not voted on by the community, and neither does advertising ask its audience whether they would prefer it not be there. I was contributing to a question raised 'Who gives you the right to put that in public space?" It raised the issue that very few people have the legal right, but that organisations with money or power have a greater ability to place their ideas and imagery in public space.

There is something magical about it that makes people want to be involved and makes people excited about the final work. They understand that it might not be as beautiful or controlled as the work of the artist alone, but that by including others in the making, it becomes something different and something important.

When I make an artwork alone in public space, it is more of a self-interested project and about my own ideas but when local inhabitants are involved the artwork the ideas are more focused on communal knowledge, understandings and experiences. It becomes a small but potent representation of the surrounding culture. Through the collaborative process the artwork is bent and moulded by many people on its way to becoming the final static, permanent object. The development of the artwork through the participation of many people, is important for its growth and its ability to speak to people and to speak about the culture and history of community and place.

What is so good about artworks made by communities is that the authorship of them is shared amongst many. Community members have the opportunity to make their mark in public space and to be public artists. But along with this is the lessoning of the artist as the author of the work. The artist becomes a technical assistant, a leader, a guide, a facilitator and an artist working alongside others. The authorship, pride and glory must be shared. The artist also has less control over the artwork and what happens to it. They give over their control in exchange for the participation of others. And they also often give up ownership and sometimes authorship of the work.  If they have exchanged their work for money, they were hired and paid for their contribution. Sometimes their work will not be known later as theirs. The artist may have to give up their ego and their role as the creator in order to assist others to create.

Dichotomy

The process of community collaboration creates an interesting dichotomy in that it can represent an individual in public space, individual ideas, identity, choices, but also represents the community, collaboration, compromise, negotiation, shared ideas and values, and, the working together that produced the artwork.

You will have to allow for the ways other forces affect the artwork -   money, time, materials, place of installation, the methods and materials needed for permanence and the various needs and ideas of the other people involved, the expectations of the commissioner, the wish to please the audience.   In a collaborative artwork all these things come together by chance and effect the final artwork. It is organic in nature .

Permanence i.e. TIME

An object that exists over time generates lasting memories and ongoing thoughts. With permanent artworks the audience has longer to come to terms with the artwork and for it to burrow into their sub-consciousness and develop meaning for them. The artwork might become part of the identity of the place for them. Think about the average of 7 seconds that an individual artwork in a gallery might get from each person, in comparison with the repeated viewing of a public artwork that might sit in someone's suburb for many years - many people will come across it, have conversations about it, it will play a role in the community's life (whether loved or disliked) and it will become part of the place.

Often I don’t know how the artworks that I make with people are responded to over time, how they become part of a place, I know very little about how individuals and communities think about these artworks later down the track. But I have experienced and been very moved by the way in which they do become owned by the community. An example of this is once when I worked with children to make an artwork which acknowledged the indigenous history of the place, a mother with indigenous heritage offered to smoke it in.  For me it was an instance of the artwork becoming part of that community and the community embracing it as something valuable.

Many community engaged public artworks are ephemeral which means that the artwork is temporary and not kept as an art object after the event or process. In these works the emphasis is often on engagement and participation. Often, when I describe my research topic, people tell me excitedly about a wonderful artwork they know about, but it is often ephemeral and no longer exists. The difference between permanent and ephemeral artworks is that they use time in different ways. Permanent art, takes up more time and doesn’t generally deteriorate over time, and its use of more time gives it a higher status. It exists over decades and so it gathers meaning and becomes part of the place and the history of the surrounding people.

I tend to think of ephemeral as the opposite of permanent. Public artworks tend to be either permanent or ephemeral but the division between them, where one starts or the other ends is not clear. Permanent and ephemeral works can share some aspects but could also be viewed as oppositional. A permanent artwork generally is an object whereas ephemeral art has a greater emphasis on the process and experience it provides. Here a little pattern develops where permanent art is an object so it must be made with the physical outcome in mind, whereas ephemeral and community art are in the process bucket but more than often also have physical substance.

It is easier to achieve community engagement in ephemeral artworks whereas it’s much more difficult to get a commission for artworks with community engaged as makers because it makes the artwork unpredictable in all sorts of areas. Who wants to commission a permanent artwork without knowing what it will look like? We can think about the terms often used in public art policies such as - quality, well-known and reputable artist, significant, enhance - to realise that artwork by non-artists becomes problematic. There is more at stake when you make something permanent.

Ephemeral art is an event and is not expected to also be a valued object. Both are governed by time, but permanence is higher in a hierarchy of time. ( fig. ) Permanent public artworks are also valued for being made by artists of repute. In this instance the value and importance of the object increases, they become an object of value collectively owned by the people. They are also a burden for councils, in that they need to be maintained and kept clean and free of vandalism and not de-commissioned.

The artist’s role:

Have I been herding People?

Why am I doing this?

What am I doing?

My role as the artist is about being someone who can move the work from ideas to fruition and also having the experience of doing this. The artworks that I have made in the past have to be shown, as photographs and they are aesthetically judged by the potential commissioners. The artist has to provide evidence of what they can make before being offered the job.

My job as an artist includes many things and it is mainly to listen to the ideas that the community has and to pull these together into a design and process that will create an artwork outcome that everyone will be pleased with, but which is aesthetically pleasing, encompasses the ideas, includes everybody as makers and will stand up to time and weather. I have to marry the ideas of the project to a physical structure that can last over time.

The role of the artist is expanded and includes communication, social skills, the ability to assist people to work together and the ability to get along with people. When operating in public one has to consider the audience. When you leave the studio and enter the outside world, you need to respect that public space belongs to everyone. It is not an extension of your own studio. The movement of the art from a private space to a public space takes on a burden of censorship, political correctness, the role of engaging and pleasing the audience, being careful not to offend. The artists must develop relationships that assist in the artwork’s process and outcome. You have to move it through from the idea to the object, taking everyone on board the journey.

Hope and trust:

When people commission me to make an artwork with them, they have to trust me and I also have to trust them. We must undertake to work together and negotiate our ideas, roles and responsibilities. Each decision has to be negotiated as we go. It is difficult for anybody to imagine the final product. Even I cannot see it clearly. We must launch together on a journey of interdependence. The community or commissioners might base their trust on photographs of my past work. I always feel a bit of sorrow for the participants as they make the ceramic work because they cannot see the bigger picture and how it will look when complete. The participant does not understand why they need to make it a certain thickness, why they need to smooth the edges, why paint it in a particular way and how their own artwork will look after firing. When making ceramics, the clay and the coloured paint will be a different colour when it is complete, there is perhaps a sense of disbelief, a walking out on a limb for the community participant. The underglaze colour ultramarine, is lilac when you paint it onto the clay. I say, 'trust me, it will turn out dark blue.' The participants make the work with the hope that it will be as the artist says. They place their trust in the artist that their input will be valued and used in the final artwork. 

The artist can take on many roles:

•               aesthetics control ( where the artist uses different means to keep the artwork appealing)

•               quality control ( where the artist tries to make sure the artwork is technically proficient and also of good quality. They might do this by setting rules about how the artwork has to be made or rules about what gets included in the final presentation).

•               keeping to plan - artworks are usually organic things, so the artist can keep this organic process on track so that the final result will appear to be what had been discussed. There might be some leeway for the artwork to take on a life of its own, or there may be not.

•               keeping to the timeline

•               making everyone makes their artwork successfully, and feel that they are part of the bigger artwork.

•               That the artwork is made in a way that enhances the final artwork. That the participants do the best work they can, that the edges are smooth, the right colours used.

•               Ensuring the work will be physically able to be incorporated into the larger piece.

•               Making sure the individual contributions of participants fits in with the collaborative plan.

Why we make it

My agenda is related to the idea of a democracy of voices in public space. It plays with the idea of community members participating and contributing to public space and expressing culture in public space, and providing an 'other' voice besides that of advertising.

I have different reasons for making the artwork than those of the community that I make it with. Each person has their own ideas about why they are doing it. Many commissions begin because there is something to commemorate and an interest in involving people in making as a part of this commemoration. The initial excuse to begin is often an anniversary, a year level that’s leaving the school, a problem area that needs beautification or the wish to create something to give colour to a dull place. But people are excited about the project and willing to put time and money into this art, for other reasons beside what provoked the project.  They see art as a useful vehicle to explore or commemorate an idea as a community and they are excited about having artwork in their place.

My perspective comes from the experience of making many of these works. I am not the community that participated in and have the work in their place, I am instead the witness to what they gain from the process over and over again as I see what happens in a number of projects. I also imagine the potential of this community collaboration in other types of public places and in larger forms. I mainly work in schools. Schools are public places but they are also private in that not all of the public has access to the artwork.

And I am also interested in bringing art back to people. I think that people should participate in making art and that the art they've made should be in public space, that we should make our own mark on public space.

A closer Authenticity to place and community if made by community:
I have done many art-works in public space as a solo artist. Whilst these are very rewarding, they are solitary acts and rarely do I receive feedback from the audience of this work. Sometimes I feel like an intruder because it is not my local place.  But when I work with people from the local community, and we make something together it means something much more. The artwork has to take on a life of its own out of the grasp of the artist. It is moved and altered by what the community does in the artwork. I feel that this gives it an authenticity of subject and place. I also hear and participate in the dialogue about the work. I hear the enthusiasm and joy and feedback about the work relayed by conversation, word of mouth, texts and emails. There is an excitement about the artwork and its relationship to the outside world that my own private art enterprises rarely find.

The magic of art, (which is the reason many people get enjoyment from it) depending on the person can be emotional or spiritual. Art has the ability to capture things unspoken and un-writable. People respond to art because it reflects and plays out a version of their lives in an abstract way. It might show you something that you have always suspected or known about but in a new way, that isn’t easily explained or described in words or text.

I also feel that creativity and art-making have been cut off from people. That making should be something that we can all do. My works seeks to bridge the gap between the creator and inhabitants of space.

I want to encourage people to think more broadly about making things in their own spaces.

Why can't we have more art in public space with ordinary people making the artwork?

I could attempt to answer these questions by writing, reading the literature written about it, or by an art practice that begs the question. I could ask the questions using public space.
Lawrence Weiner * suggests that if I put anything in public space, I will be asking a question.
This parallels my line of thinking, where I think that if I make a particular artwork in public space, then people will ask why is it there, who made it? Why did they take the trouble? questions are generated.
Actually placing the art object into public space creates a dialogue in the form of questions about why it is there and what its role is.

*  'Art is one of those things that has no central definition, it has a history and it has no qualifications. It has no need of a reference point to anything else. Art is one of those things that appears in the world because somebody decides they're gonna pose the question and that makes it art.'
    Lawrence Weiner, the means to answer questions, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AscU8wKzbbE

Why we make it? Cultural democracy, - everybody’s culture

I see public space as an increasingly controlled area, and I became interested in the individual’s ability to mark or alter public space. It had a great resonance for me, particularly when urban landscapes were visually dominated by architecture, official signage and advertising.

In one sense this authorized use of public space prevents discrimination and slander and graffiti, but on the other hand it gives the power to visually speak in public to those with money.  It was illegal for individuals to make their mark on society without authorisation. One of the consistent arguments of graffiti is that they are questioning and challenging the ownership of space. I saw community artworks as another way of challenging the situation and offering other values and understandings of culture.

Billboard advertisements are not democratic.  If you have a lot of money you can present your ideas by buying the right to public space in this way. When individual artists asserting their imagery in public space this is also undemocratic, but by doing so they raise the question about who has the right to place imagery I public space? We get this strange dichotomy of individual and community within public space, where the public has no power to insert into public space but when an individual does intervene it is in much the same undemocratic way. This is echoed in the dichotomy of community collaborations where each person contributes their own individual work but towards a larger group process and outcome. We get the individual within community and both are aspects of ‘public art’.

My thinking is that what you see in public space influences your thinking and affects how we learn and know things. Public space doesn’t reflect things such as gender equality, ethnic diversity, and other realities and histories. Advertising promotes ideas of homogeneity and what we should aspire to, with the main aim of persuading us to buy a certain brand or product. Individual voices and 'other' voices are not generally heard or seen in this space.

Art can be a very powerful medium when used in public space. Because it doesn't belong. It stands out. Particularly handmade art, stands out as something not functional and as not a building. It works against against our increasingly ordered, digital and technological environment.

obstacles, tensions difficulties, challenges

The brick wall or my perspective

 In our culture there are different statuses and categories for things and the artwork that you make with people doesn’t fall into the category of permanent public art commission. I became increasingly aware that my understanding of my practice and its importance and its potential was not seen in the same way by others. They did not have this same perspective about community participation in permanent public art. They did not imagine community art as permanent public art. It was really important to me that it be considered permanent public art, that it not be immediately categorised and thrown into a different bucket called ‘community art’.

You could say that my research began when I found a sort of invisible barrier to my work. It was easy to get work in schools and they wanted this type of artwork where everyone had made a part of it. People understood the idea and they understood the meaning. They weren’t often worried about the aesthetics perhaps because they had seen my previous work and trusted me but also because the idea of everyone joining in was very important to them and they understood that you had to let go of 'excellence', in order to have participation.

There were a range of perspectives besides mine. The philosophies about permanent public art and community art did not seem to overlap but instead sit in distinctly separate buckets.  As soon as I mentioned the community were involved, the person I was speaking to said "oh yeah community art". There seemed to be no support for a perspective that encompassed both areas of practice. Small projects where community members participated in making were got up everywhere in public space and some of them permanent but they were usually small in size and budget. They sat in places like parks and gardens, under the radar and not called permanent public art. 

Ownership, acknowledgement and creative authorship
Who owns a public artwork where the community have been involved as makers? And who is acknowledged? In some of the recent artworks I have made, the first names of those involved have been installed into the artwork. But this raises the question of, 'why not the second names?' It is difficult to place the second names of participants, if they are children because of privacy rules and parental permission. Then whose full names do you include and whose do you not?

Often when I am making an artwork with students towards a permanent piece they are unhappy that their names are not included.  They are used to writing their name on every piece of work they do, both drawn and written. The name is a traditional part of the maker’s stamp and people enjoy writing their names on their work and in primary school you have to write your name on every loose piece of paper.  But I make a rule that no-ones name is on the work including my own. I become the facilitator, and unnamed. Then at other times particularly if it is a voluntary work i want to be acknowledged so I might add acknowledgements.

How to practice in public space?

One method of developing you public art practice is to make your art illegally and independently in public space. Studio practice can’t just slide outside and onto a wall, public space has other things to consider. The practicalities of materials, working within the site and audience reception, are a few of the things that make it different from a studio art practice. And you learn better learn by doing.

Because I was aware of what you could and couldn’t do in public space, or what was assumed you couldn’t do, I was interested in stretching the borders. It would be like quietly pressing the wall sideways like in the Seinfeld episode where the apartment walls moved as someone tried to make a bigger space for themselves.  So the wall is quietly moved and then others notice that it can be moved. Or you sort of momentarily stretch the rubbery hide of public art, out a little in once direction. When it flings back into shape it has a forlorn altered look where you have stretched its elastic. The dint is not the shape you made but it’s noticeable and it changes the way that restriction looks. You’ve altered its taughtness, and people have noticed that it does stretch.

I wanted to apply for bigger council commissions but it was hard. Councils wanted several things that I didn't have and which were difficult to get. For example they wanted you to have experience at doing a project that had a similar budget and have examples of work which was of the same size and style. There was this strange issue of needing to have experience practising in public space where it was difficult to get a commission without experience. It was a palindrome. 

(drawings of palindromatic snakes)

Perhaps it was not only the money but this nagging idea of the potential of these large budget projects to really do something interesting and to also get paid properly. Now we can see this as an artist’s perspective and bad luck because you don't have experience but what is tremendously important about this is that it signifies a general issue that it is very difficult for artists to become public artists. Architects are advantaged because they already practice in public space and handle large projects and budgets.

(but sometimes I wondered if it wouldn't be more effective as something discreet that spread over a large area or suburb. Why was large and significant important? )

It seems I was chasing the opportunity to do a big commission, which was outside of a school, but which included community members as makers. Could I transfer my usual practice of working with communities inside schools, to public places outside of schools? Could community involvement in making be a part of a large permanent public art commission?

Now of course my problem was how to get the work I did with people into a larger form or to have it recognised as a good way of working. I felt that I needed to convince people somehow. But who were they? and what did they do? And how to get around them or convince them? Or alternatively, how did other people do this work? How did other projects evolve and happen in public space which involved community members in the making.

The philosophy of community participation is constrained, altered and shaped by the practical needs of time, organisation, and the need to be aesthetic.

The physical

I believe that the physical act of making is important and also choice is important. I think there is a difference between consultation and participation and there are different depths of participation. Consultation is dialogue, participation could be in designing, talking about what needs to be included, but making connects the mind and the hand. People can suggest ideas or speak or write but that actually making and manipulating materials that are directly used in the artwork is a significant act. And having choices so that they are designing and making using their minds, making choices and using their hands to make the work are very meaningful processes. When I work with community members, they have to act on the material. Making the artwork with their hands creates a direct relationship between the people and the artwork. Consultation and participation in design means that their intellectual ideas might or might not be used, but if you are involved in making the artwork it has your stamp of individuality of choice on it. It is marked by you and your hand. It has your fingerprints on it. The creative work emerges from the ideas in your head, through your hands and into the artwork. When I photographed the involvement of people in making the work, I often photographed their hands, I also looked for actions of the hands, for example manipulating the clay, using tools and painting the artwork. There was the artwork but if the hand was in the photo it emphasised that a person was making the artwork. This was the connection between the person’s ideas and the artwork. The hands did the work. When it is a finished artwork in public space people like to touch the work in order to connect with it.

This physical relationship to the artwork paved the way for an emotional connection. 

This affects the artist who often carries, processes and installs the artwork.

And likewise, the community members who physically participate in making the work spending their voluntary time, energy and intellectual thought in making it may also develop this emotional connection.

 

craft

Although aesthetics are partially sacrificed for participation, the use of an crafts-person assists with making a work that gives pleasure to the audience of passers-by and also the makers. Aesthetics is a really important part of the work. It doesn’t necessarily have to be beautiful but it has to engage the audience without repelling them. Similarly aesthetics has to take us on the journey from meeting with the object to understanding it in some way so that we can connect with it. Craft assists with this. Craft is the method of getting the material to work successfully both physically and aesthetically.

Permanent public artwork is bound up with the particular physical material that makes it permanent, and it has to either engage a craft of hand-making or otherwise it involves technological production. The crafting of materials in permanent public art is important because it is the material that makes it permanent. The artist can’t rock up and say ‘I’ve changed my mind, tissue paper would embody this idea better’.

The use of craft is also limiting. I found it difficult to move into abstraction, because I employed the materials to communicate. My experience was that figurative work or text both able to communicate clearly were favoured as devices for communicating through the artwork. It is difficult to offer people abstract or conceptual designs because they are particular visual languages that not everybody understands. 

One way that public art is practiced similarly to an artists studio practice is illegally or as intervention. Craftivism, graffiti and street art are art practices in public space because they are usually part of a repetitive, trialled and developed practice of making in public space.  The opportunity to develop work by practice is available in these forms simply because they do not conform to the general requirements of commissioned public art. They do not consider the stakeholders, the need to be permanent, aesthetics that will please everyone or social and cultural mores of public space.

There are many players in the world of art in public space and public artwork, involved in works both permanent and not permanent. Players might include; politicians, commissioners of public art, arts organisations, council arts and urban design officers, commissioners, architects, planners, owners of large buildings and gardens, artists, community artists, street artists, graffiti artists, taggers and lone wolves. These players regularly use public space to express themselves or their idea of what should be placed in public space. There is a world of public art with different layers of public art practices and subcultures. And though they operate in their own genres, they are all part of an intermeshed world. The hierarchy of power could be imagined to have the players with money, government and the law behind them, at the top of the pile.

But each player in this game has their own weapons or tools in how they might gain space and permanency (or time) in public space. The weapons might be money, skills, tenacity, materials, community acquisence, acceptance, beauty, politics, and more complex things such as fame and the idea of wealth and well-being.

I thought that the graffiti movement and all that it had entailed – laws being developed which regulated marking public space - had affected the other genres, such as community art and public art commissions. From what I could see, no-one discussed the world of art in public space as a whole, instead things were discussed in terms of the separate worlds. Separate worlds were continually being challenged by characters such as Banksy who crossed easily from one world to the other, by street artists who were commissioned to make permanent and paid murals, by community artworks that became permanent, by a commissioned piece of permanent public art being tagged or altered or by community artworks being written into academic literature. The interaction of street art, graffiti and participatory art are changing the way that art in public space is commissioned, viewed and categorised. These genres make visible different ways of thinking about art in public space and provoke debate and argument about its role.  

I visualise this world as a Venn diagram, but a complex moving one where the jostling spheres merged into one another repeatedly. The spheres could be still or spinning and at different times they showed different faces of the genre.  They all shared the same public space and battled for attention but often acted as if they were the only ones there. The whole thing was elastic and changing because of the crossovers and movements between the genres. For example I felt the graffiti movement had altered the way in which people saw public space as not a place for anyone to make their mark on. As a place that needed to be regulated to protect private property and the way that things looked. We had retracted from thinking of it as ours because we didn't want it to be everyone’s to do with as they wished. The taggers had provoked fear. So rules had been made to prevent tagging and these rules had influenced the way we viewed anybody altering public space. If the taggers shouldn’t be doing it, then neither should any individual. We had to categorise and discuss the differences between what is art and what is not. What is allowed to be in public space and what is discouraged and prevented. The rules were getting very tangled when graffiti artists entered the museums or were paid to install permanent murals. 

When you place an artwork in public space the way that graffiti might affect it is taken into account by the planners and also the audience. I found it startling when doing one mural which was in a public thoroughfare, that at least half of the people who commented began their sentences with ‘I hope it doesn’t get graffitied.’ This scenario has repeated itself in many places and the reality is that it rarely happens but it points to the interaction between the two genres and that when people think about art in public space, they have to contend with the uncommissioned world of public art.

Graffiti and permanent public commissions can seem oppositional, one is permissioned, the other not, but in another sense they both have prominent places in our understanding of visual public space. Graffiti has influenced public art commissions in that plans for how to prevent them being graffitied has become one of the considerations of the commissioning and making process. And sometimes what we think of graffiti suddenly becomes commissioned permanent public art. The object of its fear encompasses it.

If graffiti art is ephemeral and illegal by nature, what happens when we make a permanent permissioned one?
Could we make a permanent public artwork form a material that decomposes?
Could we use a big public art commission, to produce a process-based artwork without designating what the final artwork will look like?
Could we take more risks in processes that might produce something politically incorrect yet be a more authentic expression of culture?

Street art

I began practicing street art about five years ago. I have a street art practice. The reason it enters here is that whilst I don’t intend to discuss it, I feel that it has an intimate relationship with art in public space. It affects and interacts on the other genres of art in public space. I became interested in un-commissioned artwork in public space as a method of having an art practice in public space and also as a vehicle to learn more about other aspects of public art practice such as materials, ownership and authority to do art and audience reaction.

(below: this could be a drawing)

aspects of both street art and                                          commissioned permanent public art

street art                                                                 permanent public art

usually small due to cost. apart from murals                   is hardly ever discreet and small
( challenge, make some large street art)
is often a series of small things                             is usually one big thing
free                                                                        usually paid for by somebody or some organisation

not owned by anybody                                        owned by a council, or landowner
not preserved                                                       protected until deaccessioned

what they both share 
both regarded as art
both are made for an audience
both have creators or artists
both are expressions of culture.
they usually take up physical space'
both can be an eyesore.
they won't please everyone

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Community art: Perhaps it was a romantic notion I had but I felt that we had drastically moved away from the seventies and the community arts movement, particularly in the ways people used public space and used it as if it was their right. It was as though what was unpolitical, but therapeutic about the movement had been placed into a nice hand-woven basket called community art and the rest abandoned. But community art and permanent public art seemed were poles away from each other and rarely met. But they did so in my art practice.

I feel that community participation in making permanent public artworks has something very important to say but wasn’t being taken seriously. It kept being dropped into the bucket of community art and sort of drowned in it. I think it is a discursive issue, it has to do with how things are defined and described and perhaps the past roles that public art has played. I was really irritated by the community arts bucket. Community arts seemed to be some welfare and community based practice that went on with the needy but also anytime you involved the community in something, even if it had nothing to do with welfare or need, it just plopped straight into the community arts bucket. ‘oh you involved people, so it’s not real art’. It’s very nice and it belongs in the field of community art. The art process that I use is not meant to be therapeutic or make life better for the participant. They are not lacking in something that art will 'fix'. I am interested in community participation as a means of making authentic and in depth cultural expression where the locals or a particular group of community work together to make the artwork, instead of the sole artist interpreting and reproducing a singular interpretation of meaning. I am mainly thinking about the possibilities of what that permanent public art object could be if community were involved with making it.

The bind of community engaged art is that as soon as the artist allows other persons as makers, it is no longer considered a serious artwork. This is because artists been conjured up culturally, as having some magic, genius or gift needed to create real art. I reject this idea. I believe that anyone can be an artist and that we all have the capacity to say something meaningful through art. 

The crux was that I wanted the people to be valued for their input as the artists and for the artwork to be seen as a valid expression and conglomeration of more than one person who had something valuable to say. They were not information or material but makers of meaning.  I was their conduit who facilitated them being artists and taking up public space physically and philosophically with their ideas.

One of the things I love about making public art with communities is working with people. Particularly when they get the opportunity to make something that goes into public space. It’s a very powerful medium. My role is to facilitate this process, and in doing so I usually teach them something about the context of the artwork and the collaboration and of the techniques and materials that we are using to make. The other thing that happens when you work with people is that they inevitably teach you something.

Process
The community arts approach places priority on process which might include conversations, research and exploration during which the artwork can deviate from the initial ideas. The artwork is not a clean pre-designed path. At certain stages there will be choices or options for the path to change. It effects the nature of the work and makes it organic. In an artist's individual practice, the process might be important for them but when they place the final object into a gallery or other place to show, the context becomes focused on the object which is the end product of that process. Often the object is placed without any context or (artists statement). Its process and history and context are not shared with the viewer. The viewer is left to make up their own mind about what that object means. Process and outcome, two important parts of any creative activity, are emphasized in different ways in community engaged art, and the process is given an equal footing in the work.

In large public art commissions the process is designed before the artwork is commissioned. When large amounts of money are involved, the stakeholders need to know what the outcome will be. This makes the practice more object-based and the final artwork taking precedence over the process. Commissions entail careful planning and designing what the outcome will look like. Whilst in reality community participation in making the artwork necessitates it evolving organically, without being planned.

Choice / aesthetic
In collaborative artworks we are all bound by rules and expectations. Not only the artist but also the community member is directed to do something, towards an overall plan. And sometimes, when it is a school project, there is an unsaid rule that they must do the work.  But within the making, they also have choices which involve them making the artwork or story their own. This means that the interpretation is coloured by how they respond with their making. The artwork changes and becomes driven with how the community participants respond to the brief.

When people make an artwork together, the outcome is often a mix of disparate parts, it is not one carefully designed image but instead broken up into individual works which are then combined.  An amalgam of voices and ideas and aesthetics. The two opponents - individuality and collaboration - clash together, which is great! We get within the artwork the clarity of differences and the evidence that people worked together to make the work.

Aesthetics plays an important role in public art. The more permanent the work will be, the more importance will be placed on its aesthetic appeal. If the multitude pay for it then perhaps then the multitude must be able to appreciate its aesthetic and have some rapport with the work. Aesthetic is also style which changes over time. Thus you recognize that some public artworks are of a particular style or era, using materials in a particular way and you might be attracted to or repelled by.  Aesthetic is not an objective thing, it is often culturally formed, so it’s very difficult to argue that anything is aesthetic.

Of course the other side of this is that there is a particular aesthetic that people generally enjoy and that is figurative work. I do a lot of figurative work with communities because everyone can understand what the artwork is about and also, they recognise it and enjoy it. I believe that recognition is important to the audience. They need to be able to see what it’s all about to in order to connect with it, and not be separated from the artwork because they can't get a handle on it. This of course creates a particular type of style and aesthetic.

When I am commissioned to do a project, it has to be discussed, then designed, then the design and quote are delivered and when that is accepted the work must be made according to that plan. I keep the sketches minimal to allow for a bit of development as the project goes along, but in this type of work, the artwork must please. It is imperative that the meaning is well understood, otherwise it does not go ahead.

The end of the work
An experience I continue to have is that at the end of the artwork I have fallen out of love with it. The artworks often take such a physical and mental toll and are a long journey to complete.  I have time to think, this would have been better in a different colour or if I had been more careful with this part of the design, or had I done this particular bit which I thought about but didn’t do because if time allowances. If only I had gone the extra mile in that bit there, taken time and care here or foreseen this problem.

As I leave the artwork I no longer love it. It is one in a series of developments and what’s in my head now is the next one which seeks to improve on the past one. I walk away and onto the next artworks. But time and feedback redevelop the meaning of the artwork for me and retrospection will place it somewhere in the history of my art practice. I care for its longevity and wellbeing (and unfortunately because it is part of my resume, inextricably links to my career and success) and if it lasts longer the audience will be greater and it will be more worthwhile.

After a permanent public artwork is situated in space for a few years it has a new value and definition which has evolved from the people who see it on a regular basis. How the locals feel about the artwork and what meaning it derives for them changes over time and no matter what the intentioned meaning of the artwork was, it will become a different meaning and importance for the community.