Part one - Watching People Work

My style of making art is very much me on my own. I did have a period where I worked with another artist and I’m incredibly lucky and grateful for that time. One of the concepts we came up with was called “Watching People Work.”

The idea was that after a hard day at work we relax by watching a film full of actors at work. The music we listen to is a band at their job. In fact most creative output is really just watching people going about a job. The idea of escaping the trappings of labour was to watch other people’s labour.

I moved from London to North Wales and my consumption of art has been dramatically diminished. The local gallery has become a form of sanctuary and nourishment, but it’s been such a long time since it has actually delivered that I’ve started to come to the realisation that maybe it will never be able to deliver its remit again.

The latest exhibition had quite a promising premise: exploring the creativity and potential in the gaps left by the understanding and misunderstanding of two languages. Creativity often lives in those small moments of tension where meaning slips slightly out of place. I also had the feeling that expression has been so crushed under capitalism that we are reduced to looking for resistance in the tiniest gaps. But resistance and creativity are still good things, and this area could be a goldmine of possibilities.

My highlight was a room with a beautifully executed twin video wall. One of the walls had been knocked into, causing the freshly painted white surface to reflect the projection back strangely. This wasn’t part of the show, but interestingly this idea was kind of played out in some of the framed works. The problem is that move had already been used here a few years ago, and when you only get two and a half exhibitions a year you tend to remember them.

What the show did do was not allow me any agency. In fact the only sense of agency I experienced came from a mistake in the hang. What we got instead was a series of works that met the logic of the funding application. A film made by collaboration where all involved were paid correctly according to the funding criteria. Wall-based works that acted as ticks to fill the space. We even got a prop fabricated to break up the room. The whole thing felt like a tracing of a map that had already been drawn somewhere else.

If I could sum up the feeling of the show it would be like a new flat belonging to someone who has just split up with a long-term partner and didn’t get the future, just the TV and Blu-rays.

None of this is unusual for regional art spaces. The run-down areas of the art world are now scrambling for funding wherever they can find it. Exhibitions have to last longer because budgets are tight, and over time they begin to feel worn out. Everyone involved is nice and well-intentioned, just doing their jobs.

But no matter how good the intentions are, the work often ends up reflecting the rules — conceived, funded, and performed solely for the grey vampires.

Maybe I’m nostalgic, but it used to feel like art got funded and people got away with something they wanted to do. Now it often feels like it’s just hitting the criteria so the next research project can get funded. The Arts Council is funding personal development to the individual.

I’m just watching people work.