Upon arrival to Manchester Contemporary Art Fair, we were introduced to studios, split into sections of galleries, exhibiting selected works by "their" artists. My immediate reaction was inspiration. Seeing the work that people were making made me want to come home and start a new project and get making. There were a few artists whose work grabbed my eye, such as Bartosz Beda whose paintings really explored the different ways of applying paint, and I really loved Abigial Reynolds prints. They reminded me of Joy Division and the image of Manchester in the late 70s/early 80s that is always in post-punk documentaries. Although it was a marbling effect which I have seen before, I really liked the chance element and the way the black paint seemed to crack into skin style creases. I also liked the photo of cooling towers that had been printed underneath. The size of the prints and the colours used really grabbed my attention.
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| Abigail Reynolds, Cooling Towers, 2012 |
However, after a while of wandering round, my inspiration became mingled with mild anger. Obviously, the event was a commercial event and a chance for artists to make money, but even with this in mind I felt quite let down. The whole promotion and appreciation didn't seem appropriate for some of the works exhibited. For example, there was an artist who was apparently challenging the heritage and sensibilities of Modernism. The work displayed was a sculpture made out of 5 bricks, holding a piece of foam, with a religious promotion postcard stuck into the foam. I was interested to see what the representative for the work had to say, and I really wanted it to be good. Up until the tour I had looked at the piece for a while and tried to grasp a meaning or anything to help me understand the piece. But I found myself disappointed when the below explanation was given, as well as a reference to other works by the artist; some steel Modernist-esque sculptures with a tea towel thrown over them to undermine the sensibilities. To me, even commercially, this is absurd, but not in a good Albert Camus or Samuel Beckett kind of a way, because that wasn't it's purpose; it's purpose was to undermine Modernism. It doesn't. In addition to this, a lot of the work seemed quite elitist in this manner, requiring the viewer to have a vast knowledge of art history to understand the work.
One piece was a drawing of a piece of paper with a Charles Bukowski poem on it. I think this is an example of that kind of "pat on the back for understanding the reference" nature. I understand post-modernism and intertextuality, but this seemed to take it too far. I liked the poem by Bukowski, but I didn't like the work, because the whole strength of it depended upon the poem and understanding the cultural reference, rather than the skill of the drawing. If the meaning was related to or about the poem, surely it would be more original and artistic to respond to the poem in a way other than copying it out. It didn't seem clever or admirably brazen, it just seemed lazy and greedy to want money for this kind of thing.
I didn't feel any of the work was especially relevant or daring or really spoke to me. But then perhaps this is unfair because I find commercial art work quite repulsive in some ways; it's not about truth, or beauty, or authenticity, or meaning, investigation, it is about money. This is a side of art that I am not enticed by.
On the other hand, a talk about the Chinese Arts Centre was interesting as the upcoming exhibitions were described and the artists work seemed really interesting and thought provoking, such as Yan Xing's "Daddy Project" (2011). But the way in which the talk was given seemed to devalue the art by overvaluing the monetary value of it. They have come up with a "great" idea to ask the artists exhibiting to produce a print of some kind so that visitors can buy prints and collect, what the speaker called, "the box-set" . I do understand promotion and artists wanting to make a living, but things like this, I find, cheapen the art. The constant push for large sums of money completely undervalues the meaning of the work and the artists themselves. Art, for me, is not an object to be bought, it is an experience or a meaning or a significance or just something. The whole feel to the fair was quite sad I thought. I know they're trying to build up their own institutions, but after visiting the Manchester Art Gallery and watching or viewing or seeing art for free with no buying being pushed on me, I felt that's a better way for art to be.
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