Aliens have no class
There are those files on the desktop that are constantly reworked and revised. These include the c.v., that list of things achieved that can skirt the borders of fiction, and the artist statement, the little bit of writing that is always in need of revising as it never quite says what you want it to say, or that is my experience anyway.
To my set of revisable texts has now been added a short biography. This slips between the first and third person depending on the requirements, and first made an appearance when I was making a public artwork in National Taiwan University. This is the elite University of Taiwan, and as such has a student cohort that stems almost exclusively from the upper echelons of the social economic strata of Taiwan. As part of the project I wanted some students to discuss ideas of utopia with the non-academic staff of the University, especially the cleaners and ground staff. This proved problematic, as for the students the idea of engaging with the workers was beyond understanding. What ideas about utopia could such people possibly have?
At the same time I was teaching in one of the many private universities in Taiwan, and during a discussion with another member of staff, an artist who had studied in the UK before returning to Taiwan, I was astounded to hear the complaint that “the common people do not understand my work”.
These occurrences made me look at my written biography, at the omissions in the discussion of my origins and identity.
I was lucky. I was born in the 1950’s, brought up in a working class Roman Catholic family in Liverpool. I came into education at the time when the hierarchies of class in the UK were under attack, when a working class Scouser could get a grant and attend polytechnic. That now obsolete term – polytechnic – brings me up short. Was that the start of the return of class, when polys became unis? There was always a distinction between the two, with the academic standing of the university being held in much higher regard than the industry connected polytechnic, nicely symbolised by the polytechnic I attend being named after a make of car.
My time on the BA was not filled with success, and I did not have the confidence or qualifications to either continue to MA or get a job as a lecturer. I did have a small skill in painting murals, and so became a community artist, part of a team placed in a deprived area of Coventry.
Here my feelings around my class and origins were in flux. The Community Arts Team were based in the centre of the deprived area, and my role was to work with a historian to produce a mural reflecting the history of the area. My personal ideas about art were confused, as I felt the pull between the kind of work the local community liked, and the kind of things I wanted to do. There was also the idea at this time that artists working in a community should not try to be experimental – was this a foreshadow of “the common people do not understand my work”? The Arts Team were from a variety of backgrounds, but we all had a vaguely socialist outlook, which was why we were there. And we assumed that this outlook was shared by everyone in the local community. And then Thatcher became Prime Minister, and everyone wanted to buy their council house as they fell for the property-owning propaganda.
And yet…decrying the desire of the local working-class community to buy their council housing is a bit rich coming from the University-educated middle-class who have bought and are doing up that nice Georgian town house.
Housing produces a metaphor (stolen, I will admit, from Michael Landy), that of the artist from a working-class background who is ‘semi-detached’ from that background by reason of education. It was during my time as a community artist that the idea of this dislocation became something that is always there. The Community Arts scheme finished after a year, and I went back to trying to work out what kind of artist I was.
It was not until I returned to Liverpool to look after a gallery that I began to feel as if I was starting on the road to being an artist. The gallery was a strange affair, funded by a local businessman to keep his daughter happy. I was not paid, but given a free bedsit and a studio, my first dedicated studio space. At the gallery openings I met local artists and others from the cultural scene of Liverpool (most importantly the wonderful poet, painter, curator, critic Adrian Henri) and these red-wine-fuelled discussions helped me to see that my ideas and ways of working connected to others.
Liverpool was a good place to be at that time (the 1980’s), for the perception by the government of the populace as unemployable trouble-makers meant that being without a job was fine – we all took the dole and joined the black economy. To keep body and soul together I taught leisure painting and produced the occasional mural, building on previous experience as a community artist. The glut of empty buildings meant that studio groups and studio group exhibitions were common, and the local publicly funded spaces (hurrah for the Bluecoat) provided more opportunities to both exhibit and see the work of a wide variety of artists.
I returned to Fine Art Education at the grand old age of 40, studying MA Sculpture at Winchester School of Art, and then getting a PhD scholarship at Nottingham Trent University. And yet….despite now being ensconced in academia I still suffered from a feeling that I should not be there. While my fellow PhD was invited to work with the students, I was not. I was a technician, working in the gallery, installing the work of others.
Since being ‘doctored’ (as it were) I have applied, and failed to get, numerous academic posts. So I have worked in galleries and museums as invigilator and technician while exhibiting, and felt that this is my allotted role. This has given me an insight into the mechanics of exhibiting and the relationship of artworks to the public beyond that I could not have gained by being safely inside the walls of the academy.
Where am I now? By a series of accidents and the following of opportunities I have found myself in Taiwan, working as an artist and as a lecturer. Finally in academia, but in a place where the nuances of my background are difficult to read, a place where my accent does not count. Here I am obviously an outsider, and valued for the insight that brings. As an alien, I have no class.
As I stated at the beginning, I have been lucky. I am still the only member of my family who has been to university, and the chances of my nephews and nieces attending further or higher education are non-existent. Without the underlying confidence and financial support that other classes enjoy, anyone from my background wishing to pursue a career in the arts is now facing an impossible task. If you want security, a house when you retire, a family…don’t do this. I am exhibition rich and in financial poverty, and fear for my future.
It is not the personal account that is the main focus however. It is what this shifting of the arts towards the expression of a subset of the population means that is deeply worrying. Culture holds up a mirror to society, and this mirror increasingly reflects the concerns of a minority. This is seen not only in the work, but in the manner in which the artist glides through the world as if set apart, encountering only the curators and critics who have a similar background. The technicians, those who build the temporary walls and ensure the paintings are fixed firmly to the gallery walls, are invisible, there only to ensure the artist’s (or increasing the curator’s) vision is achieved. If this shift can be discerned in the artists, then it is reinforced in the curators. The public are an annoyance, only addressed by the education staff who are trained in the ways of speaking down to the great unwashed.
I am reminded here of the worries by the upper echelons when it was proposed that the British Museum should be open to the working class, and the similar concerns that accompanied the plans for the Great Exhibition. In both cases the worries were unfounded, as people came to not only look at the exhibits but equally to be seen looking at what was on display.
Is the art world like that depicted in The Class Sketch (The Frost Report, 1966) in which John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, and Ronnie Corbet, were the three classes? This social stratification still holds true for the arts I feel, curators at the top, artists in the middle, and technicians at the end.
What I find most troubling about this is that this is replicated in Taiwan, indicating that the problem is more wide-spread that just being a by-product of the entrenched class system in the UK. There are differences here, stemming in part from the hierarchical nature of the society and the fact that Taiwan is a recent democracy threatened by a dictatorship, but a student from a working-class background here will find it difficult to be accepted.
Works that look at the experiences, the history, of the working class now seems like anthropological reports, a view from an outsider of a totally alien form of life. There is little sense that the work stems from personal knowledge.
The Oriel Davies is a publicly funded contemporary art gallery in Newtown Powys. On the Saturday morning after the opening of each new exhibition a boy, about seven years old and poorly dressed, would come in and wander around, looking at the works. At first it was assumed he might cause trouble, but each time he came in he was quiet and looked carefully at the works, sitting and watching videos, looking at paintings. My friend asked him why he always came in when they had a new show, and he said, simply, because he wanted to look at the new works. She asked if he wanted to bring his family, and he replied “no, my dad doesn’t want me to come to places like this.”
Art is for everyone, not just for the cultured elite. This applies to the making of art as well as to its reception, it applies to the chance to push ideas as far as they will go. No one should have their desire for education in the arts dictated by financial considerations. The idea fostered by the present incumbent at No 10 (I will not put a name here, as recent experience has shown that the only long-term inhabitant of Downing Street is a cat) and by others that the arts are somehow of secondary importance shows a poverty of imagination and knowledge that only someone from a public-school background can hold.
I am dis-located from my working-class origins, yet know that the scepticism and humour that comes from that background is crucial to what I do. As indeed is the knowledge that manual labour is important, and that taking joy in the building of an exhibition enables me to connect to my background. My dad and my brother can connect to what I do by the shared experience of building things, and I enjoy that moment when the curator realises that the builder is also the artist.
