The Stuckist’s bone of contention is that the craft of painting is being ignored
by such institutions as the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery in
Some museums, like the Tate, choose artists that deal with regurgitated life, rehashed advertising, ‘found objects’ and what is used in marketing terms is “second - level appropriation”, as the first level, “The Creatives”, are thought not digestible enough for the public. This ‘art of appropriation’ is only favored because it is defined by curator-ship - if curators say it is art, it becomes so – hence the curators influence becomes more and more powerful. Curators choose mediums that have no ‘quality standards bar’; any art installation, or video still looks like itself, the distancing quality that the medium has absorbs any criticism, whereas there is a lot of difference between a bad and a good painting.
Sadly I remember early video art from Darcy Lange or Tina Keane that was both
beautifully filmed and also struggled with bringing meaning through the medium
of movement and the artist’s passionate involvement with society. I guess it
is the political which is so unfashionable, but it really bought a depth and
sincerity to 1970s art works - in all mediums. I that miss that insight in shows
of contemporary art in Musums in London. It has been up to private galleries
like Alison Jacques Gallery, Lazarides Gallery and THE AQUARIUM L-13 to show work
with zip. The exhibition traveling the country now, 'No Such Thing as Society'
chosen by David Hurn, the Magnum photographer, curatored by David Alan Mellor
and with photography by Martin Parr and Christine Voge among others cannot get
a venue in London- even though it has been bought about by Hayward Gallery Travelling.
As it is about the terrible recession in the 1970s and the class divide it will
be next shown in the
That is why the Contemporary Art World is so mediocre; it is the lack of real
content in the work shown. The Stuckist Movement has included artists who deal
with real life and personal experience with heartfelt imagination. For instance
painting what it is like to be on social assistance for so many years that
you start to imagine skeletons ‘signing on’(Philip Absolon), painting the memory
of young French sailors fornicating in the streets of Chatham (Joe Machine),
painting the reality of societies’ trap for young lovers – a hangman’s noose
ready (Billy Childish), painting a celebrity bleeding from the eyes with internalised
pain (Stella Vine), painting the rivers of life and death that wait for us
all (Elsa Dax), painting the transsexuality of display (Ella Guru). That these
artists use paint, I think, is of secondary importance to the fact that they
are voicing the pain and glory of what it is really like today to be alive in
this
But you will not see this work in the Turner Prize. ©Alexis Hunter London 2008
All Photographs below taken by Alexis Hunter during the Turner Prize Demo at Tate Britain September 2008
Read article of Charles Thomson's International protest for Artistic Freedom here