The “Brand” New Generation event took place on 2nd November at The Drum as part of Kalaboration. Aside from my Pecha-Kucha-style presentation on glitch art glitching (i.e. not working) it went really well! For the benefit of those who couldn’t make it and those who attended but couldn’t see the images, here’s a desktop recording or the presentation:
The discussion that followed was very interesting and covered topics such as being/not being an “emerging” artist, residing in Birmingham and finding validity in the art scene. Charlie Levine did a bit of live-tweeting:
who are the establishment in brum? @hellocatfood says ‘the Internet and whoever would take a chance on us’ @the_drum
— Charlie Levine (@curatorcharlie) November 1, 2012
who are making the rules in Brum? Karen says @eprjcts @ikongallery but @hellocatfood says the independents make the more exciting rules
— Charlie Levine (@curatorcharlie) November 1, 2012
Karen says Brum is a mid stop, @hellocatfood says its the final stop & @danauluk says you can come &go &that’ll give you a better insight
— Charlie Levine (@curatorcharlie) November 1, 2012
To reiterate some of the points in those tweets, I think the idea of being an “emerging” artist is rather stupid. Whilst I recognise that building confidence in your practice takes time and effort, from what am I emerging and what am I hoping to happen once I emerge from it? Do I lose the emerging artist tag once I’ve had a clearly defined number of exhibitions or successful funding bids? Or is it the case that I need to get my work into the well-known galleries and be represented by a gallery in order to no longer be an “emerging” artist? This confusion on the term isn’t just shared by me.
Although I’m predominantly a digital artist I don’t reject the idea of working within white-walled galleries, nor do I attempt to avoid associations with the fine art “scene”. As the above tweets suggest, I’m more than happy to work with anyone that is as excited about digital art as I am, be they independent galleries and artists/curators or commercial organisations and well-known galleries. To me, the support of friends, family and curious strangers is just as important to me as support from institutions, galleries and funding providers.
On that note, here’s some pictures from the event by Kalaboration:
Thanks to Ian Sergeant/Kalaboration for asking me to take part and Elly Clarke for chairing the discussion.
More photos available on the Kalaboration Flickr stream and on my Flickr.