Sheila McGregor on contemporary art
Sheila is the Chief Exec of Axis Web, the repository for contemporary artists in the UK. Sheila talks eloquently about art of all eras, so I jumped at the chance to go and hear her talk about contemporary art in Sheffield last week. Her definition of ‘contemporary art’ is ‘made within the last 10 years’.
I found the assertion that commercial galleries take risks that municipal galleries do not take illuminating. The examples she provided were of the White cube in Hoxton and Mason’s Yard near Piccadilly. She also mentioned the soon to be opened (local for me) Hepworth gallery in Wakefield and the wonderful Cohen collection in Wolverhampton. Take note if these are in your geographic zone.
Sheila talked about various forms of contemporary art through examples by artists including Toby Ziegler who uses computers to plan images of a richly patterned nature and Ian Davenport, who drips and pours paints very carefully to form stunning images, a sort of ‘Josef Albers meets Saturday Night Fever’. She then talked about sculpture as a way of occupying space and highlighted the work of Eva Rothschild, who will open the new Wakefield Gallery with her work shortly. Other types of sculpture are often better described as installation, such as the work of Egolafur Eliasson, and even more tangential are Public Art statements such as the work of Jeremy Dellar in which public art revisits conflict. My question is “Is this art” ? Sheila refuses to get in a stew about the definition of fine art, and I certainly came away feeling that nowadays art can be ANYTHING. She re-quoted Gombrich: ‘There is no such thing as art, only artists’. She also suggested that art is a comment on experience, and an invitation to look, but to be art it must contain at least two of the following elements:
- content…
- concepts…
- technique…
- method…
- process
She gave the example of contemporary art often being temporary and responding to a particular site such as Annika Eriksson’s temporary flood lighting of the famous (or infamous?) sixties Park Hill housing estate in Sheffield and Philippa Lawrence’s bringing trees back to life in a quirky and delightful way.
Philippa Lawrence, 'Bound' Installation, 2004. National Botanic Garden of Wales, Carmarthenshire.
Sheila also talked about the role of photography in art, and this raised the question about the length and breadth of art: photography as art, art as photography. She highlighted the work of Nan Goldin. which has a personal and political dimension and the role of film or performance in tightly demarked space, often about the art is simply in creating a relationship with the viewer. She showed an amusing Youtube link to an Ultra-red performance piece. Hmmm. Is this art, or entertainment – and what’s the difference?
