Completed 'Risk Assessment 6: Fill Your Lungs'

'Risk Assessment 6:  Fill Your Lungs', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Paper, 60 cm X 45 cm, 2013

Here’s the latest of my paper-based ‘Risk Assessment’ pieces, completed earlier this week.  It’s No.6 in this occasional series, begun at the start of the year, and utilises the same general format, hazard ‘candy stripe’ motifs and grungy text elements as the previous five.  As before, the text implies a potential hazard to life or wellbeing with the unwritten preamble, ‘They Will…’

I’ve already alluded to the way these visual outbursts tend to reflect my anger or frustration at human behaviour and the machinations of the powerful, as relayed to us via the news media.  Mostly, I suppose, they are a protest against the sense of powerlessness many of us habitually feel, and an attempt at some form of catharsis.  I’m sure it hardly needs spelling out that ‘Risk Assessment 6: Fill Your Lungs’ is another response to the routine atrocities being acted out in Syria of late.

Certainly, the ‘Risk Assessments’ are far more direct than anything else I do at the moment and pictorially, little more than simple carriers for text.  In that respect, I suppose they look toward the more polemical intent of an artist like Bob & Roberta Smith in his sign painting mode.  I wouldn’t want everything I do to be this politically, satirically or sociologically engaged but sometimes it is a relief to just get things off my chest, (and out of my head).  

The other thing about them is that, (by my standards), they are generally produced quite quickly.  In a frustrating year, when my artistic progress has been steady but a bit ponderous, it feels good to have just rattled out a couple of these in fairly short order.

Completed 'Risk Assessment 5' / Masters Of War

'Risk Assessment 5: Bomb Your Town', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Paper,
60 cm X 45 cm,  2013.

Honestly, they never cease to amaze me.  In the three weeks since I completed my recent ‘Cave Wall' paintings, our own vainglorious leaders nearly plunged us into yet another war and the twisted games of psychotic geopolitical brinkmanship, centred on The Middle East, carry on apace.  Do these maniacs never get bored of all this murderous nonsense?  Depressingly, it all just seems to justify George Orwell’s dystopian vision of a state of perpetual foreign war maintaining the position of those in power at home [1.].

It seemed an obvious time to return to my paper-based ‘Risk Assessment’ pieces.  This occasional series forms a separate stream from the ongoing ‘Belgrave Gate Project’, on which I’ve largely focused of late.  Their texts tend to be more direct, fairly rapidly produced, and mostly an expression of the frustration and anger that generally overtake me whenever I listen to the radio news.  Like those that preceded it, it reflects my attraction to Health & Safety graphics and includes a text implying an existential hazard to which anyone might be subjected and that actually would benefit from a risk assessment.  Of course, they never do, despite the plethora of H&S legislation applied to almost every other aspect of modern life.  The implication is that each sentence might begin ‘They Will…’, with ‘They’ remaining undefined.

I think 'Risk Assessment 5: Bomb Your Town', speaks for itself but, just in case there’s any confusion, here’s a list of those for whom I have zero respect just now:

• Psychopaths who use chemical weapons of any sort, (including Sarin, Napalm and White Phosphorus).

• Sickos who think it’s OK to drop incendiary devices on schools.

• Hypocritical, self appointed, ‘global policemen’ who think the appropriate response to a war atrocity is to add their own bombs and missiles to an existing UNHOLY mess.

• Fanatical religionists who gleefully exploit regional conflict to pursue their own twisted sectarian agendas. 

• ‘Free World Democrats’ who bemoan foreign conflicts whilst relying on them to sustain the arms industry on which their own Capitalist economies rely.

• Morally vacuous politicians who indulge in war-mongering to improve their electoral chances.

• Cowards who speak of ‘surgical strikes’ but shelter in safety far from the ‘theatre of war’.

• Simpletons who believe that wars have goodies and baddies, or that ‘We’ must always be the good guys and can act autonomously without serious analysis of a situation.

• The constructors of a weird hierarchy of horror in which chemical weapons are somehow less noble than terrifying ‘conventional weapons’ (or, indeed, nuclear arms), when, for the victims, the ultimate result is generally the same.

'Art Everywhere No. 47 (Bob & Roberta Smith, 'Make Art Not War'), Poster,  Nottingham,
September 2013.

Frankly, they can all go to Hell in a handcart.  It’s just a shame they always try to take the rest of us with them.

(…Just saying).

[1.]:  George Orwell, ‘1984’, London, Secker & Warburg, 1949.

Bob & Roberta Smith Stick It To The Man

Bob & Roberta Smith (Patrick Brill) Speaks Out...

In a recent post I alluded to it being part of an Artists’ role to bear witness and respond creatively to events without necessarily hoping to change them.  In that case I was discussing the weather, in which context it’s probably only realistic to admit to a degree of helpless fatalism, (although it might be an idea to stop fuelling the fire, at least).  Sometimes, however, in the field of human affairs, it becomes insufficient to merely observe and record.

Bob & Roberta Smith, 'Make Art Not War', Commercial Paint On Plywood,  1997 

For many years, I consciously tried to avoid engaging with politics.  My general position would have included the notion that “REALITY’ is so much bigger and more engaging than the self-serving, factional disputes of various narrow interest groups.  Perhaps the cappuccino fuelled vacuity of Blairite Britain afforded the anaesthetic luxury of such detachment but it’s a position that is becoming increasingly difficult to justify.  The recent palaver over Madam Thatcher and her funeral reminded me of how revved up I used to get about the stunts she and her gang pulled in the 80s and early 90s.  I guess it’s no coincidence that many of the same feelings have returned.

Bob & Roberta Smith, 'Join The Art Party', Commercial Paint On Panel, 2012

Everyone must find their own breaking point and degree of engagement but it seems too lame for the injustices and moral/cultural bankruptcy being inflicted on us under the cover of the current crisis in Capitalism, to go overlooked or unprotested.  Thus, I find myself drawn again to the work of Bob & Roberta Smith, (actually the British artist Patrick Brill).  It is, I think, one example of how to accept the task of social engagement with humour and goodwill but retain artistic integrity.

Mark Tichner, 'We Want Responsibility To Be Shared By All',
Ink Jet Print On Aluminium, 2004

I first noticed Smith & Smiths’ work, (I’ll maintain the fiction for the purposes of this post), a few years ago when I started to research various artists who had used text and typography within visual art.  Like the work of his contemporary, Mark Tichner, it draws upon identifiable popular stylistic tropes in pursuit of a conceptual, philosophical or political project.  Like many figures from the turn of the century YBA moment in British art, he achieves this in a more visually entertaining, less theoretical way than much of the ‘hard’, Conceptualism of the 60s and 70s.  Indeed, this may actually be the most useful legacy of ‘BritArt’ in general.  At the remove of a few years it feels easier to assess much of the work produced during that period and to separate the more interesting or insightful examples from the mere shock tactics and savvy marketing usually associated with it.  As ever, it’s more revealing to view an artist’s output over the long haul than merely in terms of any introductory splash they might make.

Just Going To Need To Watch The Spelling Though B & R

In Smith & Smith’s case, the appropriation of a slightly wonky, naïve folk style, somewhere between traditional signwriting and the homemade political placard now seems less ironically Post Modern and more directly appropriate to the times we find ourselves in.  Since he first emerged we’ve witnessed global economic meltdown, a vocal Anti-Capitalist movement, the rise of blind religious hatreds and plenty of geopolitical upheaval.  Here, the biggest issues revolve around the pernicious attempts by our current government to dismantle much of what makes Britain tolerable, nominally to repay the massive public/private debts of a mismanaged economy, but also to maintain the fiction that only a privatised marketplace can provide a sustainable, fulfilling future for everyone.  Protest placards, street-level ‘situations’ and underground or community action once more feel like the currency of our times rather than mere cultural references.

Bob & Roberta Smith, Public Art Event, Details Unknown 

There have always been plenty of High Art in-jokes in Smith/Smith’s work and a certain element of philosophical content behind the humourous facade.  If this marks him out as a poseur or left wing Art Luvvie to some, it is to ignore that, for many practitioners, the very act of producing art is an intrinsically political and/or philosophical pursuit.  Smith & Smith simply puts those elements at the front end of his art.  He has also demonstrated a willingness to bring his practice to ‘the street’ via numerous public art events and campaigns of an essentially democratic, inclusive nature.  Perhaps it is his refusal to leave specialist knowledge and an engagement with ideas marginalized within galleries for the delectation of an elite that actually annoys some.

Bob & Roberta Smith, 'Letter To Michael Gove', Commercial Paint On Board, 2012

This willingness to allow the worlds of ‘serious’ Art, philosophy and street politics to run into each other seems particularly vital if the Government-promoted philistinisation of Britain and attempted down-grading of creativity and critical thinking within education is to be resisted.  As many people have already twigged, this looks like an attempt to reshape the intellectual landscape and hijack the future for ideological ends, (having already claimed the past and wrecked the present).  Education Secretary, Michael Gove’s appalling vision of the future appears to be one in which, having been denied a financial stake in society, large sectors of the population are also to be denied the chance to even imagine an alternative to bleak utilitarianism or find artistic expression within themselves.  I also note, with a shrug, Culture Secretary Maria Miller’s recent assertion that the only Art activities worth funding are those of direct benefit to the floundering economy.  Most of us involved with this stuff know it’s actually a bit more important than that, regardless of whether you do or don't make a living from it.

Bob & Roberta Smith, 'Art Party Messages', Commercial Paint On Plywood, 2012

R&B Smith’s open letter to Gove of 2011 has been rendered technically obsolete in its specifics by the abandonment of the proposed EBacc qualification. However it is absolutely on the money in general terms, still very relevant, and funny into the bargain.  I’d urge you to read it in full.  I also note the central role played by the artist in promoting The Art Party, a lobby group that appears to be both philosophical and artistic as well as politically campaigning in nature.  It’s membership criteria require simply that one be a creative individual on some level, highlighting an intent that is communal and far wider than the merely factional.  It also reflects the status of arts as a fundamental strand of human experience, rather than an irrelevant, minority specialisation as Gove and his ilk appear to claim, (and I’m ready to lose it big style with anyone using the word ‘Hobby’)

Bob & Roberta Smith, 'Art Party Conference Poster', 2013

It’s all too easy to become despondent about the state of things and so, encouraging having artists like Bob & Roberta Smith around just now.  The charming seaside jollity of his poster for the upcoming Art Party conference in November proves it’s possible to become actively engaged, produce valid art in opposition and remain cheerfully positive in the process.

...To Maintain High Visibility For The Arts