Jill Randall – Tate Project

 

Today I gave some thought to the piece of writing I intend to do for submission to “Tate Papers”, their highly-respected, peer-reviewed on-line journal.The Tate Papers essay could be something to do with ‘success’ and ‘failure’, and what this meant to the artists and organisations/industries, maybe just focussing on 4-5 industry placements (which I have a lot of material on.) 5 artists in particular wrote in detail about their experiences with the workforce and management, what they did creatively, i.e. attempts to make work, and when and why things went wrong. I like this honesty.These would be good to use :-
Stuart Brisley at Hille Furniture. (Became politicised by experience. Some success but clashes with management. Spent a lot of time at factory).
George Levantis at Ocean Fleets, (Couldn’t match up to role of art-instructor, not all bad, but felt isolated and misunderstood for a lot of it. Made work.)
Garth Evans at British Steel (Had nervous breakdown-couldn’t really work. Had sympathy with workers and hated  factory environment. Didn’t work there much.)
Leonard Hessing, ICI Fibres. (controversial because of perceived patronisation of an informed workforce. Used factory purely to fabricate this work. Didn’t spend much time there.)
Ian Breakwell with DHSS (Controversial Broadmoor Report, told truth and didn’t like it. Managed to use experience as spur to practice.)

This is getting me excited by the research again – a chance to compare their experiences with each other, (Possibly NEVER DONE BEFORE) and in the broader context of APG History and Legacy in the light of all I now know.
AND, importantly, I can compare their experiences with my own at Magnesium Elektron and Parys Mountain Copper Mine.

The Raven Row APG Show, and its format for presenting lots of data looks perfectly acceptable now, but very radical in its time, paving the way for process as product, research as practice.