Jill Randall – Tate Project

Today I looked at the direct experiences of artists working in industry.Its amazing how articulate these artists were-was it because a lot of them taught in art schools?-they were able to theorise their work and approach, and describe and quantify experiences really well.Did this validate them and APG? What about very good but very inarticulate artists?

“Stuart Brisley. Statement made for Penrose award.” TGA 20042/2/2/4. APG Statements. Stuart Brisley. c1969. Not numbered.
….”Under these conditions the relationship between radical art and economic survival is a chronic dilemma.Those artists who relate commercially become cultural heroes-they endure the internal stress of knowing that their apotheosis is in conflict with their art.The celebration of materialism is ritualised.Those who reject materialism as the ultimate value underlying art, reject society as it is, and can either withdraw completely, or operate within an alternative set of values….The artist then embracing a humanist position becomes political, he does not necessarily assume a political ideology, buts acts politically because of the nature of humanist art as a generator for change…..
To withdraw from contact with the prescribed channels for marketing art is to make a political act.To make an art which cannot be marketed through existing channels is to make a political artistic act, i.e. the nature of the work, its process and its exposure involves a re-ordering of the way art is made, the way it behaves, and is related to….He may cease to think as a specialist, as an isolated figure, a decorator and become an integral part of the climate of thought, feeling and action which generates the alternative……For the artist embracing these conditions, art as form is irrelevant, art as action all important without recourse to the past or future and without thought for art operating eventually as a monument to the maker…”

Stuart Brisley and Garth Evans had a strong personal response to the factory environments they had access to -and reacted in different ways. against what they found intolerable human conditions in the factories. Garth Evans had a nervous breakdown, Stuart Brisley became politically active.

From 20042/2/5/4/1.Stuart Brisley’s Report following visits to Hille factories.
…I left thinking that the most critical factor in any artist/industrial relationship was the way in which the artist could relate, not only to the working procedure of the factory, but that really in order to do this he had to establish healthy relationships with the key men in the factory…

Garth Evans British Steel Corporation Report.1969-71.…” Generally, the difficulty I have experienced so far in relation to making sculpture in steel arises primarily in its absence of constraints on my working procedure.The vast range of basic forms available, together with the freedom-in making something-to add to and subtract, literally indefinately, is not a prescription calculated to result in the production of finite objects..”TGA 20042/2/2/9 1-6. APG Statements.

…”So far, in terms of the production of completed sculptures I have been unsuccessful.The basic mechanical skills required were fairly easily acquired to my satisfaction. I have made a very considerable number of beginnings and have envisaged a good many more.I have experienced much excitement but find that the overriding activity has been one of asking questions of myself..”TGA 20042/2/2/9/1/ 1 “Report on progress”. Garth Evans. October 1970.