Jill Randall – Tate Project

Revisiting some of the industry correspondence from the early days not viewed yet to see if there is any more insight into how they operated. The unsuccessful company approaches are in themselves very interesting-there’s lots of evidence of Barbara Steveni’s relentless persistence with follow-up requests (all very polite and friendly), often over years.She just refused to take no for an answer or give up and was very persuasive.

What were the reasons the companies turned them down?
Usually economic
Not prepared to take risk
Lack of relevance to organisation
Didn’t understand APG concept
Liability of having artist
Suspicion as to what they might get up to

TGA 20042/1/2/32/12. Letter from Peter King , Massey-Ferguson to Barbara Steveni, 11th May 1973 .Typical response due to economic reasons:-….”This is because of the financial pressures we face at the present time and various other difficulties, which mean that we just have to concentrate all our efforts on short-term business problems.”

Could be interesting to revisit the reasons industries did decline from the letters. Early letters to industry talk about
“artist-with-company” relationships
Quite odd and alien-sounding concept now-but of course it was new-there was no precedent, no ‘artists residencies’, ‘art in context’, ‘contextualised practice’, ‘art in a social context’, ‘socially-engaged practice’- these terms did not exist and this type of practice did not exist.

TGA 20042/1/2/35/14 2 of 2.
From report on meeting with Advertising firm Rolls & Parker.
….Norman Manners, a director of Rolls & Parker, asked about APG and what a company might get out of the relationship we were suggesting. BL….stressed that the success of this arrangement lay in the willingness in the first place of the company to accept the artist on his terms as an artist – not to be useful to the firm…”

(This is really radical stuff and makes me realise how far we have moved away from this, that the artist now undertaking a commission or residency practically always has to justify their existence, has to be seen to have a useful purpose , has to earn any renumeration by products, results.The idea of asking for quite substantial amounts of money for doing nothing in particular is truly audacious!!.)

Interesting little quote from back of letter TGA 20042/1/2/35/22  inn7o statement:-
“….The exhibition will be in 3 phases-installation, conference, and public summary.
By concentrating on ‘role’ and ‘context’, the intention will be to emphasise the person and the process.
This is not to exclude ‘the object’ as an end-product, but rather to reverse the order in which value has hitherto been credited.The artist is a representative of this kind of reversed order.”

TGA 20042/1/2/44
Artist Placement Group
File of correspondence with Reed International Ltd, labelled, ‘Reed Paper Group’
[c 1969-1972]. Transcript from ‘APG talking to the Reed Paper Group’ 23rd October 1969…
(Rough spoken version but very interesting.)

…”APG was started in 1965 by a number of artists who were working in the areas between painting, sculpture, performance, film, and who’s obvious materials were the processes and products which belonged to industry.
The idea came out of the conviction that the artist has an important role to play in the total society and that he had a wider function than that of just a decorator or embellisher-and this function was not being supplied by the art world of the galleries and museums.
In other words, the artist was indicating an interest in the world outside rather than the protective area of his studio…
The artist doesn’t pretend to have the technical expertise that you have but what he does have is a direct link with the public’s unexpressed situation, and how it will be….

APG artists fees for placement with companies was £2000 per annum in 1974. What would this be in today’s money, nearly 40 years on? 10x that amount -£20,00 per annum? Really quite substantial. I don’t know of any artists residencies which would pay anything like that today, and would be heavily reliant on results, product, and numerous workshop/educational activities with people thrown in as a compulsory part of the commissioning process.