Wednesday Oct 3rd Slow Burn
Today I came across a letter to the APG from artist Joanna Mowbray, a sculptor who was an inspirational and influential teacher when I was studying at Falmouth School of Art many years ago!!! I remembered that she had undertaken a residency at a factory in Yorkshire, where she is based, so I look forward to following that one up. The letter was in response to an advert APG put in the then youthful Artists Newsletter magazine calling for artists . This was the early 1980s and the idea was new. It was all an analogue world back then – typed (on old-fashioned typewriters!) and hand-written letters, notes, telegrams, flyers, the only way of capturing and communicating information. How its all changed. Wonder if APG would have been more prominent with today’s ease of networking and communication?
..” APG stresses that it is not about employment for artists. Formed in the 1960s the group aimed for the placement of individuals in association with organisations of all kinds-industries, schools, universities, banks, hospitals,government departments, town-planning authorities-in fact any service organisation…. for a significant period of time. Believing in the artists ability to ‘prefigure tastes and priorities of the period that is coming’. The artist would go into an organisation to carry out far-reaching dialogue and analysis with the staff and resources, and perhaps in the end realise works that demonstrated the strong level of interaction between art and organisation.The artist would have the status of an autonomous professional whose work has a fundamental role in the social, economic and conceptual structure of the community.(From unnamed telegram,TGA 20042/1/1/13)What I’m really interested to discover is how this works out in practice and how the artist is accepted into the organisation on an equal footing- that process of negotiation which I have encountered in my own projects, and which I describe as a process of “slow burn”.
Proposed APG Conference in late 1981-Theme – Reconstruction of European Culture. It was to be the first multi-disciplinary assembly – the greatest generator of new ideas and initiatives since Marx and Engels.
Very ambitious plans.Were they realised? we shall see.
I am researching the Archive primarily as a means of reflecting on, and evaluating my own work, and deciding where it should go next. I regard the research itself, and the new thinking it promotes, as a creative act .Its a real privilege and gives me a thrill of excitement to able to look at original material, and read the ‘truth’ of the APG from the artists, in its time, rather than how it has been represented.
