No More Factory Farms; No More TV Dinner Biennials; Eat Money, Spend Food; Leave The Art Fair and Never Come Back…

Abstract

In the days where global economic recession is looming over our heads, whilst food is genetically modified and education is run like a business, it leaves many of us feeling somewhat disillusioned and disenchanted. Nothing is more true when it comes to choosing a career, or a path to follow and goals to set. To make the decision to become an official art student we are provided with a societal frown of “What are you going to do with that?” or, “ How are you going to make money?” and, “ What exactly is it preparing you for?” The latter is actually an interesting question because it encapsulates exactly what my practice led research is all about. How can art become more relevant? How can art students develop the best environment in which to become artists of consequence? This is an extravagant way of exploring and subverting urban and social environments; and experiencing and experimenting with the role of the student, the student artist and artistic proposals. Some examples of my work resonate with the potential of some living conditions and the state of freedom in the paradigm of the art world and the society of today. We know that it is important to scale-up our spaces in which we include ourselves, to consider and address our limitations (or lack of) and what we actually want to create and show for our existence as artists and ultimately, as human beings. This proposal borrows from my earlier ideas of “conceptual existential architecture”. A term in which I have coined for myself to discuss and examine the structure of an environment that the architecture of a space creates. Space could be interpreted as a gallery, or studio – to dialogue and even mental capacities. I am referring both to the architecture and its spatial discourses, but also a more humanist advocate of what is offered in terms of the actual word ‘architecture’.