Something is still not quite right

'Below the surface' at the SSA
(bottom row, third from right)
Photo © 2013 Megan Chapman

Today I picked up my painting from this year's Scottish Society of Artists Annual Open Exhibition. Days like this are often ones of mixed emotion. There is an understandable sadness in taking work down and returning it to storage or the studio. We make our art to be seen and so taking it away from the eyes of the public is never a happy event. Added to this is the inference that the work has not sold, which has attendant to it worries about worth, as well as worries about paying the bills.

On the other hand, something precious we made is being returned to us. This may not seem like much consolation, however it is better than simply being depressed about all of the above.

The SSA show, which I was finally able to visit last week, was an excellent exhibition. With a wide range of painting, sculpture, drawing, printing and photography, it showcased what has clearly been a strong year in Scotland's creative arts. I truly felt honoured to be part of such a fantastic show. I was particularly pleased to note that conceptual art was at a minimum, with more of a concentration on objects that had actually been made by artists (which pleases me greatly). I believe this exhibition is one of the best I've seen in the RSA building for some years.

Sadly, not everything about the exhibition was great – lack of space was a glaring problem. The walls were crammed full, with many pieces so high up that it became very hard to see them. This was especially exasperating, because the calibre of work this year was so high.

Then there was the number of works on show. The SSA had again to team up with Visual Arts Scotland and the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour, in order to be able to meet the costs of holding their annual exhibitions in the RSA. This meant that between the three exhibitions, there must have been around a thousand works on show. There was no way to take them all in on one visit – although with the exhibitions running to only three weeks, one visit was likely to be all that most could manage.

Clearly there is a problem here. The expense of hosting an exhibition of new Scottish art in the very building that was built to showcase Scottish art has become so prohibitively expensive, that no one of the three main organisations that represent Scottish artists are able to show on their own. It is a very sad state of affairs.

Being an outsider to the organisation-level part of the art community, it appears that the RSA is being difficult in this instance, although there is every possibility that I am making an incorrect assumption. However, what is clear to see is that the building is not used all year round, with it often standing empty for a month or more at a time. 

Is three exhibitions in three short weeks really the best that can be done to represent our thriving and vibrant artistic community in our capital city? The City Art Centre also stands partially-empty for months on end. It is quite dispiriting.

On which subject, let me briefly mention the current exhibition at the Fruitmarket Gallery. Whatever is in there just now, is of the usual Fruitmarket standards: insipid, uninspired, meaning-free dross, spread thinly around what is a lovely space. I left, as usual, feeling dispirited and wondering what the hell is going on with art.

I'm glad this combination only happens once a year. To see such great work over-crammed into one gallery, mere minutes from another that is empty in pretty much every sense is not something that I'd care to experience more often.

Cash rules everying around me

On first appearances, the world of art and the world of banking would seem to have few similarities. However, on pondering the current show at the Fruitmarket Gallery, it occurred to me that there was at least one.

Showing until April 9th, Anna Barriball's exhibition 'Exhibition' fills both floors of the gallery. Walking in with no foreknowledge, we were at first perplexed and then, finally, made somewhat angry by what we saw. Two dimensional objects, such as a five pound note, coloured in with ink; pencil rubbings made of doors and windows; rolls of graphite or paint-covered paper placed against the walls; found photos spotted with ink; a whole wall of stencil-patterning.

Here is art that is made using techniques common to primary education, masquerading as interdisciplinary work where "drawings are also sculptures, sculptures are drawings". These are basic techniques being exhibited as elitist art and I was utterly disengaged by them.

Without reading about the work, I saw nothing here but surface; a gallery of superficial 'art'. After reading the exhibition guide, which uses several hundred words to say almost nothing, I felt no more disposed to the work. More to the point, the long-winded descriptions of the pieces in fact angered me.

Anna Barriball, Untitled, 2009.
Pencil on Paper, 218 x 134 cm.
Private Collection.

"Much of the large-scale work in this exhibition Barriball makes through a process similar to taking a rubbing of an object: pressing with pencil or brush onto paper attached to different surfaces, directly transferring the texture of a window, wall, shutters or door onto paper. The body of dense markings possesses solidity, weight and mass despite the weightlessness of materials like paper and graphite. The direct transfer of surface texture and folds and creases produced through flattening volumetric elements creates a very close representation, a fusion of abstraction and figuration."

Of the ten paragraphs in the guide, of which this is one of the shorter ones, there is little more explanation of the work than this. Barriball's techniques are laid bare in rather grand eloquent terms, that try to disguise what could be seen as rather infantile mark making processes. If anything, rather than serve as an intermediary, an explanation that helps the views to enter the work, the guide slams the door in our faces. Like the art, it simply says that if you do not know and use the word 'liminal', you have no place here.

This exhibition is a retrospective and one where the majority of the pieces are called 'untitled'. There seems to be almost no evidence of artistic development, over the ten year period covered. Looking at the work, and the overblown claims made against it, it all seems like an inside joke that is trying really hard to be clever. This is exclusive and arrogant work and there is nothing here for anyone beyond the elite of the art world.

A few weeks ago, I commented on more conceptual art that is currently being exhibited in Edinburgh. In particular, I was unimpressed by Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing #1136, a large mural concept that has been licensed to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art for eleven months (does anyone know if LeWitt works with Ikea?). At that time, a phrase popped into my head, which I kept to myself. That phrase, 'fashion art', returned to my head after seeing Barriball's work.

Fashion as we understand it in terms of clothes, is a superficial world. There is nothing beyond what you see on the surface. As a label, Fashion Art could be thrown at any art form, however this morning I want to throw it at Conceptual Art, because for me it seems the closest fit. When a piece of art looks bizarre or ugly to the majority, when it makes no impression on us, does not move us, when even the artist seems to have no explanation for it, who would call it anything but Fashion Art? There is no depth here, no meaning. It is not holding up a mirror to life.

The more I am exposed to the world of Fashion Art, the more come to I dislike it. Who is this work made for and who is buying it? It feels like a giant house of cards, waiting for the slightest wind to knock it over, when we shall see the emperor's new clothes for what they are.

Another place we may well see at least the first part of that horribly mixed metaphor is in our banking system. Yet it is not the house of cards in banking that first drew me to writing this piece. The similarity I see in banking and art is in the people who populate it. In both worlds, the mass of those working there are simply doing what they can do to get by. The motivations between the two groups may well be very different, but we all work and eat and live in the world. However, it is at the top of the ladder than I see the biggest similarity.

On both sides are groups of people, whose importance and renumeration are impossible to justify. It is hard to see why they are in the positions they are in. To many, it appears they have reached their positions by either bluffing their way to the top, or having known the right people and said the right things.

In both practices, the existence of these people bring their entire worlds into disrepute. They grab all of the headlines, as well as farcical sums of money, while at the same time having almost no connection to those that make up the majority of their worlds. It hardly seems to be a balanced system.

For some time, top artists have been thought by the masses to be in this unjustifiable position. Only lately have top bankers been recognised as being similarly located. At this time, following a seemingly endless cycle of banking crises, many are questioning why we have such 'top bankers'. In the world or art, where fewer and fewer artists are able to make ends meet, I think we need to ask a similar question.