It's here to take the edge off the monotony of your everyday life...
In the art world today there's no shortage of artists working in collaboration with the public. There's hardly a London school kid in sight that hasn't been forced into 'getting involved' in the name of art. The poor things are fought over like the underdogs of the art world, and dragged from one bawdy installation that 'helps the community' to another. So it's no surprise to find out that the Deptford X festival which takes place this September wants to “tap into the everyday life of Deptford”.
Having been enrolled as the lead contributor, local resident and artist Mark Tichner has worked with students at Deptford Green School to produce work that can be seen on refuse trucks around the area – I'm sure many have already made the joke about it being 'rubbish'... So here we have an opportunity to discuss whether the end product of public collaborations are actually any good, or whether the work that gets made is just being dumbed down in an attempt to get people interacting and involved in art.
There's a positively massive divide in the contrast between high brow contemporary art for the elite and the veritable boom of trying to get everyone involved whilst securing a little arts funding along the way. But does getting the general public involved in art make them actually like it any more?
Design is ingrained all around us. It's everywhere you look, because everything man has made has been designed. There's a lot of beauty in things, objects, and we might appreciate that the aesthetically pleasing makes life a little more interesting, if not bearable. Advertising campaigns are annoying, sometimes funny and infinitely persuasive, pervading our everyday world without us even noticing that them that often. Take the example of the T Mobile dancing flash mobs, with people itching to take part – community art or massive viral campaign? The point is...and I'm getting there eventually...is that as soon as you label stuff as 'Art' you could just as well get a gun and aim it quite steadily at your foot. There's almost a stigma attached to it, if you were to go that far. Because as soon as you mention 'Art' there is the presumption that it must take skill and time, it must take talent and it should be beautiful or thought-provoking. Saying that it just cheers people up, makes the world a little nicer and gets people having fun maybe aren't the best of reasons for some people.
In this respect then it takes a lot of sense when Tichner says of the work at the Deptford X festival, “It doesn’t matter what ‘it’ happens to be, but ‘it’ is experienced and ‘it’ is lived. Daily discoveries uncovered by chance encounters on busy streets. Not art but everyday life.” Our everyday lives are infused with a vast array of images and targeted marketing already, so why not add some public art to the mix of our everyday experience of the world, just minus the ulterior motives of trying to get you to buy a certain product.
With over twenty emerging artists taking part in the festival you can expect the Deptford area to be awash with more than a little vitality. Intermingled in different locations the art popping up includes an audio work of bird song installed at the train station, video works in shop windows, sound bytes from residents from a dedicated phone line and a series of free tai-chi workshops. As well as this they'll be interventions, experimental projects, discreet artworks, residencies and performances. And you don't need to make up pretentious rubbish about what it says or what it means; it's just interesting and exciting and...it's...art.
Deptford X is on the 24th September to the 3rd of October and is taking place at various sites in Deptford.
Click here for the Deptford X website.
Click here to see all London exhibitions.
Click here for things to do in London.
Return to Spoonfed's London Art homepage.
Image Credits: Left: Sue Lawes, Creekery. Right: Annabel Tilley, Drawing the likeness of a brick.
Add an event
Minimalism, Van Dyke, Mondrian - Editor's Choice, Exhibitions
From Wednesday 15th February Colin Glen @ TJ Boulting Tangled complexity meets stark minimalism in t...