C102
Article
Vox
Pop:
Una
Walker
Artist
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Installation
shot, Sight Specific, Kilkenny Arts Festival, 2002:
foreground: Sean Scully: Union
Blue Grey, 1998, oil on canvas;
photo Colm Hogan; courtesy Kilkenny Arts Festival;
background: Seán Shanahan: Untitled,
2001, oil on MDF;
photo Colm Hogan; courtesy Kilkenny Arts Festival
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The contemporary visual-arts infrastructure
in Ireland is composed of various elements - a small number
of national institutions, a small number of local-authority-financed
galleries, a small number of independent, but publicly
funded arts centres, and a growing number of local-authority-managed
and funded arts centres. This final group may seem the
most problematic in trying to combine too many functions,
which results in the visual arts losing out, but the same
problems encountered by visual artists at this level permeate
the whole visual-arts infrastructure.
The one thing the various arts facilities up and down
the country have in common is the need to justify their
income from the public purse. As the finance and general-purposes
committees, or their equivalent, meet around the country
to allocate capital or revenue funding for the arts, the
one justification we can be fairly sure will not be used
in relation to the visual arts is "this will best serve
visual artists and their needs in creating and presenting
work."
Spending on the arts is justified on the basis of their
instrumental value, not their intrinsic value. Art is
now seen as fulfilling many functions - promoting social
inclusion, creating jobs, improving the environment, etc.,
etc. As an element of the creative-industries sector the
arts are one of "those activities which have their origin
in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have
a potential for wealth and job creation ..." In doing
this they join "advertising, architecture, crafts, design,
fashion, film, interactive leisure software, music, the
performing arts, publishing, software, television, and
radio, in close inter-relationships with tourism, hospitality,
museum and galleries and the heritage sector." (DCMS 1998)
These are the reasons which politicians use to justify
spending money on the arts; they do so, in their terms,
because the public will benefit. Artists on the other
hand tend to make art for totally selfish reasons: they
make art because they want to. Despite the wide range
of different media employed by different artists we share
common concerns. In making art, and continuing to make
art, we hope to maintain integrity in both the processes
we use and the work we produce. We hope to be honest.
(Of course, being honest, a decent income and a bit of
fame would be good too.) At the opening of Sight Specific
at this year's Kilkenny Arts Festival, Theo Dorgan commended
the work as an affront to the economists and politicians
who viewed everything in monetary terms. Good art embodies
honesty and integrity; it may also be difficult to understand
and engender uncomfortable emotions. None of these are
funding priorities.
Politicians allocate funding to arts facilities for their
reasons, and artists make art for entirely different reasons.
The fact that these spaces are often unsuitable and their
revenue funding inadequate is therefore not surprising.
It seems unlikely that politicians will alter their position
on why they fund the arts. On 5 September John Reid, Secretary
of State for Northern Ireland, paid tribute to the arts
community at a reception in Hillborough Castle for arts
professionals and supporters. I have no idea who was at
this reception - certainly not the artists who were at
the four exhibition openings in Belfast that night - however,
the music ensemble Camerata Ireland 'provided the entertainment'.
Maybe we visual artists should be grateful; politicians
may not be willing to fund what we want to do, but at
least we don't have to entertain them.
