At Cern, where they use the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments to study the fundamental laws of nature, they collide particles of matter together at close to the speed of light in order to give the physicists clues about the very nature of being. The project has no practical or commercial use other than to ‘ask the biggest questions that we can’.

In describing this work the Director said he considered that the only other people working in the same way as his team were perhaps certain artists and curators…

 

More than anything else I understand myself as an active practitioner within this experimental field of fine art and critical theory. I am someone who thinks about and produces ‘objects’, and at times my thoughts and the objects they produce have been written about and have reappeared as if by magic around the world, interacting and colliding with other thoughts and notions.

Actions I have takenand  words I have spoken havebeen cited in academic papers, and some of my ‘objects’, having being negotiated and exchanged for relatively large sums of money, are now both on display and in storage as elements within ‘art’ collections, they are a small part of the structures and contexts that make up our cultural landscape. I have observed this landscape to be at times contingent, weighted, irrational, corrupt and perhaps ultimately meaningless, yet i continue, confused, nihilistic and enthralled.

Having no trust fund nor professional income except through my studio work (my choice), and in an attempt to live the artist’s life full time, I have chosen to observe and engage with these highly stratified systems of the Art World.

This has included going through various stages of formal art education, collecting a large number of professional friends and peers, networking and promotion, being funded through the formality of the arts council, the caprice of a patron or two, and both within and outside of a relationship with an arts dealer sold enough work at high enough prices to keep both the project and the illusion going (if not strong , at least going). During this time I have observed the trajectories of various art stars, movements, galleries, booms and busts, and have at all times continued to consider this within the framework of my practice and just how to understand, measure and value my own endeavours.

 

Many years ago, I noticed that there was a  strange disconnect between the process of making and producing my work and the metrics of acceptance or critique, the feedback being almost irrelevant and secondary to the process itself However the pleasure of on one occasion exchanging something I was considering throwing away to make space, for twelve thousand pounds worth of fifty pound notes is an experience I am happy to repeat at any time (although now I find it almost impossible to throw anything away, just in case). Photography as both a familial foundation and a constant element within my own practice, continues to be one of the most problematic areas of my (re)search, both intellectually, aesthetically and even emotionally.

My brother Stefan was one of the rising stars of mid 1960’s photographic scene, think ‘Blow Up’ with me as a ten year old at the Cheyne Row party scene. I both observed and took part in his photography, modelling the first space hopper in Europe for the Daily Express in 1968, inhaling the fumes from his developing trays in his Holland Park darkroom, and since he died in a quintessentially sixties car crash (a quite literal collision of the working class and the aristocratic), i have inhabited along with his orphaned work, the void he left.

 

This has made an interesting foundation for my very private practice, choosing to eschew the commercial for the intimacy of a studio, the billboard for the gallery, the archive for the collection.

 

So where does the value of an artwork come from if not from praise, celebrity or money?

Marx talks of commodity fetishism, of the social relationships (much like a religion) which give the commodity its value, as opposed to the intrinsic value of work. Duchamp shattered the relationship of art to the craftsmanship of the artist with his readymades, challenging the traditional value systems of the art world and perhaps attempting to decouple commerce from the work itself, a process taken further by performance based work, auto-destructive art, and the conceptualism of later modernism: works existing simply as description or instruction.

Context here becomes key, where an everyday activity can be promoted to a work of art through intention and agreement, the intention of the artist and the agreement of an audience and within the context of a wider academic tradition.  A photograph shot for an (advertising) client remains just that, whereas an identical shot within the context of a fine art practice can be displayed in any collection or museum. In the inverse, through provenance and fetish, the preparations and rejects of an established artist can be elevated to high priced collectables. Recently a large collection of Bacon ephemera ordered destroyed by the artist was kept safe by his driver,and despite being rejected by his estate, yet gained both provenance and amultimillion high value by a donation of several pieces being accepted into its collection by a world class museum. Random Warhol prints, possibly not even seen by the artist, may have the seal of the Warhol Foundation approval, whilst others remain rejected, sacrificed to the needs of market scarcity and commerce. Art tasked with the same existential quest of high science (Cern) becoming the talisman of the artist as shaman, a cheque signed by a Picasso or Dali, having more value than the cheque itself, a hurried glance through layers of darkened bullet proof glass being a ‘moment’ with the Mona Lisa… art collected like stamps or cigarette cards…..

Context…...Is context really all?

My answer would be yes and no, obviously.

 

Art plainly exists and at so many levels, High Art, Low Art, Tribal, Social, Political. It plainly exists as both a function of and a need of human society, the breathtaking communications from the paintings of Lascaux (breathtaking viewed through our contemporary context perhaps, they may just be adverts?), through to Nasa sending Blind Willy Jonson’s sublime blues to the stars (EMI blocked sending the Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ for copyright reasons), strongly suggest we have a fundamental need for art.

I have wandered through the seemingly endless matrix-like shelves of the Hulton Getty archive in London where my brother’s work is preserved and monetised for editorial. Each shelf containing hundreds of boxes, each box containing hundreds of photographs, negatives, moments, notes, joys tragedies, politics, births, lives and death; contingent, weighted, irrational, and perhaps ultimately meaningless. The systems through which we value, collect, and preserve are far from perfect yet in many respects they mirror the creation of art itself, it is a practice that will continue and can never encompass everything, I remain enthused, nihilistic, engaged, enthralled and committed and en route asking what for me are ‘some of the biggest questions i can’.