Friday 24 April 2015

Success breeds success?

A couple of "events" in the past week:
  • My submission for a competition for a public work of art on the Hoe was rejected.
  • I went to a talk by Marie Toseland, a conceptual artist, at Plymouth College of Art.
How are they related?

Well, they got me wondering about the proverb "nothing breeds success like success".

Marie seems to be riding a wave of success in getting residencies.  She recently completed a residency at the Tate St. Ives and she says that probably helped her get her latest one,  at the Royal College of Art.

I suspect that someone that's got credentials like this will beat me in a public art competition regardless of whether my idea is better than theirs.  It's less risky to pick someone that's accepted by the art establishment than picking someone like me, who's a relative outsider with not much of a track record.

I certainly felt like this on the Energy from Waste competition, where the selectors shortlisted mainly established artists even when they proposed ideas that didn't address the brief.  (See my previous whining on this topic.)  

Marie works "across media".  She combines objects with writing and music, and I have to admit, I don't understand or like her work much   Here's a couple of  examples:

This one's called "Being and Nothingness"

This one's called "FP" and is something Marie found in a fetish market.  She has no idea what it's for.  The original was rubber and Marie made copies of it in other materials, such as ceramic, trying to make them look as though they were rubber so they intrigued people.  She admits she's not very good at making stuff.    She showed these with sort of discordant music and people reciting, er, I guess you'd call them lyrics or poetry.

In some of her other work, she explores hidden surfaces, for instance by getting a dentist to make a mould of the inside of her mouth.   She's also trying to sell her wisdom teeth, which have been extracted, likening it to prostitution - making money from your body.

I think the ideas are quite interesting but (sorry) I like art to look beautiful.