np - Introduction for book

Sad Fuck

“Pour me another double cliché, you can’t write a song that’s never been song”

Chumbawumba Shh


There are approximately 114.2 million worldwide blogs, and this does not account for the estimated 72 million Chinese blogs.


So here I am writing an introduction? My first thought is who cares, who will even read these words. I suspect no one, and suddenly I’m filled with the criticism leveled at me on a comment enabled You Tube film. I made and posted the film in response to a collaborative project between myself, Chris Hodson and John Lunburg*. The video entitled Nasa Breach has had 346 hits and one comment which reads; Sad Fuck... It hasn’t bothered me until now, and suddenly it hurts.

But before you level this same criticism at us, let me explain why we are writing this blog;

An archive of our practice.
Chris, although ten years my junior is an absolute equal, we share common ground and an understanding about what art means to us at this point or at least at the point of departure on starting the MA proper. We can converse easily without worrying about the other formulating a judgment about our relative positions, we compete with ideas and concepts but not in understanding, we give up as much as we gain from art, language use and understanding. The blog is a relaxed venue of amateur art criticism, publish and be dammed doesn’t really exist amongst those 114.2 million blogs. A postmodern sercurity of infinite insignificance. So in the first instance we wrote this blog for ourselves, a record of our respective MA’s.

Question Education.
Also, Chris and I have questioned art education. Chris believes the reason he has found a voice or an early praxis is because of the type of preliminary arts education he received. I also believe the reason why I am only just coming to into my ‘voice’ is because I have been held back by my art education. Chris studied a product design course and happened across Fine Art through a multi-disciplinary route. My ‘pathway’ was via A level art Foundation Art and BA Fine Art. I missed the point and floundered in a world of art that I thought should be technically skilled, lone authored, self-obsessed and critically reflective. A seminal moment was the realisation that a syndicate sponsored horse named ‘A Real Work of Art’ which ran in the 4.30 at Chepstow was actually a piece by an artist named Mark Wallinger. Something clicked and my work changed.
This blog was not intended as any sort of critique on education however myself, in particular, have developed or am developing some opinions about art education.

I attended a very good symposium organised by artists and curators Celine Condorelli (support structure) and Andreas Lang (public works) 'Institution and Initiative’. Matthew Cornford and Sam Curtis gave two very good talks, questioning education. Matthew alluded to a new realisation that the independent art school is very much a thing of the past and all Universities are in danger of becoming the same. A bureaucratic homogenization of modules, ‘professional practice’ and rationales tethered by economic factors that have no bearing and restrict research based investigative art practice. Sam Curtis proposed his own education that of the self-imposed residency and setting up his own multi-inter-disciplinary school within Goldsmiths. Chris and myself have invited other artists, critics, writers and collectors to contribute to this debate and I hope you enjoy reading them here.

A Rolling Project
By buying this book you are supporting another collaboration between two or more artists who would like to move their online blog into an off-line published diary.
Again thank you for buying this the inaugural edition.

So there you have a few reasons why I have made this book, Chris, I’m sure has some more of his own. As to the You Tuber critic, user name 'rmarther10' thank you for your valued comments.