Goldsmiths: But is it Art School? – Yes.
A short piece about the Goldsmiths documentary…
BBC says… “The film explores the culture of contemporary art through the ambitions, influences and attitudes of the next generation of young British artists”.
Well it looks all too familiar to me…
The program takes me back to 1979 when I was about to leave Epsom School of Art and seems to give a reasonable snapshot of the anxieties and dreams (mostly anxieties) of those about to control their visibility and inevitably take responsibility for their work. In my class of 79 all that was said was “… off you go , oh and by the way you’re pretty unlikely to get a job doing this“. It is indeed true that when all the cushioned studying is done, only your work remains and you will need to know just a little about what the hell you have been doing for the past few years.
Fortunately this dip into art education-world has none of the pomposity, novelty and stupidity of ‘School of Saatchi’… and I like that.
The four main student players are clearly a tad mixed-up, but that’s really to be expected given the clips of their advising tutors and their super-pontificating. The klepto-shitter Roisin is a red herring and should really have been on SoS. But, the others are only mildly confused and of these, there is only one (Ian) who actually knows that he is… this is a big plus. In Ian I recognise the self-doubt and familiar uncertainty that are so important in the creative process. This doesn’t hold back the other two guys who have their rigid processes and plans all sorted. They execute pieces with military precision and blinkered determination, not stopping to question the content, the product. Blue Curry wanted to say something interesting about his work but he can’t, thankfully he had to hand a strategically pre-written scrawl to convince us that he is truly ‘Saatchi’d’. Whereas one-trick cow Thomas shows just how desperate he is to milk as much as he can with limited resources.
Have these people been a little let down by Goldsmiths? There appears to be a distance between Ian and the tutors. Maybe I’m reading it wrong (on screen) but this doesn’t seem to be the time to start explaining any work as a ‘painting about painting’. Perhaps king tut Gerard should own the problem and not be making throw-away comments like “… there seems to be a flaw in your education” – that would be the education that he is part responsible for, right? Tutor Mabb at least makes some effort and delivers a few gems to camera with a hint of honesty. Rightly he identifies that the social skills of artists are probably more relevant today than ever. So, surely that was part covered in the course? Not sure I saw it in play during the program, but it’s reassuring to know that these days spin is equally treated in relation to content.
I await part two with interest… do the tutors apologise for not taking their responsibilities a little more seriously?… does Roisin get her collar felt and say “it’s a fair crap guv“?… does Thomas lose his paint-gun and have to return to the armory day job?.. does Blue abandon the idea of using found objects and change his name to Thai Green?… and does Ian discover that the BHSAD mission to produce elite Russian design professionals to compete in the world marketplace is something he want’s to be part of?… and do any of them emerge with the ability to pass practical and theoretical information on to others?