Sunsets, Skylines and Semesters

So the sun is setting on Semester One of my Fine Art BA and the staff very kindly provided Fine Art festivities in the form of lecture from visiting artist Doug Fishbone followed by mulled wine.

Now if you missed this you missed a treat - Laura's mulled wine recipe was legendary with rumours of sloe gin.

Wolverhampton Art School - View from the 7th floor

Doug Fishbone too was a treat with his anecdotes of Art Practice in context. If you saw a shed load of bananas by the roadside in Latin America you may not be surprised but what if you saw them outside the National Gallery in London?

It might just make you pause for a while and ask the question: What the.........?

Doug talked about context affecting art and his curiosity with this takes him to great lengths including:

Producing and starring in a 'Nollywood film'

Creating a Leisure land mini golf course

Working with a hypnotised audience.

Doug also introduced us to the Fake art industry in China - countless masterpieces being copied with varying degrees of accuracy. So could a reputable art gallery be persuaded to replace one of their own precious collection with a fake? It could.

Contributing to this 'art in context' were the visitors who were asked to identify which painting in the collection might be a fake - in the end only 11% were able to. The interest in the project led to a fourfold increase in attendance.

Is all the work in an art gallery real?

Apparently not and fakery in the art world is a huge problem.

Only at the end were the two pieces shown side by side - the one on the right is the fake.

Doug was very generous in sharing with us his own working process and all the things he has learned along the way about pursuing an idea. He emphasised the need for a good project description almost as a first step in creating a piece of work and certainly as an essential part of pitching a project.

There were a few notable mantras including:

'Don't be afraid to hustle' 'What have you got to lose' 'no shame in rejection'.

Then there was the classic "Can you tell me what your standard artist fee is?"

There was much more - and as I said if you missed it you missed a treat.

Sunset at St. John's Swindon.

As the sun sets on this semester I am very grateful to the staff of the Fine Art department for all they have done to make our learning interesting - compelling even. As a part-time student I find it hard limiting myself to the modules I have to attend and declining the others, so much is on offer. Such is the generosity of the department that there really is no discrimination between full time and part time - a part timer can be as full time as she wants - but just take longer to complete the degree. But to do justice to my other calling I sometimes have to resist the newer art student calling within me.

What surprises me is that not everyone feels the same! It seems so often that it is the younger full time students at the beginning of their art career who are absent. It is a great pity, they don't know what they're missing and perhaps there is a truth in the saying about 'youth being wasted on the young!'