ARTISTS TALKING

# 2 [16 July 2008]

To read this blog is like getting backstage access to a Paul Daniel's show.  I am giving away all the secrets to the magic. Take note: 'Beardism', in its huge and monstrous form, is an alternative reality and exists only in the mind of the believer.  Like the child who realised the emperor was naked, I saw only canvas on a wall but it transpires that there is more to this than meets the eye.  All art needs a context and for the 'Beardists' this is the realm of conception.  Not conceptual art as I know and love it but the actual act of conceiving a concept by suspending your disbelief (or for disbelief insert 'suspend conviction of what is known to be true').  I do not mean interpretation of a piece of work intended to be read in possible formal, subjective, symbolic, semiotic sense but a complex orchestration of myth.  And it's messing with my (artists') belief system......

There is cheeky trickery in inventing an art movement out of an absurd symbol (overgrown facial hair) and creating a whole history of artefacts; writings, sculptures, a network of fictitious artists and a complex ideology.  I am in danger of stepping over the mark by dispelling the illusion and have been cautioned to tread carefully but this blog is essential as a critical overview.  Art is imitating life which previously imitated art.....  

The project's growth so far has been online and the artists have become detached from their real life identities.  The physical presentation of the 'Contemporary Beardists' show is not until mid October but the sheer inflation of the 'movement' to date suggests that the whole thing is becoming bigger than the sum of it's parts.  The ironic thing is the 'Beardists' are in danger of actually becoming a new movement without meaning to.  I might call it the 'Brand New Romantics'.

# 1 [8 July 2008]

Contemporary Beardism is keeping me awake at 2am.  Not out of worry or concern but just out of excitement.  I am co ordinating the month long show at the Crompton Tavern in Derby and it is starting to occupy my dreams already although it doesn't kick off until October.  The Beardists are Liam Sharp, Ali Powers, Adam Starfish Dutton, Chris Tree and Mat Chell.  All blokes with beards and paintbrushes and all from very different backgrounds.  The disparity of having the paintings by a tattoo artists showing alongside those of a comic artist is ripe for the evenings of debate I want to programme into the run.  Is drawing subversive, why is comic art continually marginalized as a commercial side dish, can Derby sustain an art movement and just how radical is a presentation of paint on canvas in a local in Derby? What is great for me is having the freedom to oversee all this without showing my own work.   Curation is a strange pursuit and already in my mind threads of debates are being sewn.  It is not so much Machiavellian as matriarchal but nevertheless these bad boys need a firm hand!