Interview with Julie Lomax, Head of Visual Arts, London, Arts Council England

Julie Lomax is part of the International Curators Forum at the Sharjah Biennial this year

Reem Fekri: I saw you give a talk recently at the ICA – which was called Patronise Me! What is the value of Art?  How did this topic come about?  Interestingly, it was shortly after the markets crashed and Damien Hirst made £11 million at an auction at Sotheby’s during October last year.

Julie Lomax: The talk was part of a season at the ICA exploring digital technologies and exploring the impact of Web 2.0 as an artistic medium and a virtual space that artists can inhabit and create new work.  This particular event posed the question whether a new form of patronage is possible via the democratisation of culture in the age of Web 2.0.  So in essence looking at the way art is funded.   The talk was conceived at that moment when the art market was at its peak and by the time I participated in the event the walls of the art market and the global economies had started to come tumbling down.

My original proposal was to give a more in depth overview on how Arts Council England supports digital and new media practice and fund new art market interventions.  I considered this as being useful information because I hoped that somebody in the audience would come up with an amazing idea that combined the two that was interesting enough to develop into a funding bid (I am still waiting for this proposal, please email me with suggestions!).  Given the economic situation I decided to propose the notion that the public funding, rather than being pedestrian and overly bureaucratic is actually a sexy proposition in an economic downturn because we are able to invest in innovative artistic practice and ideas.  I argued that we were able to take more risks because our funding is not tied to the sure thing or the safe bet.

I think the talk threw up more questions for all the panel members than solutions but and these are interesting in themselves.  Here is an extract from my notes for the talk.

I am, through the work I do, in a very privileged position because I come into contact with a wide range of artistic practice and artists are using Web 2.0 to create, display and share work.  Web 2.0 also democratises audience interaction and endorsement.  Despite my personal reluctance to engage in Web 2.0 applications and scepticism, I am interested in new forms of expression and I can see a parallel in Web 2.0 with the DIY culture that came out of the 70s punk movement.  I think it is a space for subversion, a laboratory of ideas and exchange in the same way painters Jorg Immendorf and AR Penck exchanged work between East and West Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

Will it be able to deconstruct the way we do business in the art world?  The optimist in me says yes. If I had been asked this question 12 months ago I would have cautioned that the market is a dominant force to be reckoned and not one to take on lightly, but with the recent collapse of the financial institutions and the global economic downturn then surely this is the time to test out new ideas.

There is still an expectation that the art world is an exclusive club that you buy into and there will always another VIP room so what would Web 2.0 offer that is exclusive to new patrons of online art?  Who are the patrons, are they peers, if they are is it possible to engage other people? It will be important to develop the market and create demand rather than supply in the first instance.  Is authorship dead in this environment and does it really matter? 

The changes in the music market should surely be a case study worth looking at and adapting.  Can this work for the visual arts that is still predominantly object based? In the case of music the element that becomes precious in this transaction is not the music itself because this can be downloaded cheaply or is free but the engagement with the live performance and associated merchandise. What would be the precious interaction or exchange for the visual arts?  Over time artistic practice evolves and an example is the rise in artists working in moving image across the world.  If greater numbers of artists use Web 2.0 applications as a medium, much as painters use oil paint, and audiences for culture are largely online then I can envisage a time when having virtual exposure is an important building block in endorsing an artist just as the museum exhibition is today.   

RF: You compared people’s reactions towards Arts Council England similar to that of the NHS (National Health Service).  People complain and mock the way it functions but they eventually use it and find it reliable.  Could you explain this further?

JL:  I think it is healthy to critique and challenge institutions because there are always ways in which we can work better and hear a different range of voices. Institutions also have to take some responsibility for developing positive public perception. Arts Council England is becoming a more permeable institution working with the artists and arts organisations we fund in a collaborative way to define future direction.  We will invest £1.3bn in the arts between 2008-2011.

We are an important but silent partner and I only have to open up Frieze magazine or read the culture recommendations in the broadsheets to know that we have usually been the architects either directly or indirectly of making that piece of work happen.  Take Frieze, Maureen Paley was funded in the early days of gallery, Smadar Dreyfuss Mothers Day gets an excellent review and we funded the piece, there is an ad for a Dan Graham exhibition with a piece that appeared in a London park courtesy of our funding, Tonico Lemos Aud has a studio in a complex that we fund, Charles Avery work in Altermodern, the Tate Triennial was funded by us… I could go on.

There are officers in my team who will be known on a first name basis to many of the important emerging artists in London because they have received funding advice and guidance from them. We are getting better at developing spokespeople from our satisfied customers and this should turn around our public image.

RF: Undeniably, different sources of funding influences artistic practices in different ways.  How do you think governmental funding has a different influence to private or corporate funding?

JL: Private and corporate funding is very important in the visual arts sector because experiencing the visual arts is usually free.  In recent years when the going was good corporates such as Bloomberg and Deusche Bank have been important partners.  I think were Arts Council England differs is that we have an open, continuous grants programme.  We make a lot of grants to individuals and support artists at any stage in their career, often supporting research and development or time to rethink and develop their artistic practice.  This is very important for artists and the overall development of the visual arts.  We are not looking for big names to support and we also have a commitment to funding organisations that can support artists such as studios, production facilities and galleries.

I encourage an entrepreneurial approach to making grants that ensures good ideas are what we fund and not just accept mechanistic proposals that tick all the boxes but have no creativity at the heart of the proposal. I try to make sure that funding the arts is not a paper exercise for my team and that it involves creating positive relationships with artists, experiencing their work, and being able to talk confidently about the work.  It is not all bureaucracy but I would be lying if I said it doesn’t play a part in what we do and that is the bit that artists understandably don’t like but we try to make it as simple as possible.  

For example Roger Hiorns pitched a few ideas to me in a conversation and they were extremely motivating but that was because I was able to envisage what could be.  He then worked with one of my team to develop a funding proposal.  All of this is done following Arts Council England’s guidelines of course.

RF: This year we have been witness to a recession. What can you expect from commercial / national galleries and other private arts projects such as contemporary art fairs?

JL: I have read lots of arts journalism that talk about the recession being a good thing and that it will equalise the market, clear out dead wood and there will be a return to true art values.  I would have agreed with the journalists if I hadn’t personally experienced friends and colleagues losing their jobs proving that this is a complex emotional and professional terrain that I occupy at present.  I would have also been happy to offer more opinion on the market but Keynesian economics state that confidence plays a bit part of the market and no market at all is not good for artists. 

What is inevitable is that we are likely to see the closure of commercial galleries. Publicly funded galleries will reclaim the ground that was lost to them when the commercial galleries, with bigger spaces and budgets, and the promise of large fees and sales that no artist in their right mind would turn down, started to curate large-scale exhibitions, competing for people’s time and attention.

Publicly funded galleries will be able to continue investing in risk and innovation and become important launch pads for artists’ careers.  A new generation of curators such as Polly Staples at Chisenhale Gallery and Emily Pethick at the Showroom will be responsible for talent spotting the next generation of significant and interesting artists. 

RF: You argued once that having less funding creates more entrepreneurial work, and that having too much makes us less entrepreneurial.  Could you explain this further and give some specific examples that you have come across during your time at the Arts Council?

There is a section in the Guardian ‘Did they really say that’ and if I am ever featured that comment can go in there!  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t subscribe to artists starving in a garret in order to make more interesting art but there are opportunities that present themselves in a recession.

Creativity and ideas do not go away in a recession or any other difficult situation such as conflict and war.  It is my experience that out of recession can come new forms of creative expression and production.  In the Western world some of our most innovative cultural product has been kick-started through alienation, inhabiting the margins, a sense of needing to create a better world, and kicking back against institutions and the status quo.

Once upon a time this was the Academy system in Paris for the likes of Monet, or the political landscape in the Thatcher years, were us and them was a simplistic notion that was easily understood.  In England it created the Derek Jarman films, The Buzzcocks Spiral Scratch EP (the first independently produced and distributed record), the dancer Michael Clark, designers such as John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood, and our art schools nurtured a set of young artists soon to become known globally as the YBAs, and as you pointed out earlier one of them just made £11m.  These are only a few examples.

Out of the current climate of doom and gloom I can see bright new horizons where artists are populating physical spaces that have been denied them because of high rental incomes, a return to DIY culture, and new expressions and philosophies emerging and it is my job and Arts Council England’s role to support this activity. 

RF: You are part of the International Curators Forum at the Sharjah Biennial.  What do you expect from the region in terms of the arts?

I was really exited to be invited to the Sharjah Bienniel, as I am newcomer to the region.  I am interested in exploring the history of the Biennial plus discovering new artists. I have not encountered the work of many of the artists that are showing in the Biennial so it will be great to get a first hand perspective of art production in the region. I am expecting an interesting arts scene that is both local and global. I want to talk to local artists and find out what type of support structure exists for making and presenting work locally and the global links they would like to make and exchange knowledge and contacts.  I am also pleasantly surprised that performance and film play a part in the Biennial and will be attending some of these events.

I will be contributing to the young curators workshop organised by the International Curators Forum to talk about arts funding and the infrastructure for developing the arts.  In my day job I regularly go into colleges and give professional development talks to artists and curators.  This is an important function of Arts Council England and one that artists and curators find very useful. 

RF: How do you expect governmental funding in the Middle East to be different to that of a Western country?

JL: This is a difficult area to comment on because I am not so familiar with the regions governmental structures, the economic climate is shifting so fast, and the Middle East is constantly evolving.

I think it is great that Sharjah Biennial has the support of government funding but I have also given some thought on the way we fund projects and which models would best serve the Middle East region.  Funding for the visual arts in England is complicated (see Turning Point, 10 Year Strategy for the Visual Arts, Arts Council England) and this is both its strength and weakness.  It is strong because it is diverse so arts organisations are able to go to lots of different organisations to get their work funded and not rely on just one.  On the flip side it is impossible to navigate if you are a beginner and requires patience, tenacity, writing, communication and exceptional administrative skills.  Whilst I would advocate for diversity of funding it is perhaps not such a good idea to have such a complexity of funding streams  (Arts Council England is one of the easier schemes to access for artists). 

One of the most valuable areas of funding for artists in England is from the Trusts and Foundations.  This is an excellent model and is built on the great philanthropists creating endowments that are invested and the returns are distributed to support projects.  Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Clore Duffield and all the different Sainsbury Family Foundations are essential to cultural life in England and a model that is easily repeated across the globe.

Given the scale of building development in the region a Percent for Art scheme would also be a way of ensuring that developers are incorporating high quality art works into their developments. 

There are Arts Council’s and similar bodies all over the world, Singapore set their Arts Council up based on the Arts Council England model.  I guess it is about finding our what works for a region given current infrastructure, practices and culture. 

Below are notes from Julie Lomax’s talk at the ICA, London.

Patronise Me! What is the value of Art? 

The brief was to comment on whether a new form of patronage is possible via the democratisation of culture in the age of Web 2.0

Credits:  The State is Sexy idea came out of an informal conversation that I had with Chris Dercon, Director of Haus der Kunst in Munich, who gave me clarity on my role at Arts Council England.  I always return to Louisa Buck for art market knowledge and I re-read her 1991 book Relative Values or What’s Art Worth? co-written with Philip Dodd and published by BBC Books to accompany the BBC series of the same name, to remind myself what comes around, goes around and everything operates on a cycle. The proposal has also been informed by many enjoyable lazy Sunday mornings scanning the business and money pages of the Guardian and Observer newspapers.

The State is Sexy - presentation notes:
I want to propose the notion today the State is Sexy, this is probably a difficult concept but I hope to show you that in times of the recession that state funding of the arts is not just important but necessary. 

I am old enough to have lived through the last recession so whilst my instincts told me things were not quite right with the world, my lack of a sophisticated understanding of the global politics of the market, meant that I, along with many other people, was unable to evaluate what was to erupt around us.   In retrospect the signs were obvious: a bloated art market; a rise in house prices creating a sense of confidence that at long last, hurrah, we were all rich; and the money markets existing in hyper-reality, bearing no relation to the real world.  But we had settled into a snug torpor with no idea that we were staring down the barrel of a smoking gun.  Then we woke up with the incredulity that is best displayed in films when the hero is disposed of in a dramatic fashion uttering the lines, I think I have been shot, I have been shot, I’m going to die.  We are currently in a state of stupefied shock because we’ve realised that we’ve been shot but I want to reassure you we are not going to die….far from it.

Creativity and ideas do not go away in a recession or any other difficult situation such as conflict and war.  It is my experience that out of recession can come new forms of creative expression and production.  In the Western world some of our most innovative cultural product has been kick-started through alienation, inhabiting the margins, a sense of needing to create a better world, and kicking back against institutions and the status quo.  Once upon a time this was the Academy system in Paris for the likes of Monet, or the political landscape in the Thatcher years, and us and them was a simplistic notion that was easily understood.  In England it created the Derek Jarman films, The Buzzcocks Spiral Scratch EP (the first independently produced and distributed record), the dancer Michael Clark, designers such as John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood, and our art schools nurtured a set of young artists soon to become known globally as the YBAs, one of which has just made £11m at a recent auction.

Out of the current climate of doom and gloom I can see bright new horizons where artists are artists populating physical spaces that have been denied them, a return to DIY culture, and new expressions and philosophies emerging and it is my job and Arts Council England’s role to support this activity.  The State is Sexy – because in the current climate Arts Council England will be a major player investing in risk and innovation.  I have a team that is on the ground investigating new practice and I encourage an entrepreneurial approach to making grants that ensures that good ideas are what we fund and not just a mechanistic artistic proposal that ticks all the boxes but has no creativity at the heart of it. I make sure that funding the arts is not a paper exercise but it involves creating positive relationships with artists, experiencing their work, and being able to talk confidently about the work.  It is not all bureaucracy but I would be lying if I said it doesn’t play a part in what we do but for example Roger Hiorns pitched a few ideas to me in a conversation and they were extremely motivating but that was because I was able to envisage what could be.  He then worked with one of my team to develop a funding proposal.  All of this is done following Arts Council England’s guidelines of course.   (It is worth noting that across all artforms Arts Council England will invest £1.3bn in the arts between 2008-2011.)

So what will the visual arts sector look like over the next year? We are likely to see the closure of commercial galleries. Publicly funded galleries will reclaim the ground that was lost to them when the commercial galleries, with bigger spaces and budgets, and the promise of large fees and sales that no artist in their right mind would turn down, started to curate large-scale exhibitions, competing for people’s time and attention. Publicly funded galleries will be able to continue investing in risk and innovation and become important launch pads for artists’ careers.  A new generation of curators such as Polly Staples at Chisenhale Gallery and Emily Pethick at the Showroom will be responsible for talent spotting the next generation of significant and interesting artists.
 
Returning to the question on whether new forms of patronage will be created through the democratising of culture via Web 2.0 throws up more questions for me than answers. 

Before I go on I have a confession to make.  I am not a digital native.  I am not on Facebook, I didn’t have a mobile phone until work issued me with a Blackberry this year and I have never visited sites such as Wikipedia or You Tube.

I am, through the work I do, privileged to understand how artists are using Web 2.0 to create, display and share work.  I am also aware of how Web 2.0 democratises audience interaction and endorsement.  Despite my personal reluctance to engage in Web 2.0 applications and scepticism, I am interested in new forms of expression and I can see a parallel in Web 2.0 with the DIY culture that came out of the 70s punk movement.  I think it is a space for subversion, a laboratory of ideas and exchange in the same way painters Jorg Immendorf and AR Penck exchanged work between East and West Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Will it be able to deconstruct the way we do business in the art world and the optimist in me says yes. If I had been asked this question 12 months ago I would have cautioned that the market is a dominant force to be reckoned and not one to take on lightly, but with the recent collapse of the financial institutions and the global economic downturn then surely this is the time to test out new ideas.

The changes in the music market should surely be a case study worth looking at and adapting?  Can this work for the visual arts that is still predominantly object based? In the case of music the element that becomes precious in this transaction is not the music itself because this can be downloaded cheaply or is free but the engagement with the live performance and associated merchandise. Over time artistic practice evolves and an example is the rise in artists working in moving image across the world.  If greater numbers of artists use Web 2.0 applications as a medium, much as painters use oil paint, and audiences for culture are largely online then I can envisage a time when having virtual exposure is an important building block in endorsing an artist just as the museum exhibition is today.   

Whilst this is unknown territory there are cautionary tales – it has been predicted that there will be a backlash against on demand consumerism so don’t forget that objects still have currency.  The first divorce case has come to court citing Second Life and social networking sites are supposed to be over.  We still have a global currency system that is fractured and Babel-like so a pay per view value is different depending on your physical location.  The local and the handmade will become more important in a world without oil and people still want to see Prince rather than just downloading his CD as his recent sell-out performances at the O2 confirm.

There is still an expectation that the art world is an exclusive club that you buy into and there will always another VVIP room so what would Web 2.0 offer that is exclusive to new patrons of online art?  Who are the patrons, are they peers, if they are is it possible to engage other people? It will be important to develop the market and create demand rather than supply in the first instance.  Is authorship dead in this environment and does it really matter? 

Despite all these questions Arts Council England is open to new ideas and when we recently looked at the grant spend on digital and media arts projects and found that we had supported lots of good ideas but not many had gone into production so this is an area of interest to us.  So this is when I am able to return to the notion that the State is Sexy in a time of recession.  I suspect that there are artists, curators, producers, galleries and writers that are interested in exploring the unanswered questions about the possibilities of Web 2.0 and that the champions are likely to be outside the current visual arts infrastructure.  Arts Council England can support risk, innovation, new ideas, projects and the development of artistic practice, including new market developments and will continue to do so because it is embedded in our DNA. 

 

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