7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
1/31
Collecting the Uncollectable Panel Discussion
Hosted by Market Project at Aide & Abet, Cambridge
30th June 2011
Chair: David Kefford.
Speakers: Bob Lee from The Collective, Michael Pinsky, visual artist and Henry Little from
the Contemporary Art Society.
David Kefford
Just before we start I just need to send an apology on behalf of Paul Hobson, who
unfortunately is unable to join us this evening. However, we do have Henry Little here
from the Contemporary Arts Society who is gone to be filling his shoes. Tonights
discussion really focuses on the challenges and opportunities for both artist and
collectors, who make and buy work that doesnt necessarily fit the traditional view of art
works as unique and self-contained objects. For those that dont know me my name is
David Kefford, I am a visual artist, I am a member of Market Project and also one of the
co-founders of Aid and Abet, along with C J Mahoney and Sarah Evans. I am delighted to
be joined this evening by a panel of invited guest speakers. Weve got Bob Lee from The
Collective in London a group of people who purchase and share contemporary art work
together. Weve got Michael Pinsky, a visual artist, mainly making work to commission
through residencies in the public realm and Henry Little from the Contemporary Art
Society, a membership organisation which exists to develop public collections of
contemporary art in the UK. I just wanted to kind of contextualize this event by giving abit of a back ground to both Market Project and Aid and Abet and I have down loaded
information off our web site. Ill sort of paraphrase what weve written.
Market Project is a collaborative initiative by eight artists and a curator who are all based
in the east of England. We are researching and shearing new method or opportunities for
artistic professional and economic development. We have a specific focus on
constructive engagement with economic and revenue making aspects of the art world. A
large part of our work will be a series of public forum events such as tonight and we are
exploring the ways in which artist can make a more sustainable living through their
practice. Market Project members are: Annabel Dover, Laura Earley, Julie Freeman,
Alistair Gentry, Helen Judge, myself, Anabelle Shelton, Elaine Tribley and Martha Winter.
We are supported through a grant from the arts from the Arts Council England.
Aid and Abet is an artist run contemporary art space, as I said it has been co-founded by
myself, Sarah and CJ. We are a peer organisation supporting regional, national and
international artists, in the production and presentation of contemporary art across all art
forms. Aid and Abet functions with supportive organisation to provide a creative platform
and out-let for artistic practise, with a particular interest in, cross disciplinary, self-initiated
and DIY approaches and the utilization of, diverse methods of distribution. In acomplimentary edition to our activities Aid and Abet also aims to develop the appreciation
of contemporary art by making a range of works available for sale, on an on-going base.
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
2/31
And I think most of you have probably seen a collection of those tonight, which is a
precursor to our next project Art is a Full time Hobby, which opens tomorrow at mid-day,
so back to tonights proceedings.
In terms of format each of our guest speakers will now introduce themselves and their roll
within the art world and their personal experience of working with collectors, collections
and artists. And then we are going to open this up to more of a, Q and A, style session,
where we invite you to ask questions to the panel, and any issues you might have in
relation to some of the topics weve been talking about this evening. Does that sound
reasonable? OK, I will hand over now to Michael.
Michael Pinsky
Ok, well we only have fifteen minutes each so I thought I would just focus on one project.
My practice has evolved in such a way, that my practice is more closely aligned to service
industries, than the sales industry and its not because I never wanted sell anything, its
just no ones ever wanted to buy anything. About twenty years ago I had a photography
exhibition, where my old school teacher bought photographs about that size and then
after that I sold a couple of other things, maybe for about four, or five hundred pounds
each and that was about it. That being said, I do completely live off my practice as an
artist, so there is obviously other ways than selling actual objects and its interesting how
you dont necessarily make a choice in these things, its just you gravitate to one sphere
or another. The trouble I have with making things, is making things is great, if you sell
them. If you dont sell them then youve got a big bill paying for a garage, or a lockup to
store them all in. I dont know if your all from around here thats not such a big issue
possibly, but I tell you, in the middle of London that is an enormous issue. When I have
had grants to do exhibitions and I thought, great, this is a fantastic opportunity to make
an enormous sculpture. And it tours for two or three years, and your dreading the day is
going to come home. And youre phoning up galleries, please, please, take this, I dont
care, Ill pay you to take this because I dont want it to come home, and then it comes
home and youre working out what to do with a four point six meter long sculpture. Its a
big problem and I dont know how many of you have the same problem. As long as you
sell your stuff its fine, you make it, you sell it and then some sort of rich collector, or not
rich collector, possibly in your case, poor collector, has it and stores it for you, rather than
you storing your own works. So I think thats quite key. So I have gravitated to work thatis more performative, more ephemeral, more commission based , well not exactly
commission based but where people kind of commission me to think about doing things,
I suppose. This is one example of a project I did in this town called; Torres Vedras, which
is slightly North of Lisbon and if any of you speak Portuguese. Do any of you speak
Portuguese? No, because you will pronounce it better than me, I mean, after two or three
years working in Torres Vedras, I still cant pronounce it but any way. So the town looks
like that, its kind of set in the hill side and the place that commissioned these is called;
Transforma. I bumped into them because I was in a book. And I was giving a talk, a bit
like to night, and a guy came up to me. And he was from here and he said I would reallylike to work with you some time. And then two years later he phoned up and said come
out to Torres Vedras. And thats kind of my perfect scenario, when people say come to
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
3/31
where we are and do something, that a perfect brief. You know it takes a long time to
write that out, two lines, those kind a briefs, there kind of this thick, you know, I dont like
those kind of briefs. I like a phone call saying just come out, weve got a bit of money,
what do you feel like doing? So thats the arts centre called Transforma and youll see a
little post box out there. And I was kind of interested in this post box and the tiles behind
it. And in fact, my first visit there, I just took a photograph of it and stuck it above thepost box. And I went back nine months later, on my next visit and its still there, above
there. So I thought, thats an amazing piece of work in the public realm, we didnt do any
health and safety audits, or anything, no vandalism reports, just put it there and it was
still there. So from that point I started to think about what else I would do. And like most
towns in Portugal external tiles are very, very prominent and I got quite obsessed by the
tiles on all the buildings on Torres Vedras. So I photographed every single building that
had tiles. (Michael points to a slide show of projected images) So thats your kind of
typical Portuguese tile. These are kind of old tiles, from the sixteenth, seventeenth century
but then these are kind very contemporary tiles, from the seventh. I love this tile, its a
shame we cant switch the sun off at the moment because the colours, but that tile is the
same as, that tile. And I think the best tile designs are the ones, when you reconfigure
them, they completely change in the way they look. This tile was on the outside of a bank
and every faade of the bank, all four sides had the same four tiles but in a different
configuration. I just thought that was really fantastic but you cant see it very well, can
you?(unfortunately there was too much light to fully see the projected images) So I had
this idea to photograph every single tile and then combine them into a single image. And
it wasnt just a question of fade them in, I Iooked at the components that made up the
design and then broke down those components until they merged into the next design.
So you can get an idea there. So each colour component, each design component,
breaks down until it joins the next design, then I split this design up into a hundred
sections. So thats my initial piece of work, were these tile designs in hundred sections,
seven meters by seven meters. I got the gallery then, because I was interested in how it
functioned as a network, this is a gallery that is in quite a rich but small town in Portugal
but its very well connected internationally. Very much a gallery that didnt look locally, it
looked completely globally, so it had a local audience and a global audience but not really
a national audience. And they were holding a big conference, so I asked them to print out
these tiles, which were, you know, well theres seven hundred, thats more like a meter
isnt it? So there are about seven hundred, by seven hundred and they posted them tothese people around the world. So people in Australia, the States and Germany, they
were phoned in advance and they had to agree to bring this tile with them to Torres
Vedras. And its kind of awkward bloody thing. So they were all sent them. And the whole
thing was about their commitment to this piece of work. If they thought they might not be
able to bring it, then they werent sent it. And the piece is called; Horror Vacui, which
means in Greek, fear of empty spaces. But it is also the reason why the Portuguese and
the Spanish, or the Moors have tile design because they absolutely hate the white wall.
They need to occupy every part of space with some sort of design, so thats the bases of
this work. For my kind of horror vacui was that someone might not turn up and thereforethere would be a gap in this. In this case everyone did turn up. So they all turned up, in
the central square of Torres Vedras and we drank some quite nice Portuguese wine that
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
4/31
they had there. And then Id marked out just the corners and I said put this design
together. And it only could go together in one configuration and I filmed this from a beam
so you had a birds eye view of it. And I thought this might take two or three hours, or
something like that but in fact they got up to it really fast. And there was a hell of a lot of
communication and we configured the whole thing in twenty-two minutes with no
instructions what so ever, a part from this one here. And someone had realized that, thatwas the tile that the Mayor of the town had and he was presently giving a talk in the town
hall. And hence he wasnt there, so someone had to run and get him. And he put the last
one in to a massive cheer of every one there. So it looked very orchestrated, so thats it,
the kind of finishing touches ( Michael is pointing to a projected image of the work)
David Kefford
Michael, how long did it last for, was it a kind of temporary work?
Michael Pinsky
Its temporary, we put it together in the main square and then we moved it to a kind of old
barn, kind of like this but much, much, much darker and more mysterious. And I
presented that, with a video of it being configured and that was there for a month or so.
The idea with this piece of work is that, then it gets sent from one gallery to another,
through the network of galleries Transformas part of. And each time will probably lose
one of these parts of the jigsaw, in which case well put the excuse of why its not there
instead of the jigsaw, so it will be; I was ill, or the flight was cancelled, or something like
that, so eventually the piece of work want exist at all
David Kefford
These people have come globally?
Michael Pinsky
Yeah, you will hear them talking all sorts of different languages but the idea is eventually
this piece, eventually just disappears, just becomes a hundred excuses. And these
hundred tile forms will be somewhere in the world but we wont know, maybe in an airport
departure lounge, or stuck in the back of some ones cupboard and not being valued.
Audience member
So there are empty spaces.
Michael Pinsky
Yeah, yeah, its embracing the fear of empty space, this piece.
Audience member
So this idea of horror vacui could you tell us more about that?
Michael Pinsky
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
5/31
Horror vacui, its Greek and I think its something that Plato talks about. Its actually
something that, you know if you talk to someone who is Portuguese, I wouldnt actually
say its common parlance but they are very aware of that as a concept. Whereas here we
dont really have that as a concept at all, in fact, I think we have a fear of cluttered space.
Its more the opposite, which goes back to my garage, which is full of crates of big
sculptures and not quite knowing what to do. So if anyone wants to buy them, Ill show alist
David Kefford
So thats more like a storage space, do you have a studio?
Michael Pinskey
Yeah Ive got a studio as well which I luckily had given to me at the moment. So I dont
need to pay for that but before I was paying for a studio and storage space. And now I
am trying to get all my work in the attic but the hatch is only about eight hundred by eighthundred ml, so I dont really know what to do. The only other idea is to build a big shed in
the back garden. I think that kind of finishes my fifteen minutes, Ive probably over run or
ready.
David Kefford
Yep
Michael Pinsky
OK, thankyou.
David Kefford
We now move on to Bob Lee
Bob Lee
My names Bob Lee and I am a member of an art buying collective. I want to focus on the
word collective, collector because having thought about tonights subject of discussion I
wondered, to what extent, did the group I belong to, break the conventional wisdom ofthe typical collector. Now as member of a The Contemporary Arts Society, I have seen
many collections in London and elsewhere. Generally, I think our notion of an art
collection, or the art collector, is a collection of finished products, so you know, when you
go to some of these fabulous homes, you will see all this fabulous art throughout the
home. So I think what my colleagues and I do, is somewhat rather different and I tried to
think why and in telling our story, I hope it will emerge why we are somewhat different
from the conventional notion of the collector, or collecting. First and foremost the marked
difference between what we do and what is traditionally considered to be ordinary
methods of art collecting, is that we share art. I suppose one may have an image of thecollector amassing things, you know, a very proprietorial kind of world that collectors
might live in. First and foremost from the very out set when our group was set up the
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
6/31
whole concept was to share art but we had other ideas as well. It took a couple years to
get the group formed. Why were we doing it? What were our central aims and objectives?
Over a couple of years meeting in the pub we thought about what were we trying to do.
There were a number of principles never properly written down, I vaguely remember what
they were. One was, we wanted to support emerging artist, two, we wanted to continue
doing what we were doing, at the time, Im going back to the nineties now, which was toengage with artist, with art critics, curators. In a sense engage with the art world. Long
before we bought any pieces we had been to many art performances, exhibitions shows
and so on, just continued that engagement. Another principle was to acquire work, not so
much the idea of possessing work but a specific idea of acquiring work to experience it
with in the domestic space and that meant we had a particular focus on acquiring
challenging work. Like everybody here, we all go to galleries, public museums and so
forth but we were interested in the idea of living with challenging contemporary art that
we shared. And so with some of those principles we were already somewhat different
from the traditional notion of a collector but there were some other things that perhaps
shaped what we were doing as well. When we go back to the nineties and may be bit
before, we were probably at a very productive period in art production and artistic
practice. My memories a bit hazy but I do remember going to absolutely astonishing
degree and post grad shows Places like Gold Smiths. My sense is, Im not an expert in
the arts and certainly not an academic but my sense was, that there was a period of great
flourishing in experimentation and new practice in the art schools in London, which were
the ones I had become familiar with. It was a great period, it was certainly a period when
you didnt see just traditional art products, there was video, performance, ephemeral art
forms. So from the very start, I suppose when we thought about investing in art, we were
doing so at a time when art, or art practice was going through a great deal of
experimentation. When the schools were very well funded, the ethos was very liberal and
fantastic diversity in art production was the result of that. So one was in that context, so
in a sense the group of friends that we set the group up with, we were never going round
looking at classic art products. It was always a process of engagement and going to art
performances that were fabulous, memorable experiences that you had with you for a
long time. So that was the context in which our group was formed and emerged. And as a
result of that some of the pieces that we have acquired and I hate those terms acquiring
things, owning things and so on, but none the less for functionality I use those terms,
some of the pieces we have acquired do raise questions about the collectability of thosepieces. Now we havent really had much controversy in our group about the things that
we collect but certainly some of the pieces that we collect will not stand the test of time,
for one reason or another, as I shall illustrate but our members would be absolutely
delighted with those pieces. So if I can show you the first one(Bob now refers to a
projected image). This is a work we bought last year by an artist called Bobby Dowler,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/-paul-/sets/72157623620982184/
and what is interesting about the piece is that it is quite a large work, on a found canvas,
and he just set to work on this, its this chewing gum, bits and pieces hes found in thestreet and stuck on to it. Again I am not an expert but he what he was very careful to
explain to us when we purchased the piece was that it wont last because he didnt prime
http://www.flickr.com/photos/-paul-/sets/72157623620982184/http://www.flickr.com/photos/-paul-/sets/72157623620982184/http://www.flickr.com/photos/-paul-/sets/72157623620982184/7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
7/31
the canvas and do whatever you have to do. And already bits are peeling off, in certain
conditions bits of chewing gum harden and fall off and so on but its absolutely fabulous
work. I dare say there might be expensive processes to make it last but thats never been
the issue for us. It was partly engaging with some new gallerist in the Peckham area of
London. Historically quite a surprise for me in London but like many places its had some
gentrification. But thats an example, where one of our major consideration, wasnt thelongevity of that work. And in a way you can translate that into ultimate sale value, or
resale value because this work will probably deteriorate progressively. Somebody said;
give it twenty to fifteen years and it will be unrecognisable, it will disintegrate and fall to
pieces. Next slide (Bob is referring to slide show projection) is a sculpture by an artist
called Michael Dean http://www.contemporaryartsociety.org its a technique, its little
hard to describe actually but its cement. I think its called black cement, it doesnt really
have title. Its a block of cement with a particular history, theres a lot text that he wrote
which we now have but just in a textual form that is buried into the cement, then the
surface is treated in a very interesting colours. So its not an object that you then put on a
plinth and gaze at it. The whole purpose of this particular sculpture is to handle it, and
carry it around and in so doing as we have discovered it get damaged. Its a quite heavy
thing you know, you take it to the dinner table or take it to the bath with you, or whatever,
its quite a nice thing to carry around actually. And part of the way its displayed is to
encourage people to handle it and see what they make of it but in the process it gets
dropped and gets damaged. And so again we dont have the view that it has to be
pristine, perfect. Its an interesting piece, with a very interesting history and narrative that
goes with it, that I dont have enough time to go into but thats another example of
something uncompleted. This is another group actually and Ive used it because I have
been involved with this group. Another collective, a London collective called the Crawford
collective http://www.the-collective.info/london1/content/view/13/2/and this is by and
artist collaborative called; With, where two artist create a virtual experience. Im not
eloquent enough to describe what they do but basically the idea is, this artist collective
will undertake an experience on your behalf. If you want to do something really wild and
really bad theyll do it for you and you will end up with a product. So this particular
collective group, the Crawford collective, they were called the Crawford collective
because they were formed, or their first meeting was in Crawford St, a flat in Crawford St
in London. However the member who lived in the flat at the time, she was going to sell up
and they had this idea to have a real wild party and trash the flat. However as she wasselling the flat, she wasnt really that keen on actually really trashing the flat, so the With
collective did it for them and they had this virtual experience. So they were in the flat for a
day and when she got back the flat was back to its pristine condition but they had a
virtual wild party and trashed the flat. If you go to their web site, http://
www.withyou.co.uk/traumaformat.html . Actually people do all kinds of things, daring
things, have affairs, virtual affairs by proxy, we will do it for you, or whatever, or do some
sky diving, or whatever and they do it for you. A really very interesting concept and in the
process of commissioning a work like that, the experience of engagement with these
artists and kind of having a virtual reality, its so interesting actually. The first talk I wentto, you sometimes get confused, whats real and whats not real, and none of its real. And
this is the document that produced at the end of the event, so this is primarily the end of
http://www.withyou.co.uk/traumaformat.htmlhttp://www.withyou.co.uk/traumaformat.htmlhttp://www.the-collective.info/london1/content/view/13/2/http://www.contemporaryartsociety.org/http://www.withyou.co.uk/traumaformat.htmlhttp://www.withyou.co.uk/traumaformat.htmlhttp://www.withyou.co.uk/traumaformat.htmlhttp://www.withyou.co.uk/traumaformat.htmlhttp://www.the-collective.info/london1/content/view/13/2/http://www.the-collective.info/london1/content/view/13/2/http://www.contemporaryartsociety.org/http://www.contemporaryartsociety.org/7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
8/31
event in Crawford St. An example again, I suspect a work like that, the value of the work
is in the experience and in the commission, rather than in the finished product. Its just a
record of the trashed flat and the virtual experience that was to have been in the first
place, obviously. So thats another example. And I think thats why the art collective, my
collective I belong to, will commission some kind of virtual experience from the With
collective, at some point in the future. They are represented by Rokeby Gallery in London.Next one, (Bob is referring to projected image) Now this one is interesting, it isnt a piece
its a product. Its hanging on one of our members wall, um somewhere in London but I
didnt explain, that as well as sharing the art in our group, there are even households who
are members of our group and we take it in turns to buy work. Now this work has a
curious history, its by an artist called Mel Brimfield, whos essentially a performance, a
live artist, a performance artist. And some members have seen some of her performances
and are really kind of fascinated by her work. Quite the complex narrative she performs.
So this is a still from a video from one of her performances that some of our members
saw, part of a series of, so it already had the start of a narrative. And when the buying
panel at the time came across this piece they were delighted to reconnect with, not
exactly a document, it connected with the performance. And another reason they were
really were interested in it, some years ago, our group commissioned a performance
actually and never had a document of it, We didnt actually seek a document, well some
record. I think most of our members say its actually the best they have ever purchased.
And it was a performance by an artist called Katherine Fry. It was looking at the course of
a kind of a married couple, set in the fifties, from the first flush of romance and its from
the womans perspective. Actually from the first flush of romance to when the relationship
drove her bonkers . So it was performed over seven weeks, in different days of the week,
in each of our households. And the narrative then took its course in that way but
absolutely fascinating thing. And I shall show you a clip from some video (Bob plays
video), so this is happening all around the household with seven actor all identically
dressed. Time Out does a review of it actually. I think about in the middle of the
performance, I think on a Wednesday when they start to become a bit cynical about their
roles in life. So its about a housewife really and her experiences. In the first performance
we are waiting for the acting husband to come home and as the performance progressed
over the week, it then became quite delinquent in some ways and then the last
performance furniture starts to fly. What we particularly liked about commissioning a
performance in our homes, we were able to involve a lot of people in the performance.The performance, it took place in every room in the house, where these actors were going
in and out of different rooms, doing different things. They had recorded all the different
sounds of the house hold and this sound wasnt, the sound you hear there, wasnt quite
the sound, the of the house its self was being played back as the performance was being
acted out.
To sum up, and I think my theories are, and I might be completely wrong, I do know that a
lot of wealthy of collectors would very generously support performance art. I mean I
know lots of commissions of the kind Michael described to you really that relies on the
funding of generous and wealthy supports. In the past certainly when we were starting
out lots of performances received public funding. I remember when the national lottery
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
9/31
came about, that lead to a lot of experimentation because funding was available to
support diversity in artistic practice. My fear I suppose is that with the recession, with
public funding for the arts drying up and perhaps with the more middle range collector, or
even the poorer collectors like us, probably being a little reticent about collecting work
which isnt durable everlasting and re-saleable. Thats a certain worry and concern, that I
would have because then it would be a great tragedy if artist like Mike and some of theones Ive shown today are restricted to producing products that sell or being only tied up
with that. So thats just my fear and I think its absolutely, um its excellent to be able to
support artist in the way we do in a small way, to practice in the way they want to
practice, so I hope some of these examples have illustrated that. Thanks
David Kefford
Thanks Bob I think that really touches along lot of discussion we will probably have later
on, thanks. And now we will have Henry
Henry Little
First another apology on behalf of my director, hes a lot more calming and a lot more
intelligent than I am and you probably all came here to hear him and not me, so I am sorry
about that. I hope however that I can elaborate on our relationship on collectable work
but also on the art market in general and how possibly uncollectable work, may actually
become collectable. First, just to give you our back ground, do people know of us at all?
Yes, some yes and some nos, we are actually quite elusive, although we have an
extremely long history and do incredibly important work. We have been around a hundred
years our centenary was last year and the core of work, the ethos that kind of underlieseverything is bringing contemporary art to the widest possible audience. That translates
to buying challenging works of contemporary art long before they become accepted into
the main stream. Historically, over our past, we have purchased work by artist long
before any one has taken them seriously in the mainstream, long before museum
professionals have taken them seriously. For instance we bought Francis Bacons, back in
1957 and practically had to give them a way to the museum collections that now have
them and these Bacon pieces now form the centre piece of their collections in many
cases and have astronomical market value. We have also bought works of Picasso long
before he was recognised, Hurst whatever your opinion of him back in ninety one about
five years before he won he Turner prize. So in a way we have always tried to be a head
of the curve and buy work, though always physical objects, buy work that at the time it
seemed unfashionable, or unwanted, or not quite uncollectable, or ephemeral but always
tried to be working with difficult and challenging work.
More importantly, sorry I forgot to say this at the beginning, I think this is an excellent
initiative. And I think artist, like art history students which is my back ground, can be
thrust out into the world from studying, with absolutely no financial or professional
development. And your different perspective, to find out how we all operate financially in
this very mercenary world at times, so trying to specially support artist who have thecourage to work with ephemeral work such as moving image performance and instillation
I think is a wonderful thing.
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
10/31
Right back to the Contemporary Art Society, the focus of our work is to have close
relationships with public collections and to support them we have to do a lot of fund
raising. I will go into that very briefly and then talk more specifically how this relates to
collectors more specifically. We have a lot of fund raising, we have a consultancy team,
who work with big corporate bodies and we build huge collections for them. We have also
membership which is my department and one of the real focuses of that is working withcollectors. We take them on a wonderful step by step journey and it is actually, it sounds
a bit trite but one of the best things about the job is taking collectors from buying what
you might see as boudoir perk, through to works that well, Bob Lee and his collective
might be buying work, you know taking on a real trajectory from something that is very
easy to appreciate and theres nothing against that kind of work but taking people on this
journey, to engaging with artist, to engaging with other collectors, engaging with curators,
to take a risk, take a chance basically and to support an artist whose work might not
otherwise have an obvious financial and commercial appeal. Conceptually what grounds
a lot of the work we do and is always in the background, is really is the link between,
private collections and public collections and those kind of endless feedback loop
between the two. Apologies if I am about to teach grandmothers to suck eggs but one of
the core ideas of what we try and look at is subscription, and apologies if you know all
this but subscription is the process whereby works of art accrue a financial value. It starts
by low level recognition, endorsement, such as working in artist run spaces and being
invited in group shows. Hopefully a critic takes notices, somebody gives an opinion of
their work, hopefully favourable, someone else notices, a commercial gallery notices, you
get a solo show, more critics write about your work, a few more solo shows, a few more
commercial gallery shows, an institution begins to take notice, more critics write about
your work, there are some academics writing about your work. Then final the real goal,
the real prestigious end to all this is a work entering a public collection and the real goal
of that is so an artist work can enter the history of art. Thats the important thing for us
because in many ways, it means that work and that narrative, and that concept, and
everything around that is available to audience in perpetuity, so that people can continue
to take from it. The main problem then lies in how do you try and codify, and historicise,
and immortalize pieces of work like performances and like film, moving image work is
also a unique challenge. But performance, how do you try and codify and immortalize
something by its very definition, is experiential, is unique happens in a moment. And
which in many ways, especially in the sixties and seventies was devised, to be anti-market, anti-institution to be anti-everything that museums in a way try and do. The
answers which I will try and get onto in a minute are very varied. And then moving image
as I say has its own unique problem which is, its technology in a nutshell. Not only does
it become out dated very quickly but also it take a huge amount of maintenance, not only
to display but also to look after. Just something to think about, say a piece of film
projection, if thats on display for a year, the actual film will need to be re printed up to a
dozen times, if not more because it gets warn out. A lot of these materials are never
designed to be played constantly on such constant display and also Im sure everyone
knows that manufactures quickly, as soon as they are not making a profit, they put slideprojectors for example, on the back, they stop producing the film and all these kinds of
thing, so the technology is a major problem. To go back to this idea of subscription and
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
11/31
private collectors, and public collectors, now private collectors tend to follow public
collection because a private collector spending money on a work of art is more
comfortable doing that if the work is endorsed by someone who does not have a
commercial interest, by someone who says this artist, this piece of work is valuable, valid,
relevant and interesting. So therefore how do you encourage a private collector to buy
something that a public institution by definition cant really buy its a very difficult kind offeedback loop, where you dont have pieces of ephemeral work entering the collection
because of problems of display, of storage and then of performance its very difficult.
How do you encourage private collectors to spend money on it? So thats the key
relationship really to think about kind of how you encourage private collectors to buy
pieces of work. A private collector has all these element of how do you live with a piece of
performance. Well I think your solution is an excellent solution. I think its marvellous that
youre doing something like that. And I hope it is an example that I really hope will be
followed and replicated because I think it is a very neat solution, to essentially trying to
support artist who do this work and enjoying this kind of work because you spread the
cost and you enjoy it as a group. And in a way it reinforces the value of it because it is a
community experience. Its not just a piece of work that you have ferretted away on your
wall and no one else gets to see it, so that in my eyes is a really elegant and a very
likeminded solution to living on a domestic scale with performance and also film moving
image I should say on a domestic scale. How do you live with it? This is something our
members tend to ask us the whole time. One of our members actually asked us to run
workshops on living with the moving image and collecting the moving image and I think
actually that is an excellent idea. With moving image in particular, theres a few kind of
solutions on domestic scale. And theres a few kind of encouraging signs which I think are
kind of helping to develop the market for this kind of work.Umm, but first if you think just
about the difficulty, just in purchasing a piece of moving image for a commercial gallery.
Moving image is a very difficult thing to show, you need a dark room, you need a whole
section marked off at an art fair,where you could live and die by the money you make on
this quite literally. More often than not, financially, it is completely unviable and I think its
completely fair for the gallerist to operate that way. But there is a now a very interesting
event that is coming over here, and its going to be on in London at the same time as
freeze. Its called moving image and its an art fair, organised by a Chelsea and when I say
Chelsea I mean, New York Chelsea gallerist called Ed Winkleman http://winkleman.com/
and its now in its second year. This again I think is a very neat solution for a number ofreasons but essentially what hes proposing to do and this closely mimics what he did in
New York, its going to happen in the barge house, which if youre artist you should be
quite familiar with, a lot of the London art schools tend to do there degree shows there.
Its essentially a space not too dissimilar to this. Galleries pay a very low fee, relatively
speaking, two and a half thousand dollars for single screen, or single channel piece, or
five thousand dollars for a larger, more complex instillation. They dont have to invigilate it;
they can come and go as they please. You have a sort of photograph of the event in New
York, its sort of long banks screens, its all in a line, you can sit, you listen, you move on.
Its essentially making the financial component a lot less on the galleries, making itspecifically devoted to this kind of work, I think you really encourage people to think
commercially and financially about moving image and I think events like that are going to
http://winkleman.com/http://winkleman.com/http://winkleman.com/7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
12/31
be a real test, essentially. I think the sales were modest in the first instance, when it
happened in New York but I really hope that it really picks up and that people really come
around to buying editions of films. From a personal point of view there was a piece I saw
recently, by a young artist called, Super Chan, whod produced a video portrait of
London. Its an a mazing piece of work and its got very, very high production value, it was
produced with money she had worked very hard to get. Umm and that was a real turningpoint for me, although well out of my price range by the time you include all of the display
materials it comes with, it was the first piece of moving image I looked at and I thought
actually, I could really get on board with wanting to collect that. If I was a collector myself,
I could really want to collector that and that in its self is a dangerous psychology
because it shouldnt really be about things with a high production value but I think it really
is starting to come into collectors minds that you can buy moving image on a more
domestic type scale. That you can buy this kind of work and that you can have it in your
collection. For performance artists theres tends to be this ideological split but there are
interesting solutions. Marina Abramovic, who is now represented by Lisson gallery,
obviously a big commercial enterprise, unsurprisingly, now has realized, now has decided
actually she can make quite a lot of money out of her practice. She has done this by
photographs and by documentation. And actually the photographs themselves, I dont
want to say theyre a cop out but for me it seems shes actually become in away
photographer. Shes selling photography, essentially because the photographs arent
really, I wouldnt call them documentation, they are actually very neatly composed, very
highly finished photographs. Also in a way, she is also using, Marina Abramovic the
brand, the person, to sell photographs. And I think that is one solution. I think, I dont
know, I wouldnt say, it kind of undermines her practice. I dont know, I think thats a
personal decision but there is a shift there. I mean That she is no longer a performance
artist. But then performance then becomes a part of her practice and the photographs are
the commercial thrust of it and I think, if thats the solution to financing everything, then
so be it. I think thats a very good idea. The other one is, um and this is an idea raised by,
stop me if I ramble, just tell me to shut up, is Logsdail, Nicholas Logsdael, Lisson director
said something interesting. He thinks that performance works should start to be thought
of as musical scores. And this got me thinking, if you are going to have a script for a
piece of work, like a musical score, then how does that enter the commercial realm?
Could we possibly end up going down the line where by you can buy performance books
like you can buy a piano music book? Or could you for example, film and moving imageworks, could you start to instead, of selling pieces in editions of five or ten and having the
price in the thousands why could you not have open editions and sell it for five pounds?
If in the future those kinds of more mass media methods of dispersion and dissemination
might ever catch on? I wonder whether we will get performance books and theyre the
kind of thing that you buy rather than the current situation where you can actually buy one
of her performances. Umm and there is a New York lawyer called Erin Levine who is very
wealthy and so has been able to buy a lot of very expensive performance works by
artists. Umm and he owns a work of hers, called.. the one of her and another
participant, dont know,they slap each other a lot and Im not sure exactly how it works.Another approach is someone like; Tino Sehgal, who is at the fore front of a lot of
discussions around performance at the moment. He is quite well known for being one of
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
13/31
the first performance works that the Tate purchased. Umm, and interestingly his whole
concept and practise is that you, is a real assertion of de-materiality. So he doesnt want
there to be any physical remnants, no physical remains. The contract he has with the
curators is an oral contract. So he told the curators how to rehearse the dances, how to
audition the dances, or the interpreters I should say.Umm and he tells the curators how to
instruct the interpreters, how to make the performance. And this oral contract waswritten, not written sorry, was witnessed by a lawyer and thats it. So it is an entirely de
materialized piece of work which is never the less in the collection but is in the collection,
in so much as it is in the curators mind, which I think is fascinating. Also he calls the
method of communication of this, body to body transmission which I quite like. But also
made me think its a very old, it goes back to oral methods of knowledge transmission, in
a very kind of pre civilization way of communicating things, of civilisation in pre-physical
methods of communicating everything. Civilization was just all contained in this kind of
manner, umm buts that my own personal digression its probably not relevant. There is
also a biannual called Performa which was set up by someone called Roselee Goldberg
and thats all about commissioning new pieces of performance. I think the more biannuals
there are and the more art fairs there are, that try to establish healthy commissioning
procedures and that also really try to get into, encourage collectors to buy work and see
this kind of work inside of a financial forum it means it will go private collectors will buy it
public institutions will buy and it will go into the history of art and be canonized. But then
again some artist may think thats completely against the whole point of it. Finally I
probably should stop but I just wanted to compare different ends of the market. I think at
the top end its very easy for someone with a lot of wealth to be extremely philanthropic
and be very generous. It becomes a form of support and its wonderful that they do that
but there needs to be a level below that, where there Its um, where its not about that,
where we try and help collectors with limited means or means that dont compare to
these kind of people to acquire these kind of works. Finally one of the other things I
wanted to just put out there is that umm generations being born now, so young children
in there two, threes, fours, are raised almost from birth with screens. You know you have
phones almost from the moment you can hold anything, you have a long relationship with
a computer from the moment you can remember, with TV with all these kind of things. So
for generations of ours and upwards we are still, these things still feel a bit alien to us in a
way but to generations born now I think the screen and the moving image, is the most is
there most important method of engaging with the world and therefore I dont see whymoving image could maybe replace paintings in the home. We will see that may be not
true. Finally I think performance as we do enter an age of hyper reproduction of
everything from films and books, where anything can be reproduced instantly,
performance will increase in value, maybe not financial but in spiritual or intellectual or
however you want to phrase it I really think it will really enhance the value of experiences.
David Kefford:
Thanks very much Henry. Thanks to all three of you as well for giving us really an in site
into your own experience and quite lot things to hopefully have a lively discussion now.So please feel free if you have got any questions or anything you would like to address
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
14/31
the panel with, now is your opportunity. Does anyone have any questions for any of our
guest speakers it must have raised quite a few areas of interest?
Henry Little
An art fair its where you could live or die by the money you make on this, quite literally,financially its completely inviable and I think thats completely fair for gallerists to operate
that way but there is now a very interesting event which is coming over here and its going
to be on in london during the same time as Freeze and its called moving image its an art
fair organised by a chelsea / New York gallerist called Ed Winkleman and its now in its
second year and this i think a very neat solution in many ways. essentially what he is
proposing to do and this mimics what he did in new york, i its going to happen in the
Bargehouse, a space not too dissimilar from this, galleries paying a low fee 2,500 dollars
for single screen for a single channel piece or 5,000 for larger more complex installations.
They dont have to invigilate it, they can come and go as they please. You have a bank of
screen all in a line you can sit, you listen, you move on. its essentially making the financial
burden a lot less on the gallery. you encourage people to think commercially and
financially and moving image. i think events like that are going to be a real test. I hope
sales are modest at first, I hope sales will pick up and people will begin to buy editions of
films. piece i saw recently by a young artist called super chan(?), it was essentially a
video portrait of london an amazing piece of work, high production values, money she
worked hard to get. a real turning point for me although out of my price range, but was
first piece of moving art Id looked at and i thought i could get into collecting that. i think it
is really starting to come into a collectors mind that you can buy a moving image on a
more domestic scale. for performance artists there tends to be this idealogical split but
there are some interesting solutions. Marina Abromovitz now represented by Lisson, has
decided she can make a lot of money out of her practice through photographs
documentation essentially, the photographs themselves, not as a cope out, but for me it
seems that shes become a photographer, shes selling photographs essentially. i
wouldnt call them documentation they are highly finished photographs. she is using
Marina Abromovitz as a brand, the person to sell photographs. i think that is one solution
and i think i dont know whether it undermines her practice, thats a personal decision, but
there is a shift she is no longer a performance artist the photographs are the commercial
thrust of it, if its a solution to financing it then its a good idea.
another idea is Longsdale, Nick Longsdale, Lissons director, says he thinks performance
works should be thought of as musical scores. this made me think if we are going to have
script for a piece of work like a musical score then how does that enter the commercial
realm. do we start to have performance books like for example you buy piano music or
can you films moving image works, could you start to instead of selling in editions of 5
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
15/31
and 10 for 1000 why not open editions and sell for 5 and it wonder if in the future those
kinds of mass media might catch on. i wonder whether we will get performance books
rather than buying one of her performances. there is a new york lawyer called Eric Levine
who is wealthy and has been able to buy a lot of expensive performances by performance
artists, he owns one of her and another artist, Im not sure how it works.
Another approach is someone like tino segal. he is one of the first performance works the
Tate purchased. his whole concept of practice is that there is a real assertion of
demateriality he doesnt want any physical remains. the contract with the curator is oral,
he told the curators how to rehearse the dancers, how to audition, he tells them how to
instruct them to make the performance. this oral contract is witnessed by lawyers and
thats it, so its entirely dematerialised a piece of work which is in a collection, but its only
in the collection in as much that its in the curators mind, which is fascinating. he calls the
method of communication body to body. it goes back to oral methods of knowledge
transmission a very free civilisation in a way of communicated things pre-physical
methods of communication.
Theres also a biannual called performa which is set up by someone called Roselee
Goldburg ? all about commissioning new pieces of performance work. the more art fairs
there are that try to establish a healthy commissioning procedure and that encourages
collectors to buy work and see this kind of work inside of a financial forum.
Finally i wanted to compare different ends of the market. I think at the top end its very
easy with someone with a lot of wealth to be extremely philanthropic to be very generous
and its wonderful that they do that but i think there needs to be a level below that where
its not about that were we try to help collectors with limited means to collect these things.
Finally generations being born now, so young children in 2s 3s 4s are raised with
screens, phones, computers, TVs so i think for generations from ours these things are
alien. but for new generations being born now the screen and moving image is the mostimportant method of engaging with the world, so i dont see why the moving image wont
compare maybe replace the paintings in the home? but well see that maybe not true.
Finally I think performance might where we enter an age when hyper reproduction
anything can be reproduced instantly that the performance will really increase in value,
maybe not financial but spiritual, intellectual or however you want to phrase it, will really
begin to enhance the value.
David Kefford:
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
16/31
Thank you Henry, please feel free if you have any questions, anything you want to
address the panel with, anyone any questions for our guest speakers this evening.
Audience Member:
Question to Mike Pinsky, Im keen to meet someone who makes money from their
practice. Im intrigued not in asking you to talk about money as such, but Im just finishing
college, am a student tentatively looking for sources funding, a lot of time the artist fee is
negligible and often an afterthought, is there another layer of funding when youre a
proper artist or important and famous and attract another level of funding? when i look
around its all very peace-mail. Another question if you go out and do something in the
world does that mean your practice is primarily responding to different situations or do
you have a theme that runs through and that you take from one engagement to another?
Mike Pinsky:
Two very different questions, first question, i graduated from my BA in 1991 and started
working as an artist doing lots of exhibitions, I was green and thought the way to get
known was to do lots and lots of exhibitions, I was doing 10 shows a year, and I was
getting paid 200-250 exhibition fees, which was ridiculous and now its the same which
is still ridiculous.
David Kefford:
Where were you exhibiting? what sort of space, artist run or commercial?
Mike Pinsky:
Public galleries, public funded galleries that pay you. So then i went to do my ma after
doing god knows how many shows when my CV was nearly falling over, and one of mytutors was helen Chadwick who was doing a show at the serpentine. I thought shes a big
artist so how much are they paying you, she said 250.... i just thought what can you do
with that, and she said they had big ad campaign etc., i said how do you make your
money, she said mostly through insurance claims... and teaching. Well that didnt suit me
as an idea, it wasnt the most thrilling prospect so when i finished my MA I did quite a few
fellowships which was a way of making money.
David Kefford:
Can you elaborate
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
17/31
Mike Pinsky:
One was in kingston straight from my MA show, another from an ad in the guardian etc.
There was a certain point maybe 1997 where a combination of my work had reached a
certain level and that was when i was getting big grants from arts council 20/30,000 and
bigger commissions in five figures and above. Then you enter a different strata where
people dont approach you unless theyve got some real money to pay you, and i
suppose if you look at a small business model and forget about art they key is you have a
five year strand, the first three years you lose money, year four you break even, and year
five you hopefully make a profit, and i suppose thats similar, that you take a 5-10 year
view then you do possibly start to make money to live off rather than these ridiculous
exhibition payment right things.
David Kefford:
Could you see the notion of subscription tangibly happen with you as you moved with
your careers, did they fall into place did they matter?
Mike Pinsky:
Not in that neat way no, its all a big family people get to know you and that you can do
things, because they are investing a lot of money in you. one thing important to me is
drawing, because i hardly ever produce a piece of work without the money being there
whether its a gallery piece or a piece in the public realm, so that thing of convincing
someone to give you some money for something you havnt done is really important. and
even when i left my BA i had some drawings of a photographic show i wanted to do, no
photos just drawings, i got the gallery and princes trust to give me money to go to
thailand, and i thought its all a big confidence trick really cause you might not do it, but
then of course if you do then they go this guy does do what he said and it gets easier, but
the whole thing of a proposition is good and then they see your work.
Annabelle Shelton:
Did anything go wrong ever? did you get the money and it just goes wrong?
Yes i have signed some contracts that dont allow me to speak about the project because
theyve gone so wrong. the worst one which isnt mine, but put fear through the whole
system, is the thomas Heatherwick piece in manchester, a 2.2 million pound commissionwhere the spikes kept falling of and they sued him for 2.2 million pounds. It sent tremours
through the system. one thing i used to get phoned up about was where do you get
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
18/31
public liability insurance from and then thank god sue jones at an magazine sorted out
public liability. now Im getting asked for professional indemnity all the time a whole other
story - absolutely ridiculous. The real issue is a huge fear with big projects in the system
in britain now due to the Heatherwick disaster.
Annabelle Shelton:
Being a public artist has so much responsibility in what you make with a wide audience,
being a painter myself i dont have to worry about that.....
Mike Pinsky
I dont feel it that way, it doesnt overwhelm me, more fear in the system cause they dont
understand whats going on, but this is a complete aside to collecting the uncollectible.
Julie Freeman:
Can i ask you to comment on the possibility of collecting a piece of internet artwork or
collecting a piece of work so a) a piece of work done on the internet or b) buying
something multiple produced on the internet like a print, or object a 3D printed object
designed as an internet artwork, what you think about its endless way?
David Kefford:
So it can be freely distributed, downloaded?
Julie Freeman:
At least its out there in the public realm how would someone try and get that collected, an
artist thats made something thats already out there for everyone to see.
Henri Little:
Im trying to get my head around something thats been fabricated on the internet itself
but the concept of something thats widely available to download, one example i thought
was good i saw a pice a couple of months ago a film by doug fishbone and he was
experimenting with identity basically the film was a kind of thriller set in Ghana with major
actors and actresses all of whom black except the artist, Doug who is American, and heplaced himself in the middle of the film, he was funded to do it by a couple of wealthy
collectors, and my understanding was that he made three very special limited edition
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
19/31
dvds, the box may have been special and signed etc, and these were for the funders and
the rest were downloaded and anyone could have it. and the very idea that it could go
right across Ghana. But the funding of it was around these special edition DVDs which I
thought was quite neat if thats what the collectors wanted, but we could have one for
free.
David Kefford:
For collecting is it important to have this numbered limited edition with the artist signature
does this make it special?
Henri Little:
It isnt for me, but i think it was important that he found a way of getting the work funded
it as a really interesting work, a nice idea and available to all... that was the way it was
done, maybe it was just a document or record for those, but the fact that he got it funded
was the important thing.
Bob
I think with something like that it always becomes funny as soon as money is involved
obviously but I think if the artist can live by funding, if theres another source of funding, if
the money doesnt have to become in with some sort of transaction with the object then
you get that massive dissemination of something thats free and it goes to an enormous
audience and something thats kind of relevant is the music industry now and I think
bands have realised that trying to sell CDs is a lost cause and that this free dissemination
is a way of kind of enhancing your reputation but the problem is always going to be how
you make money, how you live, you know if might have an enormous artistic impact by
being disseminated but the poor individual who is trying to make a living is kind of
struggling but hopefully the more people who are out there seeing it the more people aregoing to give you money to make these things so it seems like a...
David Kefford
Double edged isnt it, cause you want to kind of reach a wide audience and disseminate
work but also you want to get money back in return so its kind of a promotional device
but in doing that you might get this monetary thing in return
Mike Pinsky
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
20/31
I mean I think there is a dichotomy there basically, if you look at the internet in the same
way as printing worked as a mass dissemination tool its all about bringing the price
down ,so the internet is at its strength as a sort of open source system the way that the
book is at its strength in the paperback, and if you want to play against that then do so
but youre misunderstanding the whole system of the media itself and what you do is you
have high volume, low price to make that work or you know you have a way of tracking
hits and you have adverts on it or you use it as a branding message or whatever but
youre always fighting against a system and misunderstanding the system if youre trying
to rarify something that is inherently about mass production so that dichotomy will always
exist and its a lost cause its just a completely miss thought system I think.
Julie Freeman
There was an interesting, um, I think it was Simon Faithful talking and hed made an app
as a work and he wanted to sell it you know for 59p, low cost get it out there, but
because he was funded, public funded to make the project in the first place he wasnt
allowed to sell it.
Mike Pinsky
He could have just done it commercially. But I mean, I have a book from Simon Faithful
that cost a 1, you know its a really nice book as an object and it cost a 1
Audience member
The panel is talking about the collector and I just created an interactive sculpture but the
starting point was collaboration, the point is people are coming back to me and wanting
something to remember it by and I want it to continue, is it up to the artist to decide or do
you listen to the collectors, whats your experience. You know do you give it away?, Im
listening to the people who have collaborated and I want to thank them. Whats yourexperience?
David Kefford
So are you talking about selling documentation? or ...?
Audience member
Well Im talking about the value of documentation or does it go on the internet free, I
know theres no rules but ...
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
21/31
Henry Little
I think it comes down to personal ideology and a personal inclination and I think on one
end youre going to have Tino Seagal who doesnt want anything ever physically concrete
then along the spectrum at the other end I think documentary is incredibly valuable and
from my personal perspective when Ive worked with artists and curated and Id be
absolutely forlorn if I didnt have photographs of the performance. In fact the artist I
commissioned to do a performance had four people filming it and a lot of artists
responding to it so it did end up having lots of different effects and manifestations.
Another solution is additions and that kind of thing and I think its a personal choice, from
my own personal point of view I can see creating something physical out of something
thats designed to be you know ephemeral of the moment I can see the clash but then
from a personal point of view i love having a document or a record or .....
Audience member
But surely a really good question is why ..... (loud cough cannot decipher) is not
collectable and I think the beauty of the artwork is that its for a very short time and I think
this desire to acquire is complicated and one that should be scrutinized particularly by
artists and by institutions and where is that coming from, if its like an entirely commercial
enterprise then I think its quite cynical and I think from museums theres this obsession of
trying to preserve something you know in its beauty lay in the fact that it lasts 20 minutes
and I think thats a question that needs to be bought into this discussion and like why try
to collect a performance like I know I know for histories sake that its important like for
performances in the seventies that we dont have access to and thats a shame, but I kind
of think thats why I like Tino Seagal, its playing with the idea that the artwork only exists
in your imagination, because of how you saw it or how it was recorded, or its like chinese
whispers and thats whats so nice in that the curator will probably describe it in a
different way.... Lets think about why we want to buy or acquire something thats made tobe temporary.
David Kefford
Bob, you talked about commissioning that performance, um, but not being too bothered
about there being an outcome or an end product, what were you commissioning, how did
that work?
Bob Lee
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
22/31
The experience of Catherine Fry can shed light on some of the issues in this in that most
members of our collective were very happy to have had to experience and be done with
it. A number of members said they enjoyed it so much theyd like a photograph, I
remember one member saying that one of the startling events in her house was when one
of the actors kind of had her head in the washing machine and it was an interesting image
and someone took some photographs I think Catherines photographers. So some of us
had the view that we could look at the photographs and choose which one but Catherine
was quite adamant that that was not what she wanted from the performance and that
would affect the integrity of what she was trying to do. I was bothered and some other
members wernt bothered so we could have paid cash for them to record the
performance probably in written form i the way she wanted to which would protect the
integrity of what she had done, what she wasnt prepared to do was say here are some
photographs and thats it, that was never part of how she wanted the thing recorded and
so we were quite content we had no more money at the time and no document in any
elaborate form, and we accepted thats not what she wanted to work to end up as, as
another photograph, and I think the artist should have control of it. If an artists needs to
make money and they decide that some product at the end of it is a way of generating
some income, but I think that you need to keep control of it, if its taken away you can
start to lose contact of what was meant in the first place.
Annabel Dover
(voice obstructed by pouring glasses of water) ...... as the artist frames it. What I mean is
that the integrity is up to the artist and they can choose if they want to eat then maybe...
(laughter)
Bob Lee
and just to say that some artists, ..... Mel Broomfield for example, he bought a work that
started life as a performance but she continues her performance through differentproducts but theyre not 5p or 5 even, you know new artworks emerge from it but these
are carefully constructed artworks a continuation of work that shes doing really. So its
not a document as such but something she is continuing as part of her art practice.
Julie Freeman
I think the point that you made about the desire to acquire - the best catchphrase, ........
(coughing obstructs voice) consumable art, edible like a dinner party where you eat thestuff and bio artists where they grow art its consumable and you dont expect to keep it.
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
23/31
Alistair Gentry
A consumable object is still ephemeral but by calling it consumable rather than ephemeral
it changes the expectation.
Audience Member
I think theres something amazing though about being a patron, a long time patron who
supports the arts, if you think of someone like the .......... family, not buying the product,
youre supporting the artist, you support the space so its sort of supporting R&D, your
work is destined for a certain destination but thats just a frame theyre giving you a
thinking space, theyre giving you a wage. And the difference is now that artists are
working in a space where we dont have that security, Im thinking of that future, um
anyway, thats um, loads of people waiting and you just um realise that that work can only
be made because the person is able to make the end product and now we can um
generate that space for ourselves so we can make work in our own way so that um we
can be free to what we are going to put that object in or we kind of start um the other way
round um and look at whats there and how it fits and how can I intervene in this already
complicated interweaving of, you know is it an action or is it an object.
David Kefford
Yes, so is it still possible to value process, like the product the making of the artwork, I
dont know.....
Audience Member
Yes I guess as Im listening to you Im musing on the difference, the different kinds of
emotional space which work is made in now from the space it was made in 1,000 years
ago , 200 years ago and what kind of interests me about that is the picture of what thatemotional space in 20 years time might be like.
David Kefford
So do you think this notion of having a private studio, some sort of garret like space, you
do have a studio but a lot of your work is site related or out in the public realm so is it still
possible to experiment with processes and techniques but do it outside of a studio
environment.
Mike Pinsky
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
24/31
The way Im commissioned is almost like someone is buying a bit of my thinking time, in
fact Im working on a commission in France and its quite interesting they call it a Le Tude
and its a study period and the study period is very well financed before you even start on
the piece and well deliberately thought through. Its something thats not valued in Britain
where they kind of think you come up with an idea, 2 days and you come up with an idea,
but you know in a way that space between thinking of something to possibly making
something, that moment of change could be 50% or 70% way down the line and it is like
buying a big block of your time really. That kind of reflects what western europe has
become which is a service economy, the people who make things are in the east now and
its the same with the artist that people are making art, making objects in the east, and I
think the artistic practice has followed, theres this huge value around the process, and
thinking, I mean thats what the whole market works on way beyond the art market, you
know not around the product so that also might be the reason why its more difficult to
sell a product that isnt the way the western economy works anymore.
Annabelle Shelton
My next question, is your saying that for instance, I was to sell a piece of work or a
collector came to me and said thats too expensive, your artwork. And in reality you know
its not.Its less than two thousand pounds and its a big aluminum piece. And they told me
they were a serious collectors, you know, that told the truth. And i realized they werent
serious collectors, but found the way I value my work, is its about you know, an artist
only sells so much within a year. And you know, part of that money is about your
continued practice. I dont like to see my work I sell as an object, its the time that I put
into it, its about what I do, and I think its really important you said that.
Audience Member
What a lot of what were looking at today is that there is many different kinds of artists inpractice at the moment. I dont think they are so responsive to the market but maybe we
could form an argument that says they are. I think all the artist we work with dont have
strategic practice you know they respond to specific contacts and situations and thats
how they want to work. And they want to be commissioned not purchased and maybe
commissioning isnt a form of purchasing.
David Kefford
For those who dont know you Dawn can you just tell us ........
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
25/31
Audience Member
..... (?) Arts, I mean were not unusual alongside other organisations like ourselves in the
way that we work and the kinds of artists we work with and so. It is a kind of purchase
but its one that happens through dialogue, you know, and acts as an exchange that
happens and then yes a sort of contract in a way is formed. Eventually something
happens that might be more than, you know, it might mean your taking part, use of your
time, or whatever, but Im not interested as much in your journey, Im interested in
thinking of different ways we might enter a relationship with people that purchase us, and
they invest it in us as an organization, and it is that journey that you look at the collective
results of obviously being on a long journey before youve even purchased work and I
think that its sort of taking people on a journey and kind of getting them involved and
interested in contemporary art practice. Something that contemporary artists have done
for a hundred years and its quite difficult, but small arts organizations to go on that
journey with individuals. And I suppose a sort of thing, that I can make a funding
application that could take a few weeks or I could spend two years developing a
relationship with someone who may never purchase anything from me, so you know its
sort of, you know Im interested in that journey and how it happened for you and the
collective.
Bob Lee
I think that journey happens in many different ways you know I think there are good
galleries out there who take their clients through a journey, in fact I am amazed at how
they over time, you know shape or expand their clients taste and expand the range and
type of work their clients would collect. And I think they do take them through a journey,
so they play a good role, I think some of the big collectors as well, going back to the point
you made over there, that I think its very honorable that some of the wealthy collectors do
buy time, and creative time, without restrictions almost, an artist will come with an idea,
and may not end in something the collector particularly likes, but to have the confidence,and I am prepared to support artists like that. In our case it was just trundling along to
shows really, but importantly I suppose go to artist run spaces that were in London at the
time, thoroughly enjoying parties, artist parties, new work, I can remember performance
many years ago which consisted of a meal, which is great, but the work was the decay of
the meal over several weeks, the remains that were left, which is all quite interesting and
quite a new concept and quite a new idea and quite an interesting aesthetic, you know
the romance of it and the aesthetic, quite a new thing to be involved with, I made the
point that we happened to be visiting shows, Tate modern came along, and somefantastic performances there, new experiences. So from the outset it was, we were semi
immersed, by no means experts but taking a step to then try to find ways of engaging
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
26/31
and ultimately collecting. I mean the first artwork I bought individually was video work
actually, it wasnt a painting or anything like that, it was a video work, kind of linked to
some work an artist was doing around investigating space and how we understand and
use space and he produced a video of it. So the first piece I bought, I think, a lot of our
members did that, but it was accident in a way that we found ourselves in the right places
at the right times, but i think there is still a challenge in people at our level, and new
groups come along all the time actually, we have a challenge in saying, well, we dont just
have to buy these products, go a bit further and investigate. Take time to engage with
difficult work, and we have to take people through journeys as well now, so some of the
works that some connecting groups buy in the early stages, you know its not very, its not
challenging, not that its not nice, but it takes time to go through that journey. Now i see
theres many journeys going on, but what I said in my opening remarks, Im worried that
there probably isnt as much funding around and some of the public art i have seen
recently, and Im not an expert so I am not going name the places, last Friday, I went to a
site where literally millions had been spent on public art, and it didnt impress me at all. I
wondered what the briefs were actually, whether, instead of giving the artist freedom to do
what they do, kind of, this is your brief. So a lot of public art...
David Kefford
So can you sort of describe what kind of public art, was it like...(laughter) was it large
sculptural objects like public art.
Bob Lee
One object was such. No I just wondered that, were the artists constrained, and if they
were, is that a good thing, necessarily, I think briefs should we as wide as possible.
Audience member
Your version of collecting seems to be, that the equivalent to an artist, I think and you
disclaim that same questioning that artists have, of materials and ideas and I dont ....
(unclear speech) from Henrys perspective that ..... (unclear speech) a lot in the collective
cause I think thats probably quite unusual.
David Kefford
And you also talk a lot about engaging the artist and its not necessarily about, you know,having a painting on your wall or something, its much more about the experience or
something about buying into the process of being an...
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
27/31
Bob Lee
As well as producing interesting objects, personally what one was interested in was
artists were saying new things. They got sort of a political activist background, and you
know thats been, saw kinds of metamorphosis, political ideology, the end of ideology in a
way. And it struck me that a lot of fresh new ideas and new thinking comes from artists
actually, and you have to engage and explore what theyre doing to see the range of ideas
that artist are generating in all different forms.
Audience Member
Im interested in the question, do you ever sell art to purchase new art?
Bob Lee
In principle yes, but never done so. In our group we dont, we certainly dont believe in
storage, and it always irritates me when even the contemporary art society say and their
big collectors come to panels like this and talk in so much of storage, I mean I dont see
the point in it really. I mean I can understand museums having limited space, but in
principle i dont see the point in personally en-massing a collection which is stored away
somewhere, so we, our group learn to work to new groups, for one thing, to get it moving,
and if in our rules, which were never written down or such, and if we did sell it would be
to reinvest in new work, so it wouldnt be that we made a big profit, you know, but to
reinvest. But we do get the work out there, loan it to new groups as they emerge.
Annabelle Shelton
So could anyone borrow artwork?
Bob Lee
Not anyone no, no..(laughter) although weve got to a public loan system. So we started
as one collective. Ill give you an example, there is a collective, lots of them actually in
other countries but one in Scotland that we were in touch with and the way they work is
this; they collect work as a group, they have experts who buy the work for them and the
explicit purpose is to buy work that will increase in value. And you know weve got some
sister groups, we dont have very much contact with, some lawyers who buy workinternationall, similar model to ours, but the purpose is always investment, they operate in
the secondary market, and thats not what were about. The kind of sister groups that we
7/28/2019 Collecting the Uncollectable Transcript
28/31
loan work to rather than just to anybody, when a group of people come together and
theyre going to set up, initially they need to accumulate funds, thats the most frustrating
thing is you start up a group and you dont have many works to circulate so well lend out
some of our work to those groups to kind of share our ethos....
David Kefford
A shameless plug here, Aid & Abet are about to set up a collective here so if you have a
desire to join a collective such as they London collective then heres your point of contact
over there. Is there any trends in other countries of collecting the uncollectible or is it
different, you know, do people in other countries take more risks in collecting things, is
the UK quite conservative lets say in the way it collects?
Bob Lee
I dont know is the answer but I expect that in New York for example theres quite a lot of
support for new and challenging work, quite a big art market, wide and varied and when
Ive been to art fairs abroad, dealers have said that on the continent theres quite a solid
medium range collector on the demographic that will buy challenging work so these risks
dealers make in taking challenging work in video work for example it finds a market, so I
expect there are markets out there.
Henry Little
Again, I dont think that I can give any definitive answer but I expect that you need a very
developed kind of visual arts ecology to develop this kind of thing and it does take a
building up of all the different layers to first generate an art world but to then encourage
people to expand their tastes and to buy challenging work and so Id at a guess say that
anywhere that has a developed visual arts ecology where theres a lot of education and a
lot of support around people buying and engaging in that sort of work on a sort of vibrantand personal level, thats going to be where theres a lot of work essentially I mean I think
that wealth breeds philanthropy and generosity and the kind of patronage that art needs,
thats probably not a particularly insightful answer but..
Annabel Dover
And also status, I mean, thats whats really interesting about what we were talking ..... I
suppose recently talking to some gallery in New York recently there is a certain amount of