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Review Jan 20 2009 « | »
Education, Education, Education Prominent YBA Gavin Turk recently lambasted art teaching in the UK for being unimaginative and overly academic - focusing......

Jon Openshaw

Prominent YBA Gavin Turk recently lambasted art teaching in the UK for being unimaginative and overly academic - focusing on a mechanical and esoteric version of creativity.

This put me in mind of own my experience with institutionalised art creation, a relationship quashed at AS level with the insistence that at least 70% of my submitted painting had to be based on 'observation' (in this case meaning the accurate replication of an observed image). I considered carving the canvas up into an ordinance survey grid of squares, filling in 3/4s of them accordingly. But in the end, I just dropped the subject.

Turk's complaint is clearly an important one, and his argument is strengthened somewhat by the practical steps he has taken to address the problem as he sees it. 'The House of Fairytales' was launched by Turk and Deborah Curtis in 2006 as a project to nurture true creativity amongst young artists, and displayed work at this year's London Art Fair.

It is true that 'teaching' and 'art' have always been uneasy bedfellows. On the one hand creating art requires skill, and a good grounding means developing artists have the appropriate tools at their fingertips to pursue their own creativity in whatever direction they should chose. Skills need to be learnt however, and learning needs to be quantified. Although Turk has gone on to become a successful artist without a masters degree from the RCA, as anyone can, their decision to not award him one (his only submission for the degree show was an empty studio with a blue heritage plaque bearing testament to his having worked there) is perfectly understandable.

Kandinsky once remarked "the blind following of a scientific precept is less blameworthy than its blind and purposeless abandonment" and this seems to have some relevance here. I think the real question is not whether institutionalised art in the UK is restricting, but whether the relationship between institution and student has become something it shouldn't have.

An interesting perspective on this can be found in a recent article in The Guardian. It points to a certain institutionalised indulgence towards students that developed during the fat years of UK art boom, along the lines of 'well done for making it here/ you're the elite/ do what you like/ the future is paved with gold'. This was always misleading, but is disastrously so in the current climate. An alternative perspective to Turk's would therefore be now is the time for the indulgence to end. Institutions cannot be responsible for creativity - that's the students' job.

This need for renewed creativity goes beyond that involved in making art, and a more creative approach to the whole process of being an artist might be required. Emerging artists can no longer rely on dealers peddling their work for them - the call is out for a renewal of the DIY attitude of the 80's.

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