Can we talk about arts Television for a moment? Only for a moment, I realise that the new series of  Strictly… is soon to begin, but if I could just have your attention until the Glitterball descends and your gaze is caught, Moth-like, I’d really appreciate it.  

I did my GCSE’s 13 years ago, but for some reason those people who make and present arts Television seem to be under the impression that I’m still doing them. Where has all the depth gone? 

I used to stay up to watch The South Bank Show late on a Sunday night, lulled by the dulcet tones of Lord Bragg, to the point where it was sometimes difficult to get up for School on a Monday morning. It was through Melvyn that I was first introduced to artists like Gehard Richter, David Hockney and Francis Bacon; all painters I grant you, but the profiles were insightful, the questioning wasn’t held back or dumbed down – and the presenters were informed. 

Fast forward to 2014 and you might say that the opposite is true, in fact I would. To add insult to injury, the presenter often assumes an air of superiority over the artist – only to be shot down in flames by the likes of Sir Anthony Caro on an otherwise unremarkable Culture Show.

Let’s make no bones about it, no artist worth their salt makes work with the express intent of profiting financially from it. M***y is absolutely not the raison d’être or driving force behind my creative work, and I’m sure the same is true of my peers. It is however a necessity, it always has been and perhaps always will be.

The prevailing attitude seems to be that to make money from the work you do as an artist somehow diminishes its cultural significance; this does not have to be the case. From my point of view, entrepreneurship in art is all about circumvention, a wholly positive attitude. Finding other ways to get your work to people. If what you produce is going to make any real difference to people then it has to be ‘consumed’ – it is entirely reasonable to expect some financial recompense for what you have made. How else are you going to make more work, pay the rent? Or eat?  Maybe it’s time for us to adopt a more entrepreneurial attitude. Not to ‘sell out’, but to find other ways through which creative practices can be maintained; critically, intellectually and financially.

I’m not talking about tapping into the diamond encrusted contemporary art market, what I mean is affording artists the ability to earn an honest living through the work they produce – and why can’t artists actively seek out and develop methods through which to do this? Is that too idealistic? Some would say “yes” I’m sure, but from the comfort of the family BMW on the way to an unpaid Internship, that’s quite easy to do.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked the exasperated question, “but… what does it mean?!” Both in relation to my own practice and that of other artists. It’s either that or “what’s the point of it?!” *see previous text.

It is a fanciful notion to believe that artworks contain meaning within their physical fabric; as if the artist has somehow managed to an encase an idea within an object – nonetheless, that wholly naive assertion is posited by many people, artists among them.

Even if they had managed such an alchemical feat, therein lies another problem; the unrealistic expectation of many a gallery-goer – a release of that meaning within five seconds of being introduced.

The art object can only ever present the viewer with its lineage – evidence of the material processes and/or references which brought them into being. They are for all intents and purposes ‘dumb’ objects; the remains of a process we are not often privy to.

It was on a recent trip to the Saatchi Gallery to see The Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture, the obligatory Summer ’Blockbuster’, that some fundamental questions about both the creation and display of art were thrown into quite sharp relief. Spot the charmingly witty pun…didn’t see it?…well that might be important a bit further on.

Entering Gallery 1, a vast utterly pristine ‘white cube’ space, the viewer is presented with a field of eight roughly hewn boulders scattered about the gallery as if they had been teleported from Avebury. The work is Summit (2009) by Belgian artist Kris Martin. 

Atop each of the rocks stands a small paper cross coloured with ink; which both the artist and the gallery suggest indicates that the stones have been conquered, alluding to such things as; dominion, struggle, conquest and victory. 

Beneath each lump of stone sits a rusting steel ‘pallet’ like object comprised of an approximately one metre square sheet, itself elevated on three “I” beams welded equidistantly along the same axis. This forms a very noticeable, seemingly integral element of the work.