15th National Students' Art Exhibition - Review

Yesterday I visited the 15th National Students' Art Exhibition. It opened yesterday at the Mall Galleries and continues until 3pm on Saturday 15th July - so quite a short exhibition.

This is a review of what I found - plus some suggestions (at the end) for how next year's exhibition might be made even better, more accessible and more rewarding for school students nationally.

The National Students' Art Exhibition

The exhibition is the only national competition for the display of artwork by secondary school students across the UK.  Artists range in age from 11 to 18 years old and come from schools, colleges and academies.

Students' Artwork in the Threadneedle Space

It has a very basic website and is held under the patronage of the Royal Society of British Artists.

we welcome work from Years 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 & 13, all types of media including sculpture and pure photography

I wasn't entirely sure what I expected to see. However seeing an exhibition fill all the spaces in the Mall Galleries with conviction got me thinking about

• what are its main characteristics and 
• the main differences between this exhibition and the others that I see in these spaces.

This post provides images of the exhibition - and some conclusions about my conclusions as to what were the main similarities and big differences. (You can see more gallery views of the exhibition in an album on its Facebook Page)

Overall, I found the exhibition impressive given the age of the students - and one which might give some other exhibitors some pause for thought in terms of how to get noticed!

Given the exhibits are all by children and young people, the links are to their schools rather than individuals.

This exhibition is......

• more colourful 
• more emotional 
• more energetic and vibrant (some of the paintings were bouncing off the walls)

View of the Main Gallery

Main Gallery exhibits

It includes:

• artwork exhibiting imaginative approaches to how to treat a subject and how to create artwork. It made me think that it's a great exhibition for demonstrating how staid and safe some artists / exhibitions have become.

Through the Trees by Reece Beech (Astor College)
Mixed media lightbox

A very unusual 3D work using perspex, slides and a lightbox.

At Home with dad by Annabelle Trew (Highworth Grammar School)
oil

I loved the perspective of this one - suggesting keeping an eye on Dad!

• unabashed political statements - providing a commentary of the state of the world today (I wish I saw more of these in the exhibitions typically seen in these galleries) 

Trump inauguration - artists to strike or not to strike?

An interesting development in the run-up to 20 January and the new President Elect's inauguration is the notion of artists going on strike!

I was amazed at the number of articles this idea has generated and I'm guessing most of you won't have read them. Some are worth reading if you want to get an idea of the pros and cons for this idea which seems to revolve around when is a strike just a posture rather than an act with real impact.

I decided to line them up in terms of whether they are

• broadly supportive
• think the action is futile and/or there are better ways of making a stand
• just want to report the news and/or haven't made their minds up yet

The article most quoted by other articles!

But first the facts...

A document entitled ‘J20 Art Strike Letter’ has been published for circulation. The letter is addressed to museums, galleries, studios, art schools, and other cultural institutions and is signed by various figures in the art world. These include:

• artists - including Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman and a lot of people I've never heard of
• art critics and educationalists - again the names mean nothing to me so I've no idea of their weight or otherwise.

The Art Strike Image

The letter states

We, the undersigned artists and critics, lend our support to the call for an Art Strike on Friday, January 20, 2017, the day that Donald Trump will assume the presidency of the United States.
The call reads:
#J20 Art Strike

• An Act of Noncompliance on Inauguration Day.

• No Work, No School, No Business.

• Museums. Galleries. Theaters. Concert Halls. Studios. Nonprofits. Art Schools.

• Close For The Day.

• Hit The Streets. Bring Your Friends. Fight Back.

This is the Facebook Page for the event. I have to say that it doesn't look very promising in terms of numbers who have said they will be involved so far (if you remember these people will be spread across the USA). Thew comments are worth a read!

These are the media articles about the letter and the proposed strike - divided into the different camps.

PRO - it will make a difference

• ArtNet News | Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, and Dozens of Others Call for Action on Inauguration Day 'This call concerns more than the art field.' Written by one of the signatories
• Dazed | Cindy Sherman & Barbara Kruger go on strike against Trump - Over 80 artists and critics are encouraging the art world to stop work, school and business, on the day of Trump’s inauguration (specifically critical of Jonathan Jones)
• Hyperallergic | Should the Art World Strike on Inauguration Day? - Will the art world in the US close down on Inauguration Day? What will that mean? #J20. Good discussion of various perspectives on a strike but less balanced in the lack of consideration of alternative options

AGAINST - People are posturing and/or there are better ways of making a stand

• ArtNet News | Artists Criticize Proposed Strike for Inauguration Day - The divisive event has art world players debating how to effectively protest Trump. (This is the counterbalance to the first article listed above) 
• The Guardian (Jonathan Jones) | has responded from across the pond with this article The 'art strike' against Trump is futile – cultural elites cannot effect change - Calling on cultural institutions to close on inauguration day only serves to make the likes of Cindy Sherman and Richard Serra feel good about themselves Very widely quoted by other articles. Maybe significant he's the only art critic who is not American who works for a liberal newspaper? I'm very much behind a lot of what he says - see below for an extract.

Yet an art strike is just about the least effective idea for resisting Trump that I have heard. The American left is in for a long, wretched period of irrelevance if this is its idea of striking back. I admire some of these artists greatly, but the notion that museums will help anything by closing their doors, or students will scare middle America into its senses by cutting art classes, tastes not of real hard-fought politics but shallow radical posturing by some very well-heeled and comfortable members of a cultural elite.

• CultureGrrl | “Staying Strong” to Get Over the Trump Hump: Whitney Director Adam Weinberg Makes His Stand Adam Weinberg went all Meryl Streep on us tonight.

I like this response by Weinberg (must be the "child of the 60s" connection!). So much so I'm going to quote his words - with my emphasis in bold

Everyone knows there’s the J20 Art Strike and we’ve been asked what we are going to do. Are we going to be closed?…We are opening our doors as wide open as possible. We are not closing down. We’re actually going to do the opposite: We’re going make the museum free—pay what you wish—all day Friday, 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Being a child of the ‘60s, all I could think of was the teach-ins [the response on college campuses, including mine, to the controversial Vietnam War]. So we are going to have a series of discussion groups that will be going on all day long. It will be open for people to bring their own contributions to this, whether their readings, artworks, songs or performances.

This our territory. This is America. And we really need to express what we believe….I feel strongly about the Whitney’s role in that. It is our role not to let them own what we think of as America but to express what we believe is America….

INDEPENDENT - we just report the news

• a-n | US artists plan to strike on Trump’s inauguration day - comes across as more ambivalent than independent
• Apollo | Artists call for cultural strike in protest at Trump inauguration
• ArtBlouin | Artists and Critics Support Anti-Trump #J20 Art Strike - reads like a direct lift from a press release!
• Art Forum | Artists and Critics Plan Widespread Art Strike During Day of Trump’s Inauguration
• Forward | The Art World Responds To Trump’s Inauguration With A Call For Strikes
• Huffington Post | Artists Call For Global Culture Strike On America’s Inauguration Day -
  The J20 Art Strike asks museums, galleries, schools, non-profits, theaters and concert halls to refrain from conducting business as usual. Fairly balanced with a hint of a slight lean towards those favouring strike action
• New York Times | Artists and Critics Call for Culture ‘Strike’ on Inauguration Day - a balanced piece with a wider range of sources for comments than most
• The Art Newspaper reports on Strikes, closures and public gatherings: the art world gears up for Trump’s inauguration - More than 80 leading artists and critics have called for museums and galleries to close on 20 January - a more intelligent piece of comment.

What's also very interesting is the number of institutions and media outlets which have not taken a stand on this or written about it. I think it's presenting a number of them with a bit of a conundrum in terms of which way to lean!

....and what do I think?

My own take on it, for what it's worth, is that a strike only works when it represents a groundswell of opinion which has been grown over time.  

A strike has to be big and it has to be solid to count for anything.

The danger of a strike organised by those who like taking stands on things they feel strongly about - without any existing connection to a wider community - is that it can become a damp squib. In which case it only serves to undermine the perspective of those taking part and emboldens those they may be protesting against.

That's why for my part I think

• there are more effective ways of making a stand
• the action taken by the Whitney Museum is far more effective in the long run.