Hello my patient and admired readership. Here I am again, with something a touch different: a bit of discussion with an artist. I noted via the medium of I nstagram (which i shouldn’t use but I do) that a local Tasmanian Artist, Selena De Carvalho, was up to something: leaving artworks of hers around her extended local region, and telling people to go grab them.
I found this awfully interesting. So I asked Selena a bit about the undertaking. She found some time to have an exchange with me. This what follows, along with some other bits at the end. So dig in.
A CHAT ABOUT ART AND VALUE
I’ll start with a story about a failed artwork.
I was asked to be in an exhibition. Sure, why not. The curatorial conceit was that it had to use logs of wood. My response to this was the idea that I’d buy a ton of firewood, sign each log, and have a fire barrel outside the exhibition, that would be burning, and if you wanted to keep the fire going, you’d have to buy a log – a signed artwork – and burn it. I was selling them for $2. I’d give a receipt, and keep a copy.
This artwork was about a few things, but I mostly wanted people to ask what they were buying. Was it art, or warmth, or an interaction with an artist?
It didn’t work because I was not allowed to use fire, not even in a controlled circumstance. I did it anyway, but it sucked and I regret doing it, because it became about selling logs as a pisstake of selling art, which was not really the intention of the work. I should have pulled out and sent a rude letter, but I took the money because I was pretty broke at the time. I’ve done worse artworks, and at least there was someone to blame other than myself for the work’s abject failure (although I do like failed and futile art a lot).
A few years later Dark Mofo happened and there was fire everywhere. I was so annoyed, but something was demonstrated about art, money, context, and status to me.
I think a lot about art and money and context, and the value of art, and who decides this, and how this is perceived.
Just recently I saw another Tasmanian artist, Selena, playing around with what I saw as concepts of value in art. Selena was placing artworks and letting people know on social media where the art works where, and suggesting they could be taken if someone so wished to.
Selena is one of the local artists whose work I find the most engaging. It’s art as a form of activism, emerging from the artist’s long commitment to environmental issues. There’s a developed aesthetic, a series of ideas and a commitment to a way of working that’s striking and often very witty. The art Selena makes is variable; she has no consistent medium and tends to utilise objects and materials that are ‘to hand’ or found or salvaged, but she also manages to make art that has an uncontrived elegance; she could make pretty things to flog to the middle class no worries, but does no such thing.
Questions:
What are you up to with this art scavenger hunt? It does feel like a kind of game, which is enjoyable. But what’s the motivation to give your work away like this?
I’ll respond with a bit of a story too- about 2 months ago I was in solo home isolation because I had been to kiss goodbye to my GG who was passing in NSW and the borders were still hard shut and when I got back I had to stay home alone during this big grief time of reflection and solitude... 11 days in and 3 days into a fast I received a call from council asking me to remove my caretaker river sign (an uncommissioned public art I made a year ago that operated under the guise of looking very legitimate in both medium and aesthetic). The sign was made in response to the ‘over-love’ of our local waterhole, that the internet of location tourism has blown the lid right off... I was devastated, how can public space be so monitored in the compliance realm while advertising is so prevalent and perverse in the private sector... any how rather than get super fucking mad, I became sullen and deeply upset, and after several weeks of contemplating a response I decided to share/gift art works in public, to leave them for others to enjoy and collect, discreetly generating more love of ‘public art’ rather than shrinking into bitter smallness... an antidote to this feeling of being oppressed and more personally as a way to make room for what comes next. So I found myself giving as a daily ritual for 28 consecutive days. A specific, generative, generous tactic, which gently placed myself, a 40 year old woman artist, mother, into public space/ discourse. I was thinking too about the life of my 90 year old grandma and how women of her generation were robbed of the opportunity to be fully recognised and involved in public life, denied even the agency to be troublemakers and increasingly rubbed out of society, as older women age, they become invisible.
Does the act of giving something away create a new set of values at all?
Or rather is the kind of value changed? Are you accessing a value system that rewards activity, or play?
Definitely – giving without the hidden hook of expectation or that I might receive something in return felt like a hacking of value systems we are taught exist as privatised assets. I also understand that money is a form of energetic currency, blanketing the context within which we live- it’s a neat way to exchange value, but in art world it can be very murky because it’s so tied to scarcity, rarity and the fetishizing of artist/ genius type characters. With this gifting spree I formed two protocols from the outset, each work gifted needed to be meaningful/ valuable to me (the practice was not about getting rid of my junk/art) and that it needed to be consistent, as in each day. Ultimately as I re-visited and re-distributed value, this playful process was, as per usual with creative processes, transformative for me.
Why do you make work and do you need people to engage with it? Does that create a form of value for you?
I make art because ideas arrive and ask to be translated into form. Works reveal themselves and have done so for as long as I can remember, and if I don’t respond, I can, over time, become a somewhat difficult person to live with J. I find the actual process of making deeply therapeutic, and that’s a huge reason for me to continue, which as you noted above, takes many forms. This slipperiness between mediums supports adaptation and learning skills through the process of creation, in terms of building a career- it might be the opposite, being an experimental try lots of eclectic mediums tied together through conceptual spider webs type artist isn’t a very market friendly approach to career building or ‘branding oneself’- which is what the market likes.
I make lots of things that don’t find an audience, I could happily spend days weaving a basket by the river, but sharing art and completing the loop of communication from idea to and releasing that idea to infuse the reality of those with whom the art encounters, is a cultural responsibility, that I accept with joy. My creative propositions have always been about raising questions rather than providing tangible assets, it’s both about the ideas and feelings these works bring up for me as well as what they go on to propose in others.
I see quite a bit of art that’s about ‘the environment’ or about ‘climate breakdown’ and it’s good that it’s there but it never seems to me to go far enough in rolling over into a critique of capital itself in any way rather than gesturing vaguely towards it – there are exceptions, and I might be asking a lot, but I saw the act of giving work away – but asking for time or effort rather than actual money – as possibly an attempt to move away from the art market. You seem to be gesturing to a different economy, or at least something that’s different to The Art Market. Is that accurate, was it a consideration?
It’s true, for the last 3 years I have experienced a ‘falling out of love with art world’, even prior to COVID I had become cynical of the instrumentalising of creativity, the role of entertainment in this space and the gaping divide between rich lively cultures and the proclivity of collecting assets as cultural capital (LOL just briefly!). What you are touching on here definitely is something I have thought about, the Adam Curtis doco series- ‘Can’t get you out of my Head’, is brilliant for unpacking this too, where they go in hard at the role ‘culture’ or the ‘arts’ has played in aestheticizing / sanitising violence and the complex relationship between money, art, power and influence. People, I notice, become very uncomfortable when value isn’t stated, they don’t know how to discern value for themselves, it unsettles especially with something as speculative as artwork –if asked to speculate or make an offer on an artwork I find that folks don’t want to offend, but also don’t want to potentially make a faulty investment.
In the gestation and realisation of these gestures, I was considering the medium (what is the art ‘made of’), embedding codified messaging into work (concepts of ecological imagination for example) and the complicity of the ‘art market’/ grants sector, over-professionalization of everything. I mean this all sounds quite heavy, simply put, I had a cache of older works in storage and wanted to share some joy at a time when I, and many others were feeling shit ... thanks to my trickster deviant streak, I did just that. And yes, it was also a response of agitation towards gate-keepers, gentrification, grant writing, hustling etc.
Of course, it might be bloody hard to make something that critiques capital without being a didactic rant. That’s something I like about this project: it’s quite gentle and even funny. I’ve seen a few former activists re-think their approach to activism and get to a result/methodology that’s like this – and it might be more effective (although that is a huge question). When you arrive at something like this project where are its roots in the activist stream[1] of your work, if that’s accurate? Is this activism first?
I would hesitate to call this activism, maybe post-activism (to quote Bayo Akomolafe). I’ve thought about it a bit (I’m currently in the end swamp of a PhD ), and certainly my experiences of activist and organising dialogues with any art that I make. This gifting was a feeling in motion. A digestive for multiple intersecting happenings that will never make sense, that as such needed to be expressed in a public/ private/ gently transgressive/ positive way. Shifting this stuckness and distributing it subtly into other bodies, through the discreet language of poetic gestures. A calling in rather than shouting out.
Was the distribution of artworks you used in your local region? Is there anything important in where you locate your art projects?
Ha- yeah this was a playful dialogue with both my local community (it was a neighbour who dobbed my river sign in to council) and with online communities of peers. I often don’t leave home if I don’t have to, so by ‘default’ it meant that numerous artworks were distributed locally, within walking distance. Places we gather that either hold us to a timetable of waiting (the bus stop) or places that ask us to be present (the river). It also meant that lots of folks who would possibly never come into contact with my work, now have a piece and that feels lovely.
Locating spots to leave works in nipaluna, and on my run to and from town was a way of revealing in-between spaces, the gaps that haven’t been polished yet, or those that folks feel emboldened to occupy (eg. the Ferntree bus stop, where there is a couch and a bookshelf that community members have provided). Kingston was also a strong feature in my art drops- it’s my ‘local’ and incredibly lacking in so many ways probably due to the rapid expansion it has weathered – a favourite was a postcard of myself next to Koodamkulum nuclear reactor which I left outside the BWS. A little rip in the cultural banality of the super-market. Another serendipitous cross over occurred around day 26, I had thought to myself I would gift a significant work that day, having pulled it out and given it a revive, with the person in mind. I was thought to hide it near their workplace, then heading to the river, they were the first person I saw, driving off fresh from swim. They had never been to my place before, it’s just 50m from where we were so I put the work in their hands and we continued on our paths.
Where does a notion of community sit in your art sphere[2]?
I’m aware of how woven into community I am in art and life. How subtle and at times overt that sense of community can manifest, as support and activation. I spent years as a road person, a long time ago now, prior to the internet being in each of our pockets, knowing and keeping in relation with that distributed community was gold- when I happened to be passing through and needed a roof. It taught me a lot about community, how we weave in and weave out, how small and connected the world is, and those lessons learned in the backyard camp spots still run through what I bring to community in art land.
Is a community a place or people, or does it shift?
All these things. Being an artist who has had the privilege of being part of numerous residency experiences I value and hold close the sense of connection, local, national and international, these opportunities have fostered for me. I’ve also lived where I reside for the last 14 years, so my sense of community here, both human and more-than human is deep. I’ve recently made a mobile sauna as a business I am working towards setting up, and this space has opened up a new, diverse community of folks which is fascinating and refreshing to be mixing it up in a new context too. It’s interesting the communities we identify as being part of and those we are claimed by.
The gallery system – cripes. Here we go. I largely think at least on a pure theoretical basis that galleries are problematic, as they maintain a direct link between art as a very high end form of capitalism. Art can be astonishingly expensive and require a tremendous amount of unsustainable resources to make and move around. It doesn’t have to, but there’s a level where art makes pretty things for rich people to decorate their homes with[3] – so art is kind of inaccessible. Do you want to maybe make art that people can afford or something along these lines? I know this is vague. It’s a vast topic but I saw something that was a possible critique of the art market in this project. I also loved the idea of seeing art where it is not supposed to be[4].
It troubles me how completely disengaged from process, ritual and the journey of making our society finds itself now. Be it planting a seed and being witness to a growth cycle or sewing a pair of undies to get a sense of embodied labour in an everyday object. I want people to experience art as a process, as a ritual both private and communal, not simply as a product or outcome in a gallery context.
What if the museum was a library we could borrow from, to really get to know works personally, and caring for life (human and more-than-human) with the same curatorial manners we safe-guard our collections was an art full approach to living. If the library were a makers space and books were being published in the ground floor gallery no one goes to. Imagine if we had an artist in residence for the city, and it was a ballot system, because anyone, given the conditions can become an artist.
I don’t know how to keep supporting myself as an artist in these times, I’m tired. I used to run lots of workshops as a participatory method to democratise the art making process, it was fun and a reasonable living. But I got tired of the performance of hosting, of people only seeing me in that context, not the broader work that I do, hence my mobile sauna. I’m not sure about the whole commercial gallery jam, having never been invited in, or sought it out. How will artists survive this capitalist death grip of reckless ethics? Not sure. I have a bad habit of answering questions with questions.
I have heaps of other artists work in my home. Some I’ve purchased, much has been gifted or traded over the years. It’s such a rich multi-layered experience living with art, the reveal of new layers and insights over time. They are embedded with meanings, as I cast nostalgia and aspirations onto these works that in turn reflect back at me new queries and puzzles. Our conversations continue, stories live in the objects and I decorate them with my human ideas about life. That’s what I wish for everybody, that the art we encounter and perhaps surround ourselves with keeps enchanting our perspectives of world making, and yes, I think this should be accessible and available to all, hence why I sometimes give it away.
[1] This is reductive but I see your art as having an investment in an aesthetic as well as political ideas – like you’re celebrating wonder and beauty (and interestingly your concept of beauty embraces decay, but as the saying goes, “there can be no true beauty without decay”), and I think that’s really crucial to why your work is largely successful.
[2] I say ‘sphere’ as I’m becoming increasingly conscious of marketing terminology infecting and degrading language and the arts. I don’t like the word creative used as a noun.
[3] Which is fine, and people need to get paid and they need to eat and we live in capitalism so what do we do about that?
[4] Where is art supposed to be? Why is it controlled and maintained to be in certain locations? Is this linked to its value?
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Selena has an excellent occasional newsletter herself, which you can check out here (and assist in slowly building a network of communication that is at least not entirely run by the corporate world).
There’s also her website which has a whole lot of information about the artwork (well worth a squizz) and you can also follow Selena on instagram in case she drops more art and join in the hunt. Also, her next project is Nematode Dreams, which will be a collaborative project with other local artists I think are tops, Julia Drouhin and Caitlin Fargher, so look out for that one.
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Andrew, like always you rattle my cage and piss me off. There is a presumption of outsider status in this piece that in my view over simplifies the dialectic between commercially viable art production AND non commercially enriching art.
Serena’s art is beautiful and capable of purchase by the largest consumer group in the world (middle class women) which has the capability of transforming and elevating both Serena’s platform and life style. But you celebrate the esoteric and the narrative of tortured outsider and encourage the virtue of not making art that is beautiful. This confuses me and I’d like to understand your motives better. Is it that you are suggesting society is a power structure to be attacked? Society is also community and a type of family, and in healing the wounded ‘outsider’ child the adult can be embraced by and also embrace others in a healthy way that includes meaningful and healthy commerce.