Life, Love, Leisure and Living Rooms: Art in a House in Aberdeenshire (Making Art Work in a Rural Place)

Judith Findlay and Iain Irving

A job at the local art school enabled us to move to Aberdeenshire. So in 1995 we travelled from Glasgow - from a 'Greek' Thompson tenement on the Southside of the city that had seen better days, to 'Greenwards by Hatton': a typical 'north east' cottage in the heart of rural farmland. As well as setting up home we also created a gallery: a tiny 'white cube' in the midst of domesticity, down a dirt track, next to a barn, a farmyard and fields. What follows are some of our thoughts concerning this project. These are not exhaustive or even conclusive by any means and we are still, as it were, in the process of formulating, 'digesting' and examining 'findings'. In any case, our gallery was not in the beginning imagined as a research experiment (not, at least, a controlled one ­ we freely admit it was not 'scientific'). There was no proposal, policy or strategy. There was certainly no application for funding and nor was any feasibility study carried out beforehand. Rather, it was all much more of a hunch, more to do with an instinct, a feeling. We did it for fun and for the love of it. We wanted to see what would happen. So if the project does represent research now this is more by way of an accident than design. Having said this, we have a notion that the venture did (and does) provide a valid and valuable insight into what might work artistically in a rural area. Let's say, to put this slightly differently, that it gave us an inkling of what needs to be focused on in research - it suggested, that is, a productive area of research - concerning what is necessary (and what might be apt) to sustain a rural artistic practice. In a sense then, the gallery has gone some way to forming a thesis for research. So what we tell of here - what we document - are some of our ideas that have occurred in retrospect concerning what an undertaking like this might imply - what it might allude to and how it might be framed - with regard to art and home and our line of work (namely fine art in the art school) in particular.

A programme of exhibitions was organised for the space: Angus Hood, Dalziel + Scullion, Ross Sinclair, Eva Rothschild, Sandy Grant, and a group show called A Fast Moving Car. But perhaps the word 'organised' gives the wrong impression. In a way it was all much more simple and casual. People (artists who were our friends) were asked if they would like to show, and all said yes. So, for four years from 1996 until the year 2000, various bodies of works and projects graced the walls of the gallery (as well as other venues in our area), and in the spirit of 'access' (or 'public art') also the garden. The artists that were shown were chosen quite simply because we liked them: good artists making good art in our opinion. They were also artists who hadn't shown much or even at all in the north east of Scotland. They came and responded to the 'specificity' of the gallery: to the fact that it was domestic, rural, and, relatively speaking, remote. This meant that often artists made art work - including a 'special' image for the exhibition card (the mail out was very important) - that reflected the characteristics of this place: an art space that often proved difficult for audiences to reach (if, that is, they knew about it at all) set in a landscape that, while supposedly 'natural' exhibited all the evidence of the 'human-made' - the technological and the cultural: the industries of oil, gas and fishing for example, the cultivation of farming, and the 'outposts' of national defence and coastal warning. As can be seen from the following images and descriptions (see figures 1 to 6), the forms, media, ideas and themes were varied. All the art works though, we would suggest, had something in common: an 'aptness' to the context in which they were shown. This aptness might be described as a perception firstly of landscape itself - of seeing it, of moving through it, of living in it, of imagining it. Secondly, it highlights an understanding of the 'leakiness' of place: how that is a place is a combination - an amalgamation - of 'here' and 'other places, of what surrounds you immediately and of what one imagines and knows of 'elsewhere' .

Being in our home the gallery was a part of our everyday life and as such it witnessed and was a site for the various comings and goings of friends and family and the various pursuits, activities and habits that comprise and are engendered by home life. That said, while the gallery was a room in our house it was, at the same time, separate from our living space. Art - and only art - existed in this space, not us (still a 'modernist' project then even though it owed its lifeblood to 'the post-modern'). Which is not to say that art didn't exist in our living space. It did (and does). It's just that we felt that if one's point is to connect with 'art' rather than 'real life' - with the cultural system or infrastructure of the art world rather than the world of mortgages, relationships and children (and yes we do know that these really aren't separate) - one has to 'dedicate' to those artistic priorities and proof of authenticity: of 'uniqueness', of 'originality', of 'preservation', of art without 'interference', of relations between works of art not of art and other things. One has to, in other words, dedicate a space - a gallery space - to art. Thus, to borrow and paraphrase the words of Philip Fisher, the gallery was 'adjacent to rather than integrated with the living areas of the house.' There was a difference then between art in our house and art in our gallery. On the one hand art was housed in our home, and on the other, we were permitted to sleep in a 'house of art.' So while it was not the case that the gallery existed and functioned in isolation it was necessary that it appeared to do so.

So, apparently separate, the gallery generated activities and habits (in essence an everyday life) of its own: events, visits, openings, writings, discussions, communications, meetings, other work, other projects, other exhibitions. Secondly therefore, the gallery was connected with everyday life by being connected with, well, everyday life. Local people called out of curiosity. Art students travelled (from Aberdeen, Dundee and London) on field and study trips. Curators, writers and artists visited and had meals and drinks, stayed overnight, camped in our garden, read our books, went for walks, ate and drank in local hotels and pubs, met our friends and neighbours. Art work was produced. Articles were written and published. Contact was made with local administrators, organisers, gallerists, curators, art school lecturers and so on. These contacts and connections initiated, inspired and influenced further exhibitions and projects in Aberdeenshire - some in other galleries and some in 'non-artistic' spaces. What was happening became therefore what might be better called a 'curatorial strategy' as it developed to encompass more than simply a gallery. The point is the gallery may have been separate from our living space but it was not separate from our lives and clearly in the spaces of our lives there exists more than art. To put this another way - and to make this point more specifically about art - while in the gallery one may be encouraged to think of art as 'art' and in living rooms one is left to think of art as something relating to oneself and one's life, it is clear that even art in the gallery is not separate from our lives. Even in galleries there exists more than 'art' - a coming together of the aesthetic and the social; an aesthetic that is in fact described and identified sociably.

This last point might relate to something Colin Painter has written with regard to understanding (or lack of understanding) about contemporary art. As he says, 'The solution is more likely to lie in an emphasis on socialisation - familiarisation - than in formal education.' It might also relate to something that Simon Frith has written with regard to academic life: that it is not 'the discourse of the classroom (with its focus on subject matter)' but 'the discourse of the hallway (with its focus on oneself and one's opinions about a subject matter and one's opinions about other people's opinions about a subject matter and one's opinions about other people)' that matters. In other words, both the gallery and academia comprise tensions: between the 'artistic' and the social (between art and the living room); between the academic and the social (between the classroom and the hallway). What Painter's and Frith's statements suggest is that what, and how, people learn informally is at least as important as what and how people are taught formally (and they imply the importance of leisure time, and living space, for identity). As an experienced and well-respected senior art school tutor once said, '[learning about art] happens in pubs and clubs.'

Thus, even as fine art is purported to be 'academic' in that it is organised, framed and contextualised academically and by academia - even as it is formalised and institutionalised as a 'discourse of art' by the academy ('the academy' being of course art schools and universities as well as all other formal, academic arrangements in which fine art is taught and handed on to future generations) - fine art can be described as unacademic. Which means to say, in other words, that desire for fine art and the artistic identities that this produces is not formed academically but sociably. (Artistic) identities are tried, tested and assumed in the company of other people - for example fellow students, tutors, artists, curators, audiences and so on - not (to use an art school version of Frith's metaphor) in the studio but in the bar. To make this point more specifically, in the art school the discourse of the hallway - the discourse of sociability, of leisure and the living room - must become an academic priority.

So imagine a proposal. Imagine a new type of fine art course or module, (that research has indicated is required but so far does not exist certainly at least in Scotland) within the art school. This course of study could be alternative but also parallel to what might be identified as a more 'traditional' type of fine art course (a course of such pursuits as painting, sculpture and printmaking in which an aim is to train artists). Instead this new course would focus on training for the cultural infrastructure of fine art or, rather, to put this slightly differently, would focus on training for cultural infrastructure by using what might be described (rather vaguely) as a 'fine art point of view' (which would most likely comprise we would speculate, a mixture of such things as fine art theory, fine art practice, fine art methodology, fine art sensibility and so on). Study would focus then on training all the people (the hucksters) that 'sell' artists: the curators, critics, managers, organisers, agents, publishers, promoters, publicists, marketing people and so on. Crucially, it should be noted however, that while curators and so forth are obvious and important 'art hucksters' (and are therefore included in this list) it is not proposed that this be a 'curators' course'. Research has also indicated that there is next to no market for a course that exclusively trains practitioners for the fine art world. Rather, although the course would be based in the art school (this being an essential characteristic of it) it would also incorporate expertise and resources from elsewhere - perhaps business and management, design, architecture, information and media, cultural studies, cultural history, new technologies and geography for example. While it certainly might be hoped that graduates could be trained who would eventually fulfil roles within the professional fine art world, a central aim would be to train fine art graduates who might be able to work effectively in other 'cultural industries': for example, leisure, tourism, heritage, entertainments, events and so on (and perhaps even to effectively connect the fine art world with these). In other words while the graduate would be fine art educated and trained, he or she would have to be transferable to other areas of work. Importantly, a crucial point - and a characteristic - of this project is that, as one curator put it, the course, 'would be training a very informed audience for fine art - the course would be highlighting the artistic process through informed looking.'

It seems to us however, that in adopting a proposal of this type, the art school, with regard to fine art, must drop certain principles it would seem to hold dear. Firstly, there is the principle of 'art versus society' or indeed 'high versus low' (what we've already identified, if you like, as 'gallery versus living room', 'studio versus bar'). Put bluntly, the art school can't afford anymore to assume the 'distinction' of fine art. Instead it would be much more productive we think to study the value of art as a discourse which infiltrates, interconnects and interweaves within culture rather than (as is often the case) as a separate, autonomous and unique world. Secondly, the definition of 'practice', would have to expand to include not only the making of art work by artists but also the pursuits and activities of all those (such as those mentioned above) who push and promote artists. 'Practice' would have to recognise and acknowledge the importance of looking and seeing and it would have to recognise and acknowledge that, arguably, seeing is more important than making - even as seeing incorporates making (and this we would argue is true for the practice of artists too). Thus, the second principle to be dropped is 'making versus looking' or, to put this another way, 'practice versus non-practice' - which might also be identified as 'practice versus theory'. So people who look and see are practitioners and this brings us to a third (related) principle that should be discarded: the principle of 'producers versus consumers' or 'artists versus audiences'. Traditionally, art schools have assumed a basic difference between artist and audience. The norm is, in a traditional cultural hierarchy, for artists to take priority. But we would suggest that what is needed in art schools is a much more playful, sociable, mutually manipulative, malleable and moveable relationship between artists and audiences. In other words, if the art school trained audiences (albeit specialist ones who might go on to use fine art in professions and employment) as well as artists, then by extension they could have the potential to develop, influence and support new, different and experimental ways of consuming fine art. This would imply that the practice of fine art in an art school would change. For fine art should be thinking in terms of access to art rather than the production of art: how to run a gallery, how to organise and set up an exhibition, how to project manage a public art work, how to run an art agency, how to 'deal in art work, how to publish an art magazine or catalogue, how to produce a promotional video or an inter-active media package, how to produce a web-site, how to work with other areas of cultural life such as radio, television, film, the music industry, as well as all the 'cultural industries' already mentioned, how to deal with 'non-artistic' spaces and venues to put on 'artistic' projects and so on - and all this instead of making art works. Moreover, to focus on consumption and access - on engagement - might also help alleviate the tension within the art school of 'academicism versus 'non-academicism'. For if the art school consciously and explicitly supported and developed audiences in these playful and meaningful relationships with artists, and of course vice versa, then opportunities could be provided for sociability - for leisure - over academia (albeit within academia). The discourse of the hallway (the discourse of the bar) could become an academic priority.

Finally then, this brings us to the fourth principle that needs to be dropped: 'art versus commerce'. Traditionally the art school assumes that fine art is non-commercial. But clearly, (just to develop a point made by Frith about the popular arts) what is needed for fine artists to thrive, for fine art to be opened to new ideas, and for 'a diversity of [fine art] pleasures' to always be forthcoming are 'people who can sell the [fine art] talents which are always in plentiful supply'. These are people who describe fine art, define new genres and discover new markets. What is needed are creative entrepreneurs who can enable fine art to work in more interesting, creative, accessible, diverse, surprising, disruptive, playful and meaningful ways. So there's a line here then that the art school might do well to adopt as some sort of motto: 'Support hucksters! Develop spaces! Build structures! Challenge [audiences]!'

In the end then, showing art work in our house enabled us to indulge at least three of our artistic passions: firstly for the art work of particular artists, secondly for a particular type of exhibition space, namely, a gallery, and thirdly for the curatorial connections - the artistic connections - it is possible to make between 'things' and images and places and people and ideas. This last pleasure we would suggest is the most interesting and exciting. It implies that what needs developing and sustaining, certainly as far as fine art practice in a rural area is concerned is a fine art network, or to use a different word, an ecology in which spaces and places, images, objects and events, organisations and individuals, not to mention courses and curricula, are connected artistically. This is most probably true for an urban area too. In fact we should just highlight that the model we chose to use - to emulate - was an urban one. Likewise, our contacts and connections - the addresses we sent to, the individuals and organisations we liased with, the magazines and journals we propositioned - were primarily city-based. In other words, we are not sure whether there is (or needs to be) a particularly rural way of doing things. What we are certain of however is that our urban contacts enabled us to work rurally. In effect then, the gallery connected the city and the country and of course connected these with a home. So in essence therefore, it reminded us of (and perhaps even enabled us to discover) the 'homeliness' of art. In saying this we don't mean necessarily that art should be safe or cosy, always placed in houses, or even domestic in size, content or character. Rather what we are emphasising (and here we are bearing in mind such precedents as Neil Postman's media ecology, Jonathan Bate's ecological reading of English literature, as well as Fisher's artistic appropriation of James Gibson's ecological theory of perception ) is this ecology of art. This is an art (including a way of showing and of studying that art) that connects and provides, to use Painter's words, 'genuine continuity', with home-life (and more specifically with an attitude of home-life), with dwelling and with how (and where) one lives in the world--with life, love, leisure and living rooms.

© Judith Findlay and Iain Irving 2002

Rita Felski, 'The Invention of Everyday Life', New Formations, no. 39 and Doreen Massey, 'A Place Called Home', New Formations, no. 17, summer, 1992.
Philip Fisher, Making and Effacing Art: Modern American Art in a Culture of Museums (New York:, 1997), p. 28.
Colin Painter, The Uses of an Artist: Constable in Constable Country Now, Ipswich, 1998, p. 10.
Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music, (Oxford, New York, 1996), p. 12.
Simon Frith, 'Popular Culture' (commissioned discussion paper 28, The Scottish Arts Council, The Charter for the Arts).
Ibid.
Neil Postman , 'The Reformed English Curriculum', in Alvin C. Eurich (ed.), High School 1980: The Shape of the Future in American Secondary Education, New York, 1970, Jonathan Bate, The Song of the Earth, London, 2000, Philip Fisher, Making and Effacing Art: Modern American Art in a Culture of Museums, pp. 40-47, James Gibson, The Perception of the Visual World (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), Harry Heft, 'Gibson's Ecological Theory of Perception', Journal of Environmental Psychology, no. 8, 1988, and Paul Rodaway, Sensuous Geographies: Body, Sense and Place, London and New York, 1994, pp. 19-22.