Music stands, tin baths and sofas: How can budding creatives afford to live, work and make in the capital?

During a recent hunt for young artists to advertise, I contacted an old friend who has, like me, just graduated from art college. Looking at a five metre tall wooden sculpture which he’s recently produced, I asked him where his studio space was “my mum’s living room” he said, “mine’s my mum’s conservatory” I replied.

Like many other budding creatives we both work in the capital, spend our evenings trying to climb the art world ladder by schmoozing, sipping complimentary booze and blurrily studying artworks at private views, and our weekends touring London galleries for inspiration; and the rest of the time running for the last train home and despairing over the Sunday service.

No one ever said the life of an artist was easy, but should we really be stuck starving in a garret just like the old days? It’s true that other cities – Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham – have impressive art scenes and are cheaper options, but London is ultimately the Mecca of the British art world and so we artists push on: bedding various sofas, setting up makeshift studios and using a child’s music stand as an easel – or is that just me?

The solution is of course affordable live/work property; however as warehouses have become so trendy that they attract the likes of Jay Joplin (see White Cube, Bermondsey) and, despite freezing floors and draughty windows, are more expensive than your average two-up two-down, the options for these renovations are limited.  Yes, a cheap room is available through Gumtree or Spareroom – but how thrilled will the new housemates be if you start noisily constructing an installation in your box room, or painting in the galley kitchen?

It’s no secret that government cuts have slashed the wages of arty folk, but luckily our creativity breeds solutions which can both accommodate our empty pockets and geographical needs. For friends of mine these include living in affordable artist studios, or taking a property through guardianship schemes; still, the first is slightly illegal and both are short term and uncomfortable – two friends living in properties without running water, one investing in a tin bath to satisfy his personal hygiene needs.

It seems that currently only one side of the problem is resolvable – take a cheap studio space and you can’t afford a bed, get a room in a house and your practice suffers. Schemes such as Container City have tried to combat this, and if you have £750pcm spare you can go for a snazzy live/work space in the East End (marginally cheaper than a separate studio and home), but neither are permanent or prevalent.

Why, when the UK’s art world is one of its biggest breadwinners, are its contributors paralysed?

Even solutions to the housing crisis on a much broader scale have met with contention: the recent change in law allowing easy office-to-residential conversion criticised for threatening developers, and plans to transform Dalston garages into teensy ‘bijou’ homes deemed ‘unethical’.

Surely what is unethical is allowing those who are building creative careers to struggle so desperately; forcing parents to take in their recently graduated kids who aren’t going to take a job in recruitment consultancy; and driving artists to live illegally, unsafely or uncomfortably.

Jay Joplin stuck his new White Cube in a 1970s warehouse because he needed a big cheap space; a need mirrored by the entirety of London’s artistic community. Although Joplin has transformed it into the most successful White Cube yet, I can’t help but think that when he took that gigantic shed, he also took something from the little people.

We don’t need flat-pack homes or a stack of metal boxes to live in; we need to make responsible use of the empty spaces we have, to assess whose need is greater: swanky developers offering loft living to affluent hipsters; or talented workaholics set to support the arts, tourism and our ravaged economy.

The solution is simple: divide it up, create a community and wait and see what that community creates.

Today began with a TED Talk.

I’m not sure why I wrote this the other day, but I did, and I missed the IdeasTap Columnist competition so here it is. It also completely trails off at the end so it’s probably a good thing that I missed the deadline. But here: happiness, some accidental indulgent self-analysis, and a bit of art chat.

We artists are a grumpy bunch, but things will all work out in the end if we just smile, and don’t cut our ears off either.

Today began with a TED Talk: Happiness ‘expert’ Dan Gilbert on synthesising the one emotion that we treat as an item, a commodity to be had. Happiness has become the ultimate Thing in our materialistic society, and we accumulate other things in the hope that the sum of these equals utter unbounded happiness.

However, as Gilbert affirms, happiness cannot be sought and accrued as it is (not too sound too new age) a state of mind: how we regard what we have. These are not only the items that we have, but family, friends, our talents; elements which we are fully aware that we take for granted – when reminded of them replying with “yes, but I’m not successful”, “yes, but it doesn’t matter”, “yes, but…”

This may sound like a sweeping statement, but during a recent bout of CBT (I’m a hypochondriac, always have been) I began to look into this dismissive attitude and found that it is widely true for young creatives – a genre which encompasses most of my friends, colleagues and acquaintances. This “yes, but…” attitude is so very damaging as it cannot be opened up to the good, as it already recognises and immediately disregards it.

Gilbert talks about synthesised and true happiness: the first is a result of instructing ourselves to enjoy life; the second is the result of achieving the ultimate goals that we believe will give us happiness. True happiness is seen as The Thing, whereas synthesised happiness is simply a meagre replacement for this. However, as true happiness is measured by success – an immeasurable and entirely subjective idea – perhaps synthesised happiness, forcing ourselves to be content, is actually The Thing as it is both realistic and achievable.

Unfortunately, young creatives are not a much of a realistic breed. Most of the young artists seen at private views flouncing about in their Barbour jackets and Toms or heavy heels and impractical headwear, have at some point had a destructive seed planted in their mind: you can have success, and you can have it now. The comments which water this seed will have been made with supportive intentions, but they can inadvertently set expectations.

So if ‘true’ happiness is the result of achieving your goals, does this mean that many of us – perhaps artists in particular – are doomed to a life of misery?

Of course not: happiness can be something intangible that we wait to materialize when that piece of work sells, a particular paper publishes an article, or that gallery commissions a show, or instead it can be something we construct, force even. Every emotion has a cause; our society is saturated with professionals whose job is to identify exactly what makes us sad, so why not instead seek out exactly what can make us happy? Of course this varies slightly as we are all wired up differently, but only to a point.

One of the oldest theories of happiness is Maslow’s Pyramid: a five tier hierarchy of human needs, which should result in happiness when fulfilled in the allocated order. First are physiological needs such as food and water; next comes safety; third is belonging; fourth is esteem; and the final tip, the icing on the cake, is self-actualisation: that imagined success, The Thing.

Maslow’s pyramid is just a theory, but when put into practice reveals why us artists can be such a discontented crowd: we’re trying to climb straight to the top without even laying down the first few bricks; squeezing icing straight onto the table without baking the cake first (which itself alone is a tragedy).

Gilbert and Maslow’s theories are not similar: Gilbert identifies an easily achievable version of happiness, whilst Maslow explains how we become satisfied. However what both scientists do is bring the idea of happiness down from its pedestal and convert it into something concrete, discussing happiness as it is: a physiological state which has a set of definite causes. If we stop fantasising about how happy we could be, stop the “yes, buts”, and instead look objectively at what we have – which for most of us at least includes two rows of Maslow breeze blocks – then maybe we will find that we already have The Thing.

….the pictures are all from found film stills, the happy times of strangers..

 

Comica Comiket and being a mate.

I spent my last Saturday morning over by the Gherkin, trying to find a bank – FYI all banks in the business section are closed on Saturdays. The reason for this was that my little childhood friend, Bex, was selling some of her wares at the independent comic and ‘zine festival Comica Comiket.

I’m not really into superhero stories, but there was more than enough printing, illustration, writing and small novelty items to keep me amused. Which is where I come to Bex’s work: drawing, print, painting, collage and charming little books are her thing. She would kill me for saying ‘charming’. Bex’s books are small and cute (again treading dangerous territory here) but also dry, witty and politically aware – see the naively titled: The Day I Met a Fatty.

So if you like ‘zines, decent illustration (none of that naive-art bull…), and interesting little stories check her out.

Here’s few tiny tasters….

…lovely handmade screen-printed robot cards, and Tick, a book about a little steampunk robot and his quest to find a purpose in our modernised lives…

An excerpt from Rumble - the battle between Mike Bison and Trevor Bearbick (ahaaa..)

Finally a couple of snippets from The Day I Met a Fatty – which taught me that make-up does not make you stupid, and not to be scared of chavs. I wish all helpful life lessons could be learnt in this way…

…more to come from Comica Comiket in the next few days.

Thank you to Miss Bex Bagley for helping me to discover a new genre of doodles.

Kristjana S Williams…hybrids, psychedelia, festivals and fashion

Last weekend I managed to get down to London from Birmingham (my supposed home) to catch Pick Me Up graphic art fair just before it closed. My housemate and I ran to the station to make sure we got a train, we paid on the day so it wasn’t cheap, we rushed to Pick Me Up to make sure we had enough time to absorb all the wonderful illustrations we expected to find…and were sorely disappointed. Last year was brilliant, this year was just incredibly commercial: typography pieces displaying ordinary ‘quirky’ phrases, over priced drawings that just weren’t that good and worst of all, my pet hate, ‘naive’ art. Don’t even get me started – if you can’t draw either learn, or do not draw. There is no talent in drawing like a five year old, really it just makes me angry. No wonder mainland European galleries have recently been chatting about how little respect they have for British art – where’s the craftsmanship!? Where!?

Luckily I did find a few gems, four in total. Well four I was reasonably impressed by, this artist is the favourite…I haven’t decided yet whether the other three are blog-worthy. Wait and see! For now it’s Kristjana S Williams, she went to art school in the UK so it’s not drawing but collage of course! No, but honestly it is beautiful collage and there’s a bit of Victoriana in there, so for me her work is a winning lot. I didn’t get to see any of her huge works at Pick Me Up like those huge canvases you can see up the top there, but her smaller pieces are gorgeous too and I suppose there are also those tiny details which add to it all and really draw you in.

Weirdly, last year I was at the Food Festival in Brighton just by accident and on one of the tables I found a flyer for Wilderness festival which I kept – not just because I wanted to go to the festival, but because I loved the illustrations. I couldn’t find out who’d done the artwork for them from the Wilderness website and I scoured the web to find out  the artist’s name, then a couple of days ago hopped onto Kristjana William’s webby and there it was! So I suppose I’ve admired her for a while.

And I still want to go to this festival. Maybe this summer…

Not only does Williams do pieces for little festivals, she’s also worked on wall murals at the V&A for the London Design Festival which are just MMM! I’m currently having my room redecorated, I can’t quite afford a bespoke Kristjana S Williams mural however I’ve got the imitation curtains down to a ‘t’, birds of paradise and everything.

Last but certainly not least, she is in fact the Creative Director of Beyond The Valley home and fashion store in London’s West End – Victorian illustrations merged together into multicoloured impossible animals in my room and on my clothes!? Go on then.

Kristjana S Williams is doing ridiculously well for herself, so I’m off to grab some old books, inks and a scalpel: non-overdraft pennies, here I come.