My initial response to being asked to contribute to this new section of Bloc’s website, entitled Discourse, was to consider whether I am really best positioned to write something under this heading? This is because I am not sure if I exemplify the most active of those involved in art related discourse. This is not to say that I am not interested and that I do not value communication with other practitioners and people ‘discoursing’ art. In fact I quite actively seek dialogue with others but at the same time I genuinely struggle with what I feel to be an overload of stuff that I would be interested in, if only there was more time.

This sense of there being so much to do and see and discuss (or discourse) but not enough time, is largely my experience just in Sheffield. Goodness knows how I would cope if I moved to London where in areas, such as Hackney, there are said to be around 183 artists per square metre (it is daunting just imagining how many artistic discourses such a swell of creative activity must generate). Thinking about this reminds me of something someone once quoted to me, by the legendary music critic Lester Bangs, about how in the future everyone was going to be a rock star and every rock star would have only one fan – them self! A little exaggerated but not far off perhaps? And the same can almost be said about the art world. Is it just me, or how many times do you find yourself going schizophrenic with the dilemma of how to promote your own project whilst simultaneously apologising for missing somebody else’s exhibition or event?

This sense of guilt I have at not being able to take in what everyone else is doing can probably be traced back to a moment when Sharon Kivland preached to a group of students (of which I was one) that if someone tells you about a book or a film that you haven’t read or seen, that you should read it or see it. She may not have said it exactly like this but the sentiment was there and I remember thinking at the time - that’s just not physically possible. What Kivland was probably getting at is what another tutor at Sheffield Hallam once described as art students ‘shitting lots without eating anything’, which I think is quite accurate a lot of the time (and some of them no doubt do not shit much either).

This frustration at art students lack of awareness and interest is in turn met by a frustration on the part of students who are aware, are interested, and are making good work, who feel they are not being taken seriously as practitioners by the wider art community. A recent attempt to tackle this issue head-on was through the sub-programming, of a series of works by current Sheffield Hallam students, by one of a group of recent graduates who put on the Host project at Bloc. For Penny Whitehead the invitation to be part of a show at Bloc prompted her to consider her new position – now regarded as a practicing artist a year on from graduating. Whitehead saw this as an opportunity to ask why is it that ‘whilst being heavily relied on to make up the numbers of Sheffield’s art visiting community, students were not taken seriously as part of the city’s art making community until after they had graduated’.

I found such a candid approach to this issue very engaging. I too recall that sense of not being taken seriously as an artist whilst still a student. I also agree with Whitehead, that Sheffield’s art scene could possibly benefit from a greater dialogue between the two sides of the graduate divide. It was good that Bloc was able to provide a context in which this opening up of a dialogue could be attempted. To what extent this was realised, however, is still in question and should it develop will no doubt do so over time as with most discourses.

As well a being sympathetic to the views Whitehead expressed I also found myself having to reconsider how I felt when I used to be critical and sometimes feel let down by tutors - who I now realise were probably just far too busy and overstretched. Whitehead refers to the 250 art students in Sheffield today. This triggers that issue for me again, of there being ‘too much stuff’ to possible take in. With the undergraduate figures so high, it is perhaps understandable that the rest of the art community waits for those who are likely to continue to practice as artists to be (as yet another tutor at Hallam once put it) ‘filtered through’.

I get the impression that there is a growing desire among some art students to professionalise their practices whilst still at college. This is certainly a positive development given the traditional experience at art school of zero preparation for the outside world. However, I detect a certain fashionableness here, perhaps
influenced by the rapid proliferation of artist-lead spaces and activity. This tendency is arguably in danger of becoming just the thing artists get involved in, as opposed to the initial motivation of such initiatives as oppositional stances to the institutional model. This development has parallels with the ‘just get it out there’ mentality of blog culture (he says writing a piece for the internet) and arguably points towards a potential problem with the issue of ‘quality control’.

In the pilot issue of The Internationaler, back in October 2005, the Manchester-based artist Jonathan Trayner raised the potential problem with the professionalisation of artistic practice, warning that ‘to be professional is equated with to (mass) produce consistently coupled with a perception that to be successful a gallery or project should have a consistent presence (i.e. a minimum of six shows a year) then there is a danger that work and exhibitions are produced for a treadmill without thought’. Perhaps Trayner was attempting to address this when, a few years back, his planed show at Bloc never took place? Joking aside, the question Trayner raises is an important one and it is taken even further by the writer and academic Charlie Gere, who talks specifically about the web having ‘the alarming potential of realising the idea of the artist Joseph Beuys, that everyone is an artist. This could spell the end of art as we know it, when everyone becomes a producer and we all drown in a sea of mediocrity’.

I am not sure where I stand exactly on this issue. I am certainly not in favour of a traditional hierarchical structure, however, the emphasis on inclussivity and DIY culture is, I feel, presenting the real problem of literally too much art (often of too little quality). Where this could lead us in the long run could be quite undesirable in terms of art no longer being able to say something different to that of the mass of information and general imagery we are assaulted by every waking second of every day. I may not have the answer and I am certainly not helping matters given I was asked to write 300 words and have now written one thousand two hundred and twenty four…

Robin Close is an artist based in Sheffield who has participated in many projects within the city, including Bloc Assembly #1, Art Sheffield 05: Spectator T, a residency at Yorkshire ArtSpace and has recently co-curated Mayflies at the Site Gallery.