WHAT'S ART GOT TO DO WITH IT?

The UNICEF website reports that some 40,000 children die everyday from the effects of extreme poverty and AIDS. An astonishing percentage of these children are less than five years old, and in the majority of so called “developed nations" they would be considered the ones most in need of protection. But the majority live in the “third world.” We don’t know them. We don’t see them. Their deaths, the result of persistent colonial attitudes and global alliances, continue everyday. As the Australian journalist, John Pilger writes: “These colonial (predominantly European and American) assumptions have not changed. To sustain them, millions of people remain invisible and expendable. On September 11, 2001, while the world lamented the deaths of innocent people in the United States, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization reported that the daily mortality rate continued: 36,615 children had died from the effects of extreme poverty. This was normal in the age of ‘economic growth’.”

But it's not just in the "third world" where this tragedy takes place. This was underlined by the 2007 UNICEF survey of the state of childhood in 21 developed nations which revealed that conditions in the UK were the lowest in the group. No wonder then, that the Mayor of London has launched a charity campaign that states "1 in 3 children in London live in poverty" (that is below the designated UK poverty line).  

And how is it in our own part of the world? We don't need to look too far before we are confronted by not only poverty, but child slavery and exploitation of the worst kind. In fact, the world for children seems to have become even more dangerous as the twenty-first century has arrived. 

So, what's art got to do with all this?   

First, making art is a very human activity. It cannot help itself, it always reflects human experience. Therefore at some point it will comment in its own distinctive way on humanitarian or political issues . The artist Doris Salcedo, whose work bore witness on behalf of the "disappeared of Colombia" demonstrates exactly this by embracing the famous line from the Brothers Karamzov:  "We are all responsible for everyone else - but I am more responsible than others."

This embodies the truth that humans are the only creatures on the planet who can choose to either protect or destroy it. We can be agents of reconciliation or annihilation. 

Second, I think there is hope in the way that the artist engages with the chosen subject. It is usually a journey of discovery: of self, of the facts, of the community and of the socio-political circumstance. Unlike a political process, it seeks to please no one with its findings.  

Third, it is born and developed in the stillness of the studio. In a non-religious way it is a spiritual activity. This "Odysseus-like" wandering through states of being, of knowing or not knowing, is at the core of the artistic process, and in a way it is a symbolic performance or ritual of reconciliation. The resulting works may resist direct interpretation, opening up a spectrum of imaginative meanings that enables the viewer to begin their own transition from one state to another.

Fourth, this approach to making art is reflective and experimental, allowing the space for the unconscious mind to influence the development of the work. Making exactly this point, Neal Beneezra writes of the South African artist, William Kentridge “The conjunction of drawing and homemade animation perfectly suites Kentridge’s interest in content evolving from process, in which meaning accrues through making.”

By engaging in this creative journey of thinking, planning and making, the artist can address difficult political and social issues from a uniquely human and non-political viewpoint. The exploratory nature of the creative journey, which begins without knowing the final destination, offers the possibility of a compassionate and revelatory outcome. 

William Benjamin has suggested that narrative in art is best communicated by "fragments" of story. In fact, art that keeps direct interpretations at bay may well be the most effective way of discussing difficult issues, as it allows the viewer to assemble the images in their own way and defers foreclosure of the work as embodied thought.

It functions beyond logic. In fact, formal logic may hamper the making of art, because it impedes intuition and the juxtaposition of opposites, or the use of accidental or random occurrences.  

Fifth, making art is also an act of remembering. For most of us these issues have become just like turning the page of a newspaper. We no sooner see it and it's forgotten. This phenomenon is a kind of collective amnesia that allows us to confine all things unpleasant to the back of our minds. It is against this forgetting that art bares witness, seeking to activate the viewers imagination, intelligence and feelings.

It is my hope, that in some way, this small exhibition may contribute towards the tipping point, that indefinable moment when the human race decides, "we can change this for these children." And that this work may also serve as some reminder, that the forces and interests which tend to isolate the world of so-called "serious" art, from the serious realities of our own day are not always and everywhere invincible? And that among the most exacting of those realities is our responsibilities towards the past and our obligations towards the future?  

It is human to hope and hope brings change, even to situations previously declared beyond hope.

-Paul Hume, March 2008