Page 49 - Studio International - March 1968

mirrored the contemporary scene very neatly but ings and exhibitions were incredibly retrogressive those in the design departments of art schools the
told one little about what was happening in the means of expression anyway and that this would at future is reasonably assured, but not all the rest
art schools. The committee this year were deter- least be a step towards updating the medium. are going to make it as painters or sculptors, and
mined that the exhibition should reflect more These ardent McLuhanites are misled, I feel, by a for this remainder a liberal education will hardly
successfully the diversity of activities within the basic confusion between two quite different things: help in a world which is liberal only for those with
colleges; partly for this reason films, environ- art and information. As a means of getting more more tangible qualifications.
mental works and performances were included. information across in a shorter time electronic Many of the works in the Young Contemporaries
The works shown are selected, by a panel chosen image-making is great. But painting and sculpture, exhibition were statements without media, stumb-
by the student committee, from whatever happens although slower means of expression, have always ling blocks, often quite literally, which force the
to be sent in. Any student from any college can been vehicles for far more than mere information. indifferent spectator to recognize the existence of
send work for selection and it is surprising how But this kind of controversy can ultimately only their otherwise inarticulate creators. There is a
many colleges are totally unrepresented even at benefit both parties (Hornsey Light/Sound Work- sense in which a work of art is recognizable as
this initial stage. Of about 850 works submitted shop at one extreme, the Royal Academy Schools such only because it can be identified as nothing
this year some 120 were hung, shown, used, per- at the other). It is surely one of the essential func- else. In the smaller gallery at the Young Contem-
formed or whatever. The committee (President tions of the Young Contemporaries to pose poraries' there was a bed— a real one—complete
Alex Thompson, Secretary Alan de Boo and four questions which are of importance to the students. with dirty blankets, dirty sheet and a plastic pot.
others) obviously gave some consideration to how If much of what is aired will appear to the spec- The second time I visited the exhibition the
or even whether a selection was to be made and tator as mere self-questioning made public it still `artist' was in occupation with comic book, book
how the works were to be hung. At a discussion on deserves our full attention. Those who are con- of verse, newspaper, transistor radio and packet of
the exhibition, held at the Camden Arts Centre, it cerned with art should be concerned also with art fags. This 'exhibit' must have got past the selectors
was revealed that the committee had even con- education. It has been suggested by some that the (if they saw it) not because it was 'accomplished' or
sidered projecting photographs of all works sub- art schools are now providing the best liberal `promising' but because it was extreme: the state-
mitted onto otherwise blank walls. This suggestion education in the country. There is a sense in which, ment with no medium; the ultimate unheroic
was supported by an articulate and vociferous for the better art schools, this is true, and the fact gesture. It said nothing but 'this is me' (which,
faction from the Advanced Studies Group of that the education is so liberal inevitably attracts some of the time, it actually was). There are many
Hornsey College of Art (represented at the Young many students who are more committed to liberal- students who are at art school not because they
Contemporaries by an 'automatic projection pro- ism than to art. While we may applaud their out- want to be painters or sculptors or dressmakers or
gramme'), largely on the grounds that both paint- look, we should sympathize with their plight: for designers, but because they want to be themselves.