Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Views Not ExchangedAuthor(s): Judith JenningsSource: Fortnight, No. 269 (Jan., 1989), p. 26Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25551822 .

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[ Views not

| exchanged I SAYING 'NO' TO talis seems to have | spread to the art world. While the Arts I Council has long been complaining that j Belfast City Council wonT talk to It about | municipal arts funding, the Arts Council | has itself been criticised for its silence I towards one of Its own clients.

Art and Research Exchange, the j Belfast community arts organisation* j (whose electronic billboard public art I project last monn\ was reported on in ! Fortnight 268), has been trying to no avail j since late October to get detaHed an I swers from the Arts Council about ris I decision to end ARE's core funding?last i year worth around ?18,000.

Without block funding ARE's future is in \ serious jeopardy, the organisation says. I Plans to appoint c aw director have had ! to be shelved in t:.<* middle of the selec tion process. A public art programme, ! including ideas for more btt'board ap \ pearances and a week of public I performance art by local artists, has

! been thrown Into disarray. ARE's board of directors found '^ uas

\ tonishing" that, having received block I funding for ten years, it was not told of an \ impending review of the Arts Council's \ core funding policy. "It would be ex

i pected that in taking a decision with ; such grave implications for the future of

ARE, the Arts Council would also furnish : detailed and convincing reasons for their : action," the board said.

The reasons for !'e decision remain the subject of sorm. uncertainty. The

\ official Arts Council letter informing ARE of the decision referred to staff and location changes?ARE's move to

Donegal! Pass from Lombard Street is

\_ . fM?srrMaW^*m*!^Z!!mm : ARE's earlier excursion into billboard

work?one of the posters by the American artist Barbara Kru^cr

i understood to have rankled?as well as

to connections wrth Circa magazine and \ "other considerations".

But in an interview In Scope magazine \ the community oris officer of the Arts \ Council, John Morrow, said the reasons

I cenired around new poficy. ARE's pro

I portion of the community arts budget ! had risen dramatically over the last few ! years, he said. "The Arts Council can no \

\ longer allow Its budget to be so tied up | wrth big groups that we can't respond to i small groups in the community.n The I block funding policy had been reviewed | and in future groups would be funded on | a project-by-project basis. ARE was wel

I come to submit proposals on those terms, ! he said.

Meanwhile, ARE argues that without at | least some core funding continuity for the ! organisation, particularly in terms of i staffing, wiH be impossible.

At the Orchard Gallery in Derry, Declan McGonagle has quietly come up with some progressive answers to the perennial problems of arts funding. JAMES ODLING-SMEE has been talking to him. Meanwhile (right), JUDITH JENNINGS reports on the Ulster

Orchestra's financial crisis, and (left) SANDY BARRON looks at the precarious position of Art and Research Exchange.

FOUNDING THE ARTSl

Making the city's

walls a gallery ASK DECLAN McGonagle about his visual

arts policy as director of the Orchard Gallery and

the answer invariably starts with the statement

*We asked ourselves the question, what is the

function of ...?". It's a question that has stood

him in good stead in creating an administration

with an international reputation.

McGonagle has been able to bring to the

gallery artists of high repute who by the logic of

scale could reasonably be expected to choose

Belfast or Dublin as their point of entry into

Ireland. With the opening of the Foyle Arts

Centre he is able to offer excellent exhibition

spaces, and he has not been slow to canvass

artists he wants, no matter how impressive their

international standing. But, with no wealthy hinterland to buy their works, how has he been

successful? Maybe we should ask the question: what is the function of a gallery in a small

provincial city? This can be answered in two ways?what it

is, in all too many cases, and what it should be.

At the opening of the Orchard ten years ago we

might have expected this publicly-funded gal

lery to depend primarily on a group within the

community already involved in the visual arts.

But this metropolitan model ignores the fact that

the pre-existing elite is not wealthy enough to

sustain the gallery and is too small to value a

wide variety of contemporary art. This situation

forces many artists towards the metropolis for

their economic survival and for a positive re

sponse. The gallery negotiates for funds, not as

a thriving and fecund enterprise but as a poor

country cousin. Artists and administrators re

main victims of a process over which they have

no power. Subsidy is provided not for positive reasons but to avoid admission of failure. The

question therefore is: how can a successful

contemporary arts policy function not in *a

small provincial city* but in Deny city?

Deny. Friday. November I 1th. 1988. At

Texaco garages throughout the city, masks are

on display produced at the children's Saturday

morning workshops in the gallery. These work

shops are organised only so long as they provide interest and excitement, yet they have devel

oped into an almost continuous series. Also

taking place that day was a workshop for young

people run by Michael Peel, who had an exhibi

tion at the Foyle Arts Centre and public work on

billboards in the city centre. These workshops exhibit one of the Orchard's finest qualities?a commitment to involving young people in the

visual arts, not as consumers but through an

understanding of the various processes of pro duction. It is a comitment which widens the

gallery's natural constituency. The next day a two-minute loopwork video.

Security/Insecurity, ran on all the television

screens in Visionhire in the Diamond. This and

the Texaco project suggest an interesting ap

proach to private sponsorship. Rather than sim

ply raising funds for individual exhibitions

(although this is not ruled out), both projects used not only the money but the facilities and

expertise of the sponsors to provide a broader

platform for the visual arts.

In November five exhibitions were running at Foyle Arts Centre: small-scale drawings,

photos and photoworks from the North-west

Artists Association; Terry Atkinson's Mute:2

series of large works/paintings using non-art

materials, alongside earlier drawings and paint

ings; photographs by Edgar Heap of Birds, a

headsman of the Cheyenne/Arapaho Elk War

rior society, as a context for the public billboard

work he produced while in the city; large paint 26 January Fortnight

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