WAYS OF SEEING.
Having had to cancel this years festival, I gave some thought into how I could continue with Nuart's mission to engage the public with art outside of an institutional context where it can be appreciated (or not) on their own terms. There are some days for artists, and who knows, perhaps it exists for everyone, where things resonate differently, a shadow, marks of the pavement, the sun hitting a garbage bin, a leaf in a odd shape. Suddenly everyday things, the otherwise mundane and ordinary, become imbued with a different sort of energy, vibrating with meaning. Perhaps it's the lack of social events, of concerts and exhibitions and bars and clubs, a lack of "spectacle". Perhaps it's a comedown, or a cheeky joint or the stars have aligned for you in a way that a piece of chewing gum on the floor leads you to thinking about its shape and form, about who chewed it and spat it out. About the team behind the discarded Snickers wrapper and the industry and people behind it. I always understood part of Art's mission was to reveal these things to us, certainly since the Baroness and Duchamp's introduction of the "ready-made". I remember at art school wiring up ordinary objects to the mains electricity, a shovel, a welcome mat, a chair. Narrowly escaping being expelled after someone sat in the chair and fused the college lights whilst narrowly escaping death. There's something danergous to power and art's hierarchies about revealing just how extraordinary the everyday really is. For then what use in expending millions on public art and the committees that control it if a shadow carries as much meaning as a monument to your own importance?
But that's another story.
Martytn Reed (Nuart Founder)
