Best Western: PALP (Penwith Artist Led Projects) Review wrttten by Dr Alan Bleakley
In continuing to promote practices of private ‘expression’ based on a stale, modernist ethos and aesthetic, the art establishment of the St Ives area of Cornwall has failed to address the possible expressive life of the local community. Such art becomes another commodity, not a wellspring for ideas. Ambitious artists with a commitment to collaborative, experimental work promoting social inclusion, networking and educational opportunities have been forced to seek project work outside the region. PALP was formed in January 2000 as a response to this dilemma.
A group whose name pitches you into place must answer why. Penwith is the big toe of Cornwall , almost an island, the land’s end. The drift westward isolates – in Neolithic times the dead were brought to the setting sun. While the place educates a peculiar sensitivity to land, sea and weather, it misses the urban pulse. Penwith is, paradoxically, post-urban, offering the first post-industrial landscape in Britain after the collapse of the tin mining and fishing industries. The scars are evident in both landscape and people, for parts of this area are amongst the poorest in the European Community. PALP is responding to this not with subscription to a literal ‘regeneration of the economy’, but regeneration of a place-sensitive language of ideas, metaphors and images, getting people to think about issues through arts-based interventions.
Three site-specific exhibitions, all including invited artists, have confirmed PALP’s commitment to increased public access to art that enthuses and excites curiosity rather than bullies, playing on themes of a ‘history of the present’. ‘Shed’ was held in outbuildings on a Cornish farm of historical importance. Responses offered contemporary narratives on issues such as housework as unpaid labour. ‘PALPitations’ was held in a disused BT Exchange building in Penzance , responding to its unique history. ‘Field of Vision’ (part of a successful RALP bid) invited responses to a spectacular rural site, including residencies, commissioned new works and educational collaboration, focused upon environmental concerns.
Important dilemmas were raised by these shows. PALP does not place itself in opposition to contemporary art conventions, but recognises the restrictions of the traditional gallery space, aiming rather to create conceptually rigorous, site-responsive work addressing local needs through international themes. However, possible transgressive experimentation may be compromised by the desire to draw in a sector of the public that would normally not attend art events. A running discussion within the group centres on the notion of ‘intention’: advocates of purity of intention deny the possible ‘death of the author’ that allows the work to speak for itself, open to audience interpretation. A growing unease pervades the group with respect to how funding opportunities are seen to dictate and restrict more radical ambitions. However, what makes such a group possible is a fervent common conviction that art-based interventions can act as a catalyst for constructive social insight and change.
The group’s mission includes an ‘aim to create links and facilitate exchanges with other professional artists and artist run organisations, nationally and internationally, for the benefit of both artists and the local community of a rural and geographically isolated area.’ PALP has made links with women artists in Albania , where ‘art for art’s sake’ is definitely not on the agenda given the white-hot political and social climate. One planned collaborative project is to turn dismantled guns into art objects and auction them to the new wealthy elite of Eastern Europe , turning the proceeds over to schools. A proposed collaboration with artists in Bologna will investigate site-specific work in a disused hospital that may inspire the local community to re-imagine the place and its history. ‘certainly, probably, maybe’ is a local collaboration looking at how the language of visual artists may help to educate doctors who make decisions on the basis of visual inspection of non-art images (signs and symptoms of disease).
‘Coal, Salt, Tin’ is a funded commissioning of work through a National Touring Programme award. An important objective of the group is to create sustainable opportunities for contemporary visual artists in the region and one of the best ways to do this is to generate strong, visible networks on a national scale. PALP has formed a consortium with artist led groups in Leeds and Newcastle . Collective involvement will include visits to artists across the country culminating in six commissions for new work responding to the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial era, where knowledge and information are the new commodities and notions of place and identity are contested. Networking also underpins ‘Wish You Were Here’, a project to be completed in 2003. PALP will commission thirty new works of art, nationally and internationally, to fit into, or spring from, suitcases as a mobile exhibition touring coastal locations.
PALP is: Sue Bleakley, Gillian Cooper, Tessa Garland, Amanda Lorens, Rory McDermott, Marion Taylor. www.palp.co.uk
Alan Bleakley is a psychologist and writer who works in medical education and is interested in the links between medicine and art. He lives near Penzance.