Notes on Storage

Artists store their work in many different ways: some paintings are meticulously wrapped and stacked in purpose-made storage systems, other paintings are flung into attics. Fragile ceramics are stacked in basements, pushed under kitchen sinks, and photographs are kept under the bed in damp houses. Some artists say they store nothing, others can’t let go of any component for fear it may be needed again. Careful storage may suggest a love of the work, a belief in its quality, or in its importance to the development of the artist. Work may one day be valuable to someone else, a collector, a museum or a family member. At other times works may be stored to prevent them entering the public realm, perhaps until a market becomes more competitive, or because an artist thinks the new work may alter the value of existing work. Some works are stored with the knowledge that they will never be shown again, others have momentary rest before moving on to another exhibition. Some works demand much less storage, videos are kept on the shelf with the other domestic videos, books are kept on the bookshelf. Whatever the method, storage reflects the artist’s perception of their work, its importance and its duration in time. When an institution or organisation, or individual other than the artist stores the work, the reasons are sometimes similar or sometimes different. Sometimes the artwork and its financial and cultural value may be high, other times the collector is waiting for the right moment to present the work.

I became interested in the ways that artists store their work in 1998 when I had to throw away sculpture I had made with patients at a palliative care centre, as I didn’t have the space or financial resources to keep the work. Before then, my method of storage had been to fling stuff in cupboards and under beds. In 2002 in Utica and Syracuse, New York, I began ‘Stored Works’. I visited artists’ workplaces and asked if I could photograph their stored work. The workplaces visited were either professional studios or rooms in homes. The photographs were taken on slide, the only bit of my practice that I stored carefully.

Artists' storage methods. Two examples from Syracuse. Photographs copyright Becky Shaw.

When commissioned by the Independent Art School I was asked to investigate the ambition of artists in Hull. I thought that one way to do this would be to reuse the method I used in ‘Stored Works’, as perhaps the care given to storage might reflect how ambitious artists were. I visited twenty-six artist’s studios during one week in Hull. I asked to photograph their stored work, as well as inviting them to answer some questions. Some artists refused to let me see their stored work, or more precisely, they did not show up. In the USA artists who refused to participate were more direct, refusing on the grounds that they did not want to be represented by their stored work.

Artist's Storage methods. Three examples from Hull. Photographs copyright Becky Shaw.

The Hull experience was developed into a new work, an ‘inaugural lecture’ at the Ferrens Gallery, delivered only to the same group of people whose stored work I had photographed. The lecture went through individual’s responses and tried to get a sense of how ambition might be detected or quantified. In the following text I leave behind the focus of the lecture and take the opportunity to speculate about relationships between storage, objects, ambition, isolation and demand.

The collection of photographs made in Hull bear many similarities to those made in the States. In both countries making and storing of art usually happens in the same place, but in the US there were also instances where making happened in professional studios but storing happened at home, amongst children’s bikes and decorating materials. In Hull work was normally stored in artist’s workplaces, and, with five exceptions, all at home.

In the images from the States the artists generally appear to have larger studios and to look more ‘professional’. In Daniel Buren’s influential essay (written 1971, first published 1979) ‘The Function of the Studio’ he indicates that there are two models for studios, the European and the American. The American one is bigger and always lit with electric light. Buren notes that the two versions mirror the types of museum in each continent, and that the studio and the museum are ‘two foundations of the same building and the same system’. I agree with Buren’s analysis of the institutional basis of studios, but in the twenty-six years that have passed since Buren’s text some of the conventions have changed somewhat. Many of the artists in Hull didn’t have a place they called a studio although there was always a space of some kind where some aspect of work took place. So, while the use of space has changed I suspect the relationships to the institution of art are no different.

In contrast to Buren’s observations, in the USA the greater scale of studios appears to be more to do with age than with national difference. Many of the artists visited in the States were over 35, while the artists in Hull were generally considerably younger. Rather than national difference, it seems that the uses of studios and storage differs more as a result of the critical frames of reference the artists employ and are involved in. My initial idea for Hull was that careful storage might reveal the more ambitious artist, believing in the future importance of their work, its’ acquisition by a collector or its contribution to art knowledge. By default then, the careless storer might be considered unambitious. By drawing conclusions like this the observer would be, of course, ignoring the critical framework within which work is made. The careless storer might be opposed to works with physical presence or permanence, or might be more interested in the rapid turnover of ideas than completion, or they may have the canny knowledge that the image of their work in the catalogue, slide or the name in the advert will last longer than the actual work anyway.

It is clear then, that the ambition of the work does not exist to be ‘detected’ in physical permanence or scale, or to the importance given to the storage of, the work. Ambition can’t be detected in the look of studios either. Ambition, if it can be defined, can only lie in the artist’s attitude or perhaps the critical contribution of the work itself. Thirty years on from the artists Buren describes, most of the artists visited in Hull see their practice as ‘beyond studios’, instead happening as live events or for specific sites. They use bedrooms, kitchens etc as occasional workplaces where storage, or ‘waiting’ as Buren describes, in whatever form, is their most important function.

The correlation between physically ambitious objects, physically impressive resources and the critical ambitions of the artist is impossible to decipher. However storage methods might reveal how much the artist’s work is in demand, or might form a simple representation of how much spatial and financial resources an artist has, which might reflect how established their career is. The majority of the workplaces photographed in Hull were in rented and shared homes, and were often untidy. The exceptions were those who worked at, and used University spaces and two older artists. At first glance it would be easy for an outsider to feel sorry for the artists- so many of the stereotypes of artistic practice are here to be seen- poverty, untidiness, cold and isolation. But the reality of the situation lies in the word stereotype, or at least in a history of what we expect from artists. The artists work and live in these situations because in the social networks that artists inhabit these kind of conditions are part of the way of life for young artists. This is not to say that these artists want to be poor, but that their desire to live life as an artist determines the way their storage and workplaces look. Also, while the studio and storage images confirm the expectation of artists working in isolation, none do it without a relationship to some group or some set of historic or current ideas, and it is these which determine how the storage functions and looks. The characteristic freedom that artists experience is only within a model of freedom that society implicitly agrees.

While it’s easy to sneer at the bohemian image artists live out, at the same time it seems there is something worth keeping in the model of the artist who is prepared to work independently because they believe they have something to say. In ‘The Death of the Subject Explained’ James Heartfield details the historic undermining of subjectivity by critical enterprises intent upon dismantling western male authority. He argues that this dismantling was necessary but at the same time it resulted in the departure of a model of an active human subject, leaving society with no agents to progress change. The artist is often characterised as being highly individualistic. We might, then, see the artist as an archetypal navel-gazing character, focused upon individuality, but on the other hand it may be that the artist is one last bastion of self-determining subjectivity. So, while recognising that no art happens, and no artists exist without a relationship to some kind of history, discourse or network, at the same time the role of the artist still has some importance as a representative of independence in mind and action. In this sense perhaps just deciding to be an artist has a degree of ambition attached to it.

While in hindsight the Hull images do not say much directly about ambition, the project does reflect on the value of the physical and cerebral aspects of an artist’s work. The Hull artists’ attitudes to storage connect to popular currents in contemporary art thinking. One ever-present current decries objects and object making for their participation as commodities in a market, blaming things rather than the relationships which determine how things function. This current is often evidenced by having no objects (or images etc) to store and having no studio. In Hull I met some artists in the pub and they showed me their sketchbooks as the only thing they stored, although I am not sure I believe them. Choosing to make no objects was part of an historical radical critique of capitalism and the art market, and also artillery in the battle to make art part of daily life rather than a separate or exalted realm. These activities are one hundred or more years old and similar sentiments applied today run the danger of appearing moralistic or romantic rather than offering a critical alternative. However, in search for new critical spaces and new means for independence, it is difficult to find models that are not already tried and tested in another era.

In the desire to have nothing to store there are additional currents at play. Many contemporary artists who do not make objects choose this strategy as a means to emphasise the communication of the work rather than its collectable or commodifiable value, or because it’s the most appropriate/viable means to say what they want to say. However some artists chose not to use objects as they think ‘there are already too many objects in the world’. This thinking is part of a common package that believes people should tread more lightly on the earth, and that we should not impose our views, tastes, etc on others. The current spate of reality TV makes a relevant partner in this crime, replacing creative, idea driven programmes with just ‘showing us how it is’. This aversion to imposition can also perhaps be seen in our contemporary reticence to make permanent works or transferable objects.

All work is accumulated time, congealed labour, and art is no different. Like any other product what we see in the work is a condensed and edited version of all that has happened in the thinking and making that formed the output. Whatever the form, the work, unlike the things in storage, is ready to be published. Perhaps then we sometimes keep things as evidence that our time was invested in something. It’s strange then that some of the storage and studio images (particularly in the USA) seem to consciously represent the ideal of an artist, as though the private world of making has also to be ever-ready for publishing. Perhaps this is because we are also familiar with the artist’s studio images that have made it into the mainstream press, becoming fused with our mental image of artistry.

Art does differ from other types of work when it comes to distribution. Mass production happens when there is a demand, or the capacity to create a demand. Art is often characterised as happening with no demand and with no guaranteed market. The accrued work then, seen in stored artworks, has poignancy, a lifetime invested that no-one else wants. The situation, though, is never as clear-cut as this. While artists work away in apparent isolation, most work within circuits of conversation, each adding to the development of thinking amongst each other through new work. Mass production does work with a greater sense of demand, but this is never guaranteed. When demand falls for a product the company must be light on their feet and either remarket the product or end its distribution and start making something else. When demand, however defined, for an artist’s work fails the artist does one of a number of things- they stop, they continue irrespective of levels of demand, they see their project as challenging conventional demands, or they reconsider their work and try a new tactic. Artists’ relation to a reduced level of demand may well be one of the things that enables art to be critical or to aspire to autonomy.

The Hull artist fulfils many expectations of isolated artistic endeavour, but at the same time reminds us that this endeavour has a visual image because this is the picture society has built, recognises and encourages. While the vision of independence is a socially constructed one it is still a pursuit of independence and a belief in individual (or collaborative) singular vision. The pursuit of this independence remains one of the important things that artists do.