Leafing through the glossy ensemble photography of Vanity Fair – you know the sort, pages packed with film industry scions, trussed in taffeta or insouciant in Armani – I often dreamt of being part of a power-player collective myself, making our mark on the British contemporary art world with our individual style. Little did I know how much thought, care and planning go into such things.
There is a dearth of deaf arts managers because everyone else wants to be an artist! But as certain deaf artists have found to their cost, arts collectives involve far more than initiative. You also need skills in project management, planning, negotiation, budgeting and book-keeping, diplomacy, sustainability, teamwork, networking and marketing – the kind of skills that, in fact, would be constituted as business skills and thus considered anathema to any artist – never mind deaf artists.
But can we really blame them for trying? Lack of access to professional development, resources, funding, and support has led many deaf visual artists to neglect something that means the world to them – their own practice. It’s soul-destroying to realise you just can’t afford to continue exploring your grand passion however talented you are. So to consider collaborating with other deaf visual artists is understandable, however misguided it might seem.
Thus is the case with Salon. Every day I am learning a new skill in co-ordinating our pilot programme, not least in getting people to collaborate. Deaf visual art has remained under-developed for so long that some deaf artists enter a state of inertia which they find extremely difficult to escape. So when that long-awaited opportunity finally arises for them to make art again, it takes months to sink in; in fact at times, only your own impassioned motivational efforts will spur them into action.
It’s the very reason behind my decision to keep my own visual arts practice separate from Salon. Not only does it acknowledge the time and effort involved but also avoids potential conflict of interest – ironically, at the expense of my own artistic development.
Often the thought crosses my mind that I can exploit my own frustration to Salon’s advantage, by simply translating it into empathy. Although I have had ample opportunity to do so, I refuse to feel cheated. After all, I can always find another outlet for creativity. I still have a capacity for ideas. It feels just as rewarding seeing artists you have lent your support to grow and prosper. And I believe fervently that with the skills and experience I gain through Salon will aid me eventually in my own development as a Deaf visual artist.
If you’re a practising visual artist, collecting oneself in the presence of others becomes a vital tool in arts management. Sacrifices have to be made in the knowledge that in collaborating with others you will gain invaluable expertise. You are, after all, still applying your creative input to the collective – it’s just in a different capacity to the one that you’d like.
This is true not just of deaf visual artists, but of any contemporary visual artist. In today’s competitive art scene we all have to experiment with ways of maintaining creativity and innovative thinking as so to build a body of work that consistently knocks people for six. Unfortunately it does mean occasionally putting aside our grand singular vision for the sake of others and embracing the very thing that is anathema to the purely artistic psyche – business acumen.
Of course, some Deaf visual artists recognised this need a long time ago. One such person was Cathy Woolley, the woman behind Deaf Arts Escape, the landmark residency-based initiative of 2002-3 that propelled Deaf visual art into the 21st century. Funded by the Jack Ashley Millennium Awards, Cathy organised a week’s residency in the Lake District where ten Deaf visual artists explored installation art, painting, printmaking, photography, found objects and video art – all of which went into an awesome two-day exhibition, Lake of Art, at the Candid Arts Galleries in Islington.
Yet even in such ground-breaking efforts, Cathy had her limits. She was herself a deaf visual artist and needed to return to her own practice. Unfortunately no-one was able to take her place and so, ever since she shuttled off to Royal Historic Palaces and then Transport for London’s Platform for Art, save a few exceptions Deaf visual art has seemed rather colourless.
It is largely thanks to her that Salon has emerged. Deaf Arts Escape has proved a worthy model for Salon to build on. This is the creative vision that Deaf visual art should aspire to – the kind of dream that can be encompassed in the pages of Vanity Fair.
