For as long as I can remember we have committed two days each week to working with other artists in Collaboration, Production. or Consultation
We share our studio facilities, along with our conceptual richness and technical know-how, cultural and artistic sensitivity, and desire to help and assist others.
From producing the finest printer profiles for the finest papers and inksets, to conceiving, editing, printing and staging solutions, and everything in-between, we genuinely believe that working with others – beyond ego and individuality – is the way forward. This eclipses the hackneyed idea of ‘influence’, or the question of what one artist may or may not have shared with another. It is about re-viewing contemporary art through a prism of shared cultural concerns.
As more of our institutions decay around us, and those we once trusted betray in horrific or indifferent ways, we succumb to distraction and fragmentation, and the partial or the incomplete. As our vigilance gets hijacked, so do we. Rather than grasping the potential of the unknown, nostalgia surges and be-spoke this & that substitutes for progress. Instead of looking forward, we look back when times past ‘seemed’ simpler, more honest, or self fulfilling.
But the contradiction is that those past who we revere, weren’t also gazing backwards when they were doing what we now revere them for. They were visionary and exploratory, and asking difficult questions. And they were working on concerns larger than just their own. This is also why we believe collaboration foregrounds our future, where shared concerns and respect for difference are artistic not just political necessities. And this is also why we open our studio, knowledge, research and practice to include others.
Dr Les Walkling
Andrey Walkling
Last updated 25 October 2024