Sweating Season

The 2022 IRL degree shows and how maybe finding joy in the role of being an artist means admitting that you're a total fucking masochist...

the vacuum sealed art school bubble

I set foot back inside the Belfast School of Art for the first time this week since stepping out of it in May 2019.

That moment three years ago, I walked away with intense cabin fever, studio share fatigue and debt I will never be bothered to - or be in a position to - pay off. Art student status for me was a co-dependency relationship with the institution, masquerading the promise of a romanticised past, present and future as an academic creative. I enrolled on the MFA program mostly because I was drowning; endlessly making do in the high cost of living economy of this island. The self-imposed, socially reinforced, lower class, naive ambition to try to “make it” was the only piece of driftwood keeping me afloat. My rock, solid determination succumbed under two years of shit jobs, unpaid opportunities, not being taken seriously and having fuck all energy or resources to actually produce work. When the low fees of the course in UU offered me an easy way out, I filled in an application form and swam like a pre-programmed sperm towards the fallopian safety of art school again.

I remember the lift and the 10 minute building width walk from the front door to the studios. I remember the Paprika flavoured crisps that cost £2 from the vending machines. I remember the front desk security, the librarians and the cleaners more fondly than the teaching staff. I remember the ventilation system was nearly always never working and not a single window was designed to open. I remember coyly bumming cigarettes, clinging to hollow friendships and drinking a lot when I had money. I remember the delusional outlook of some, the shrugged shoulders of others and class differences within classes. I remember telling myself I was part of something so I could ignore the sense of feeling completely alienated. I remember having the best time of my life - sometimes. I remember the emotional ransom my tutor held me under and how, at first, I liked it. I remember wasting time in the course and spending time in my minimum wage job. I remember reading things and forgetting them straight away. I remember a tutorial with Willie Doherty who said he liked how shit my work looked; which I’m still digesting. I remember realising that I didn’t really know what I was doing there. I remember ignoring how it was, in fact, my choice to stay there. I remember the mind-numbing anxiety caused by silent group crits, obligatory lectures and the obnoxious degree show tension. I remember lying awake at night because I couldn’t shake the executive dysfunction paralysis of the day time. I remember wondering why oh why did I actually pay to put myself in this situation?

Mental health support across the island of Ireland is bad enough as it is, without artists being on some of the lowest incomes and most demanding types of underpaid work. The social pressures of being reminded that you “don’t have a real job”, living a double life to support yourself financially and are probably, most likely, completely exhausted by the absolute ignorant, schmoozery of the arts industry in general. So it’s no surprise that the absence of mental health support for students specifically whom attend art school is a contested issue, for me anyway. The craft relies on a certain amount of self expression that you are then taught to manipulate into meaningful outcomes in a grade based setting. I only stunted myself more by making the choice to not make anything about what was real to me. I had no means to seek private therapy and didn’t trust school counsellors for reasons I won’t get into now. Vomiting up your emotional insides on cue and being rewarded with an academic achievement; art school is a ropey bridge where many coast right through and others plummet off the sides. (sorry bit dramatic, couldn’t find a better analogy, suggestions welcome).

I remember - coping, just like everything previously in my life. Perhaps that’s why I went back, stuck through it and still complained when coming out the other end, because coping in school was something I was well accustomed to.

I set foot back inside the doors after they had been closed to the public for nearly two whole years, and immediately felt the claustrophobia creep I had anticipated.

the degree show-uhhhhhhhhhhhh

Everything, everywhere, all at once. Joy and absurdity. The final showcase from the third batch of pandemic degrees was both symptomatic and heartwarming; a reaction to the oppressive narrative of the past two years in the form of embracing the irony of returning to normal. Time spent away, time spent alone and time spent wondering is a type of time not really available to one when housed within the institution. Repetitive and cyclical is the routine of removal and resetting that symbolise educational systems everywhere - where can art rest in these conditions? I’m making the broad assumption based on what I heard and what was going around that many of these students spent more time elsewhere or following strict times to be inside the building for the majority of their degree and it shows - in a good way.

The MFA show was expectantly laid out by the false wall armature more akin to horse stables than studios, a running theme of the degree show every year, including the BA levels. I found this permanent armature of the temporary symbolic; change in the art school is perhaps only possible outside of it. Thanks to this skeleton map I knew my way around instinctively, wandering from booth to booth, passing comments and making jokes with old alumni. I distracted myself with biting the bitter pill of revulsion from being back and chewing it like gum, sucking on mouthfuls of eye rolling and heavy sighs. The work of the MFA class I liked; some students looking like they had had interesting times enjoying new material processes, others offering elusive and exciting work that left me thinking about it afterwards (always a good sign) and the rest whom perhaps just got bored or dropped the ball or just stuck to what they know - which is also fine.

The expectation to have your practice or a new body of work refined and perfected, ready for installation by the harsh deadline of the academic year, is fundamentally flawed. The opulence of the degree show being flogged onto inexperienced artists causes misguided decision making, disruption and false idealisations for some who’s work perhaps demands time (and actual MONEY being left consistently out of the equation) more than anything else. Considering this: can you write criticism about degree shows??? Or better yet: can you criticise a degree show work/artist without criticising the school itself??? If someone had told me on the first day of my BA degree that it would take me another 10 years to really grasp what it was I wanted to make work about, I might have easily just quit there and then. I didn’t, naturally, because I wasn’t told that and instead, allowed my head to be filled with the notion that my degree would cement my personal and public identity as a creative professional. I also stupidly let those same notions re-emerge in my mind when completing the MFA. I was disappointed twice, a type of eye opening that’s twice as crushing than any rejection email or curator forgetting who you are. The awards I received both in and out of art school were always foreshadowed with the lingering spectre of presumed luck.

Collectively across the fine art department (MFA, BA Painting, BA Sculpture Lens - coz that’s all I could fully give my attention to), there was a playfulness and pleasure within the works that felt genuine. There was more laughter and softness within the themes regardless of how heavy they were, whether those laughs were heartfelt or manic, they were free to be duplicitous or 2-D. I wish I could have just seen some of them in an actual gallery than encounter them in what feels more like a sanitary hospital building than an art school. I don’t want to discuss my favoured ones, and I don’t want to give each artist equal air time, because that’s not what I’m trying to do here. The unspeakable, competitive pain of degree shows is bad enough without reams of attendees Instagramming the shit out of the same handful of artists as if they were tourist monuments. I’ve seen people offering their “line up” in stories with an air of approval attached, without any context. No student who has been through a degree during Covid (or in general) should be subject to the lame scrutiny of people’s momentary social media choices that are made with the intention of only representing themselves and not those whose work they snap and tag. I don’t blame any recent graduate holding out for the acknowledgement of their favourite artist or person of value online to mention them, but those shared digital spaces leave out any real dialogue or sense of care, which I feel is what is really craved when you leave the safety of school.

Unless you’re a dick.

final thoughts on the subject

Consecutive lockdowns coupled with the globally shared fear and loathing of the Covid-19 flu have shaped this year’s class yet its presence was only in the leftover public health stickers adorning the glass doors. Degree shows have an artificial aftertaste and this one was no different, but the love of making fun and satisfying work was abundant and made it a little fuzzier around the edges. Maybe it’s my reflective state right now, and my bringing up all those old memories and feelings, but when you’re in it and amongst your peers, it’s a hard experience to try and enjoy. Whether you’re the chill as fuck one, the swot, the I couldn’t give a shit one or the absolute anxiety case, degree shows are fucking weird things, like all exams. As they continue in the business like standards and attitudes of ever privatising third level spaces, they will only feel more and more like lingering symptoms of late capitalism.

A plastic cup or two of cheap white wine coupled with the unnecessary heat of the place, turned my face the same bright red as my Adidas hoodie. I said my goodbyes and my congrats, descended in the lift with a lingering smell of some 20’years old’s body spray (half nice - half triggering) crossed the shiny white tiled threshold of the foyer and stepped back outside to the real world. The tepid, wet air felt like a mouthful of strawberry ice cream.