no. 6

Art and Exhibitions: Are people paying attention?

Galleries and art exhibitions are something that most people have done at least once in their lives. It’s a fun day out. It’s a cultural enrichment. It’s a way to pass the time.

As someone who is going to various exhibitions all the time, you start to notice familiarities with the demographic of the people there. There are always the creative people, tourists, children who were dragged by their parents, and the older, rich people. But one thing I have started to notice about these places is that so many of these people don’t seem to pay attention to the art itself. I love people-watching while I’m there. However, when there’s a constant flow of people taking pictures, it becomes a game of dodging them to see what I came to see.

Let me explain.

We all know that so many of these exhibitions and galleries have been made popular because of social media. Places and people letting other people know what a cool day out it would be and so on. I think it may have gone too far. These days, whenever I go to an exhibition, I am surrounded by people taking photos for their own social media to get an aesthetically pleasing post for their feed. To be clear, of themselves, not of the art. Of course, people are entitled to do what they want, where they want, but to me, it feels as though the whole point of the art is getting missed.

The last exhibition I went to was at the Saatchi Gallery, their ‘Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art & Culture’. Now, the amount of people posing in front of all these paintings and pieces was so much more than I could have imagined. One of the highlights of the exhibition was an installation (La Fleur Morte) created by Rebecca Lousie Law; her work contains themes of consumerism, sustainability and life cycles. This particular installation was created with waste flowers from the commercial flower industry and was a representation of capitalism and how, as consumers, we are always looking for more. Barely anyone was reading what it was about. It was about getting a great photo. I think some people were there for about fifteen minutes just taking pictures. As I left the room, I got to thinking. The whole point of the installation was completely missed because of it.

Don’t get me wrong, I always appreciate a nice photo in a museum; it’s a nice touch to a photo dump. But surely there is a way to effectively do both. It feels like the art in these spaces is only being reduced to purely how it looks rather than the message it is trying to portray.

The rise of social media has had a countless impact on pretty much everything in our lives. I love social media. I use it all the time. I love to post on it. But surely, we should try not to live for social media. Try to gain something else from these experiences than just a cute picture.

Naturally, I was thinking about this while on one of my solo walks. The capital nature of art and fashion.

I mean, this is significant in terms of brands as well and sort of relates to the battle of creativity and commerciality. How many times have fashion designers had to rethink an idea because it wouldn’t sell enough? How many times has an artist created something differently in fear of people not understanding the message? Maybe not as many times as I am imagining. But still, it is an important point. The balance between creativity and commerciality.

I guess it is one of the things that every artist has thought how can I express myself and still produce to sell? When artists, all artists, create work, it’s like they’re putting a part of themselves on show to the whole world. The most vulnerable part. And to put a number on how much it is worth in monetary terms whilst trying to connect to a deeper audience is such a weird thing to wrap your head around. Art in our heads can be so different.

When thinking about fashion, there’s always a core idea, and translating that into the real world can be quite difficult. Creating menswear that explores the boundaries of femininity, for example, is a great concept, but commercially, how many men are willing to wear a skirt or items made entirely of lace? Even when examining designers and their past work, how many of them actually succeeded? Although John Galliano was immensely successful at Dior (until the events of 2011), his own label always struggled to fit real people into their lives, another aspect that needs consideration. Artists of all kinds have this battle with success and capital.

That was a bit of a tangent.

I hope people can relate to this. Maybe I am a bit too judgemental of what other people do.

I thoroughly enjoy having these days out and posting about it later in the day. But sometimes, in some situations, people should be able to see art for its meaning.

By Natasha Joshi