On 15^th June 2024 I attended the opening of the ‘Soils’ exhibition at Van Abbemuseum. As this was the last exhibition at Van Abbemuseum that Charles Esche would host, it was made all the more poignant for me and, I’m sure, many others who attended. ‘Soirls’ itself cambe about slowly, evolving over eight or so years from different conversations, points of view, positions and debates that arose from and intersected through many other events and projects that the Van Abbemuseum has been involved in. As such it was a fitting end to Esche’s 20 inspirational years at the help of Van Abbemuseum whilst, at the same time, marking new beginnings for how museum exhibitions might be parts of longer, more entangled process of discourse, resistance and joint activism.

The name of the exhibition came from the proposal, made by Palestinian writer and mathematician Munir Fasheh, that there are four ‘soils’ which are fundamental and core to our life on Earth. For Fasheh these four soils are earth soil, cultural soil, communal soil and affection-spiritual soil. Nurturing these soils together, for Fasheh, is fundamental for the care and nurture of the planet, and for our complex co-existences to be sustainable and nourishing to each other.

As such, ‘Soils’ took as its starting point the literal soil that we stand on, the physical soil that underpins our local specificities and nuances, but which is also shared by all living beings. As the foundation of our lives ‘Soils’ reminded us that the very ground beneath our feet is the place to build upon the histories of our ancestors and to grow the dreams of our future generations. However, the exhibition also took on our contested, violent and extractives relationships to soil. From mineral extraction, depletion, overproduction, land grabbing and the exploitation of labour, ‘Soils’ set out to remind us all of our responsibilities to dig where we stand and to contribute, wherever we are, to both the geopolitical and local, urgencies which face us.

For me, this was encapsulated during a talk, taking place in the Van Abbemuseum’s ‘Museum as Parliament’ installation by farmer and activist Valiana Aguilar. As part of the farming collective Suumil Móokt’aan, which reactivates ancient Mayan principles of farming and sustainability to remind us that there are other ways to be tougher today, Aguilar talked about the role of sharing, growing, cooking and the importance of the kitchen as a place where identities and communities are formed. In doing so, Aguilar reminded us that contested sites of gender, class and exploitation, often exemplified on a domestic level in the west through ‘the politics of the kitchen’, could be reconfigured and reactivated as sites of communal activism through cooking and sharing. ‘The revolution, Aguilar reminded us, ‘will be delicious’!

From February to June 2024 I was able to take a research sabbatical. More specifically, after a competitive process I was awarded a Liverpool John Moores University/Faculty of Art and Professional Studies sabbatical in 2023 to write a book on Useful Art with Manchester University Press (MUP). The sabbatical will give me the opportunity to sift through almost two decades of projects, involvements in and writing/thought processes about Useful Art. I have wanted to develop a more accessible book on Useful Art, one which non-art specialists and non-academics alike could ‘use’ as a means to rethink their relationships to art, activism and ground-up micro-resistance. I also proposed to MUP that I wanted to write a book which both informed readers about Useful Art whilst, at the same time, would act as a kind of activist manual on how to use Useful Art. Emma Brrnnan, who is Editorial Director at MUP, has been incredibly helpful with developing my pitch to MUP and, also, with developing a hybrid contemporary history/manifesto/user manual approach to the book.

From Saturday 27^th January to Sunday 28^th January 2024 I was lucky enough to be invited back to Yamaguchi Centre for Arts and Media to take part in the remarkable project ‘Speculative Library’ which had been developed and initiated by Barto Bartolomeous and his Team as a project that would invite local constituents to both re-imagine what YCAM (Yamaguchi Centrer for Arts and Media) could be whilst, at the same time, giving them the tools that would enable them to become active users of YCAM rather than passive spectators.

On Saturday 27^th I was able to deliver a talk, as part of the Speculative Library’s ‘Let’s Think Together’ series. I took Tŷ Pawb a key example of a multi-use arts and culture space, embedded within a close-knit community, that activated Useful Art as a means to rethink what sustainable constituent culture could become. This revolved around reframing ‘play’ as a way to approach the space – where play is no longer confined to an activity set aside for children, but a cradle to grave right for constituents and users to experiment and reimagine themselves and their communities via the resource of Tŷ Pawb.

This was followed on Sunday 28^th January when I was invited to participate in an Arte Útil Workshop at YCAM. This was part of a series of Arte Útil Workshops which allowed participants to use YCAM as a space in which to discuss social problems and generate ideas using examples for the Association of Arte Útil Archive.  

From Thursday 12th January to Sunday 14th January I took part in a series of talks, discussions, seminars and workshops at Grizedale Arts, and Grizedale Art’s The Farmers Arms, which were aimed at laying the groundwork for a new long-term research initiative called ‘The Valley Project’. After twenty Five years or more as Director of Grizedale Arts, Adam Sutherland and his staff, colleagues, comrades, constituents, artists and fellow activists have developed a wealth of archival material gleaned from the process of reimagining and reinventing what we might know of as socailly engaged art practice. In Sutherland’s hands, Grizedale Arts has also reimagined what an arts commissioning agency can be or could become. By initially inviting arts to ‘do something useful’, rather than offer the more standard approach of studio space and a final exhibition, the sheer wealth of groundbreaking activities that have come out of Grizedale Arts is breathtaking. The Valley Project Seminar placed a marker, a will to begin organising, archiving and sharing this material for the good of all whilst, at the same time, beginning to set this activity within the historical and critical context of the Lake District’s Crake Valley, where both Grizedale Arts and The Farmers Arms sit, and which has acted as a magnet for artists, poets, thinkers, makers and doers, since the mid-nineteenth century.

For me, Grizedale Arts is also the home of Useful Art, a place which welcomed me to collaborate back in 2005 – and from which my interests in Useful Art, Arte Útil and activist art have grown and developed alongside the work of so many Fellow Travellers across the world over these last two decades. I’m both eternally grateful and looking forward to the next adventures.

On Wednesday 11th January 2024 Liverpool John Moores University hosted my Inaugural Lecture as a recently conferred Professor of Useful Art. The Lecture took the form of a discussion between myself and my long-term colleague Alistair Hudson, whom I’ve worked with on various Useful Art projects over these last twenty years. It seemed right to do this talk as a discussion, and I was incredibly grateful that Alistiair was able to take time out of his schedule as the newly appointed Scientific-Artistic Chairman of the ZKM | Karlsruhe, a role he had only taken over in April the previous year.

A video of this discussion, courtesy of LJMU, can be found on YouTube at John Byrne Professorial Inaugural Lecture

On 30^th June 2023 ‘Economics the Blockbuster – It’s not Business as Usual’ opened at The Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester https://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/ as Part of the Manchester International Festival 2023 https://factoryinternational.org/about/manchester-international-festival/mif23/.

Showcasing 10 examples of projects by artists, collectives and art organisations, the exhibition intends to demonstrate uses of art as ‘real world economic systems’. 

Economics the Blockbuster originally initiated by Alistair Hudson during his time as Director of both Manchester Art Gallery and The Whitworth Art Gallery, built upon the work undertaken by Hudson as he sought to reshape and reimagine The Whitworth Art Gallery as a primarily useful of ‘constitute’ space. As part of my role as The Whitworth Art Gallery’s Writer and Researcher in Residence (from 2019 – 2023) I had the privilege of working with Staff, Constituents and affiliates of The Whitworth as part of an exhibition steering group led by Poppy Bowers (then Interim Head of Exhibitions at the Whitworth). Also, the online research platform I proposed in 2018 (Decentrailsing Political Economies) was intended to run alongside the long-term development of this project.

For me, what was always most important about this exhibition was not the exhibition itself, but the use of the exhibition format as a means for a museum (in this case The Whitworth Art Gallery) to begin to rethink and remake itself as a different kind of institution through a collaborative, inclusive and constituent approach. Key to this, and also from my perspective, was to host an exhibition that was not simply ‘about’ economics, or one that sought to illustrate, illuminate or ‘make accessible’ the idea of economics as we now know it to be. Instead, Economics the Blockbuster was, for me, always about making an invitation to be curious about what economics actually is (or, rather, what economics are) as a complex system of relationships – use, making, community – that cannot simply be reduced to the instrumentalising idea of simply ‘money’.

From 23rd to 26^th June I had the good fortune to be able to re-visit and re-connect with the Van Abbemuseum after an almost four year absence. I was fabulous to see my old friends Charles Esche and Steven ten Thije again and to also have an opportunity to attend some of the classes for the 2023 iteration of the Decolonial Summer School ‘Realling Eaerth: Decoloniality and Demodernity’ and to attend the opening of ‘Tanah Merdeka’, an incredible exhibition of work by the collective Taring Padi at FramerFramed in Amsterdam (and a big thanks also to Alexander Supartono for pointing out the YNWA Liverpool FC reference in one of their incredible paintings).

The ‘Tablecloth as Toolkit’ was a new commission for the Horizon Garden exhibition at Ty Pawb. Produced by artist Owen Griffiths and AAU activist/curator Alessandra Saviotti, the ‘Tablecloth as Toolkit’ offers an opportunity for a group of people, drawn together from different backgrounds, to talk through key themes and issues. After a meal together, and using a series of prompts, which are provided on the napkins, the meals hosts (Grffiths and Saviotti) ask the guests to talk about ideas and inspirations that are important to them. In doing so, guests are encouraged to think together, connect and discuss how they might begin to plan and effect real world long term change.

On April 6^th 2023 I was invited in my capacity as an Advisory Board member for Ty Pawb to join and engage in one of these shared meals, I was able to contribute to a group discussion about how Ty Pawb, via the ongoing development of its roof top garden, might best join up with, and contribute too, a developing network of growing projects in the North Wales and Wrexham region

 though mutually and served as an important way to activate dialogue within the exhibition came about as part of an ongoing process of developing a community growing space on the roof of Ty Pawb. Through this process Ty Pawb has become part of a network of community growing projects in the region.

In addition to our hosts Owen Griffiths and Alexandra Saviotti, other invited guests included: Ian Bancroft – Chief Executive, Wrexham Council, Councillor Hugh Jones – Lead member for Environment, with responsibility for Ty Pawb and City of Culture, Marja Bonada – Freelance artist and gardener, lead artist for development of the roof garden at Ty Pawb with KIM Inspire, Morag Colquhoun – artist and environmentalist, exhibited as part of Horizon Garden, Andrew Collings – Horticulturalist and food growing advisor, Katherine Saxby – Founder of Incredible Edibles Wrexham, and Complementary Healthcare Provider and Christopher Hall – Director Incredible Edibles Wrexham.

The idea that the group concluded with would be the ambition to meet again for a meal in three years time and to see how ideas, actions and ambitions have progressed.

On March 10th 2023 I took part in the final planning sessions for the exhibition ‘Economics the Blockbuster – It’s not Business as Usual‘ scheduled to open at The Whitworth Art Gallery on 30th June 2023.

In February 2022 a joint article ‘Hacking education: Arte Útil as an educational methodology to foster change in curriculum planning’, written between myself and my long term colleague and collaborator Alessandra Saviotti. At the time of writing, I was also acting as Lead Supervisor for Alessandra’s PhD by Practice. The article was published online as part of the ‘Art & the Public Sphere’ Journal (Volume 11 Number 1). There is a pdf version of this article on the Writing Tab of this website).

ABSTRACT

Artworks operating at the intersection of art and education often attempt to chal-lenge dominant education systems in suggesting alternative pedagogical models that could function outside the official academic realm, proposing radical changes to the latter. However, the lack of continuity of alternative education models imple-mented by artists and curators within universities’ art and design departments fails to provide a longer-term change. This article stems from our research on the usological turn, a recent shift from spectatorship to usership according to which artists and curators tend to create art projects which situate themselves as part of a broader usership. Using an autoethnographic approach, we will analyse how the principles of the art group Arte Útil intersects with the undercommons. Hence, we explore how they apply an alternative method, through participatory curriculum planning, as a tool for change within the institution of education.