The Chelsea Bench Analogy

CHELSEA SPACE is not like most galleries. As participation and collaboration in art becomes a bigger deal with each passing day, the framework adopted by curator DONALD SMITH could prove to be the formula that moves the art world forwards.

As the administrative head of a gallery, curatorial responsibilities usually include things like collating and explaining exhibition pieces. With CHELSEA Space, Donald is looking to stretch this definition of curator and art space, so that it fits the changing contemporary art scene. This means a greater emphasis on networking, collaboration and interactivity. Acting as a jumping board for emerging talent, it’s a space for visual arts, sound, performance…well, anything really.

But for all my attempts to explain CHELSEA Space, maybe Donald himself describes the concept best. He certainly does so more poetically:

“See the bench over there? It’s there because of DEREK JARMAN, who was a very important and an openly gay filmmaker who died of AIDS in the early ‘90s. He campaigned for HIV awareness and against the stigma: he was always in the Evening Standard having a row with someone and at the same time producing these movies and books. When Derek’s show was on at the Richard Salmon Gallery there was this bench, like a north-facing window seat, which you could sit on at private views. The booze would just keep coming to you. You’d be sitting on the bench, and you’d say to the person next to you “Good show, isn’t it?” and ask “What do you do” and they’d then say “I’m an artist”, and another person would jump in with “Oh, I love art, I wish I was an artist. I write scripts, and I worked with Derek on some films.” Someone else would then sit down and say, “Oh, I love art too but I’m a musician. I worked with Derek on some music projects.

“All this because Derek was involved in film, painting, writing. People from different fields seemed to lack the anxiety normally seen in the art world. I got sick of going to private views and feeling the two main levels of anxiety: one, where’s the free booze? And two, why have they got a show and I haven’t? That was the thing that destroyed me in the end; I lost all faith in the art world for a while because I just didn’t feel that competitive and didn’t want to be like that. The bench is all about being interdisciplinary, and liking the idea of coming together rather than being threatened by it. This coming together should be spontaneous too, and serendipitous. I like the idea that CHELSEA Space is a bit like that bench.”

Part of Donald’s work also involves aiding graduate fine artists through an interaction with others in the art world. As chair of the Chelsea Arts Club Trust, he oversees an annual award of free studio space for six months to one gifted fine art graduate. Aside from having a space to work, working alongside professionally practicing artists also allows for a degree of mentoring. “[Art graduates need] someone from the same studio block who’s at another level, who can guide them and say ‘don’t send your work to them, that’s ridiculous’. You know, the kind of guidance no-one really gives you properly in the classroom.” This guidance goes beyond mentoring too; he has so far managed to convince the trustees of the Chelsea Arts Club Trust to donate an extra £2500 towards the Chelsea Studio Award, which will be matched by ACME studios. Not too shabby.

As an art graduate himself, Donald understands the need for help in the no-mans-land that awaits after art school, “Back in 1984, I kind of walked out of there and got very little information about the way the art world works, and so made all the usual mistakes like just walking into a gallery with my portfolio, things like that, to the top gallery in the country which of course is a massive waste of time. You need someone to show you how it all works.”

As CHELSEA Space looks forward to its fifth birthday, it seems Donald’s networking model is finally being more accepted in the art world. Fittingly, the celebration exhibition also has a collaborative aspect.

“It’d be quite pompous and silly for me to celebrate myself, wouldn’t it? So what I’ve done is invite Run Gallery, which has three curators, HANA NOORALI, ELENA CRIPPA and LYNTON TALBOT, who all worked with me when they first started out. There was no way that they were just going to take some stuff and just put it on a wall. That’s just not in the spirit of CHELSEA Space.” To find out what lies ahead, we’ll have to wait and see.

Art graduates now find themselves increasingly isolated and unable to understand the changing nature of the art market. Could CHELSEA Space, with its model of interaction and collaboration short-circuit that problem in the system? As the example goes for HARRY MAJOR and KIKI CLAXTON, interviewed by Sketchbook last month, it seems that change is on the way.

DONALD SMITH

A drawing by MICK JONES of the Clash adone in 1975 whilst a student at Chelsea

Text: SIOBHAN LEDDY

Photography: KATRE LAAN