As an undergraduate at Brighton University I studied under the tuition of Roy Grayson, a respected though little known Post-Modernist who conceived and perpetuated his ‘Alternative Practice’ course since the late 1960′s. The odds of getting in to his course were stacked against me, I was a drug-fuelled nervous wreck by the time it came to my interview.

I’d created a series of prints and videos exploring my own feelings of paranoia and agoraphobia at that time, I’d turned down a chance of an interview at St. Martin’s for the sake of a sea view and a more relaxed pace of life. I was in my late-teens and already tired of life. I can’t say that I truly understood the purpose of my course at the time, but in the near 20 years since I have gone back over everything I was taught again and again, repetitively, compulsively, trying to work out the nature of our 3 year disagreement about the purpose of art in modern society.

The main tenet of Roy’s argument was that art was there to uplift the mass, as would say religion, he was a man ahead of his time, although his time had passed, and I believed that culture had shifted far further and more quickly towards a Baudrillard abyss, an implosion of meaning, that he seemed to believe our generation was supposed to guide and steer the majority towards a conceptual abyss in full knowledge of the results. Whilst I saw the artist more as a reporter of the results of this implosion rather than a spectator and analyst of the event as it unfolded.

Much of my work was classed as kitsch, as far as Roy was concerned the opinions and views of the mass were irrelevant, and thus, in turn, so was my work. I would eventually put all ideas of becoming a fine artist on ice, Technology was speeding up the process of change, and as my fellow students played with ideas of installation, sculpture, film, painting and print, I found myself salvaging commercial billboard posters from local suppliers (who were always overstocked with past redundant campaigns), and piecing them together, as photo montage on a grand scale. I barely crawled out of that course with a 2:2, my written work, my thesis had managed to reduce any damage done by my intellectual conflict with Roy, having made allegiances in the Arts History department. I hid myself in a world of graphic design, a commercial world, a dead world.

Still, art was behind me, Roy had done well, he was convincing and I impressionable enough to a live a life devoid of artistic meaning or purpose, my earlier ambitions dashed by the overwhelming resentment and rejection for the established gallery system. I have never believed my work will end up in Cork Street, if it does it will not be of my own doing, but rather the financial movers and shakers who steer supply and demand as suits their corporate investors. Yet as time unfolds in its own unique majesty, the once forgotten detritus of society, the debris of the intellect, now, so ironically, take centre stage. I am only now beginning to understand exactly why I took this path, this route to a once presupposed oblivion.

Art is merely commodity yet to reference that commodity within a secular medium has until now been seen as unacceptable exploration by the old guard. I am a failed child of Thatcher yet still knowledgeable of that common history, this process always seemed natural to me, analogous to investing in futures. Rather than subjectively dictating circumstances I place creative bets on the death of art, as it is dying. I’m taking a punt on the length of its long drawn out death scene, and thus through my work I hope to force myself and others to acknowledge that which must come next. The void filled with the aggregation of populist microbiotic discourse, the chasm bridged by the vestiges of waste and our throwaway iconography celebrating the moment and not the achievement.

I plunder pop culture because it is our future’s history, I did not choose to be born into this lifetime, and if I did then I have no memory of the decision. What I do know is that artists have always reflected on their current culture and experience, however fragmented or inadmissible their methods and pursuits in technique and presentation may be.

I am here, I am now, so are you. Our language is a commercialised one, we speak in tounges, codes formed by iconographies that would not survive the scrutiny of generations past. If it were still so then realist landscapes and royal commissions would still be the name of the game. We understand light, colour, metaphor, nature, and the metaphors of the human condition. We simply reject them out of a gross over familiarity. The principles of art in history can no longer support the enormous commercial aspect of the Post Modern Art Movement.

Populism guarantees, as with Banksy, Koons, Warhol, that no matter how thin the debate, how ill-conceived the perceptual model, to be known is in it self an act of creation. To appropriate fame in order to use it as a currency is the last bastion for the unknown artist, they are forced into a retaliatory position, they cannot afford to ignore the present and all its foibles, be it economically, spiritually, intellectually or culturally.

The artist is as much a commodity as art itself, without the notoriety of an artist, their oeuvre will not receive the publicity needed to garner the interest of bankers, commodity brokers, fund managers, journalists, and publishers. Without this interest the gallery system would die, as it will do, and be replaced with auction houses who reap far more of the financial rewards than any speculator can expect in a lifetime.

I use populism, the blatant imagery of our present day as a device, a tool, a construction plan for my subject matter. Each famous image is a mask, each subject conceals yet another, my work is a campaign, an advertisement for the vacuousness of a Western life in the  C21st.

Money is power, fame and glory. To disseminate, de-construct and interpolate the facets of celebrity and popular iconography is my goal, in order to peel back the veneer of our virtually non-existent shared experience is my purpose. I am in the process of performing an autopsy on the purpose of modern life, and without emotion or belief I will endeavour to complete my work within this lifetime, within this reality. The end of art must be followed by the end of celebrity, fame, and eventually power.

The dissipation of content into the subjective pool of a collective consciousness is the only logical step forward. The deconstruction of modern myth, the advertising machine, the global media’s agenda, the political stand-off that is democracy, the rewritten histories of all that has been must be distilled further, until each and everyone of us is enabled with a purpose, a self divining, in which our future can converge beyond the limits of that which is mere logic or the aggregation of knowledge into power.

This post is tagged art, art commodity, art currency, artist, Banksy, commericalism, gallery, Koons, money, post modern, proclamation, propaganda, UK art, Warhol