Sunday Sundries: the importance of art

So this is the first Sunday Sundries since I went away on tour, I still miss my cosy little bunk but I’m glad to be back. Looking forward to many things, namely Matisse’s Cut Outs at the Tate and the Chris Marker retrospective at the Whitechapel -the director of La Jetée- as well as Play What’s Not There, at Raven Row -one of my favourite galleries. Closer to home is Welcome To Iraq, a restaging of the Venice Biennale’s National Pavilion of Iraq (which I missed when we visited the Biennale last year) at South London Gallery. Even though I work in a pretty unrelated field, I’m grateful for my Critical Fine Art Practice degree, a creative and visual training which still informs the work I do today.

You can tell I’m building up to something can’t you? This week Michael Rosen wrote an open letter to our new Culture Minister. The poet talks about how ambivalent we are as a country about ‘culture’ and quite rightly asks what someone like Sajid Javid is doing in the role. It does seem strange that an ex-banker -and one who worked somewhere that was fined for rate-fixing- should now be heading up this position.

I guess one of the simplest things you can do as a person to show art and culture matters is keep going to exhibitions, keep being counted as a bum on a seat or feet in a gallery. There is a demand and more importantly a need for non-essential services like galleries, museums and when funding for the arts has been slashed it’s important to show your participation. The richness of a country cannot just be counted economically.