Print Contemporary Practice
Laura O Loughlin
Speaking within the context of the Irish artists’ community, there are hundreds of people with degrees in art and design entering the workforce each year. With funding for arts staying relatively similar year on year, and the number of artists leaving a college environment increasing, there is a growing distance between the artist and the ability to acquire adequate funding. This results in artists being pitted against each other in order to make a living from their work.
The motivation behind No Artists: No Art is to highlight the increasing economic and social pressures put on artists as they try to make a living from their work. As studio and housing rental prices skyrocket, there should be an escalated sense of urgency for policy makers to support artists. Since the beginning of COVID-19, the world has looked to artists to help ease the stresses of living through a pandemic, however the support structure for artists have only changed in relation to the current situation and do not seem to be being considered for the long term.
No Artists: No Art presents text-based work in the form of silkscreen printing, dry point etching, cyanotypes, digital media and analogue filmmaking processes.