A new code of practice for UK’s artists and the visual arts sector is currently being prepared, and will soon be published by, a-n The Artists Information Company. This unique initiative is the next step in a-n’s campaign to redress the public art sector’s ‘culture of systematic exploitation’ of artists, powerfully revealed in a-n’s recently published research report: Structurally F-cked.
Commissioned by a-n, the report’s de-vowelled title is quoted from testimony given by one of over 100 artists who responded to the research: ‘as the artist you’re at the bottom of the food chain and expected to do your “magic” in a system that is structurally fucked’. Artists’ testimonies in the report consistently condemned the nature and extent of pay and working conditions: low or no fees paid for their creative skill and labour, when contracted by publicly funded galleries in England and Scotland and Northern Ireland, to deliver projects including major commissions, solo exhibitions, talks and education workshops. Finally, pending publication of a-n’s new code, the report urges artists to keep timesheets for projects, stop working for free, insist on written contracts, and join a union.
There are currently three artists unions in the UK that the report encourages artists to consider joining: Artists Union England, Scottish Artists Union, and Praxis Artists’ Union of Ireland. An embryonic union is being developed for artists in Wales by an independent voluntary network: Visual Arts Group Wales. Even if armed with a-n’s forthcoming code, such artists collectives are likely to encounter difficulties in persuading public art sector entities to comply with suggested good practices.
Collective trade and business associations customarily abound in most industries, both nationally and internationally. They speak with one voice for their members, harmonise common industry standards and codes of practice to which their members subscribe and undertake to comply with, and negotiate and agree minimum rates of pay and working conditions with industry employee worker unions. Not so in the contemporary public art sector, where so-called gatekeepers mostly operate independently, not collectively. In any event, as a-n’s recent research report attests, artists are invariably commissioned to deliver unique creative projects as independent contractors, not as employee workers.
As for the research report’s urging of artists to insist on written contracts, this is sound advice – but easier said than done.
Most artists throughout the world continue to have little or no bargaining power when dealing with the greater power, wealth and influence of the contemporary art world’s gatekeepers: private and public collectors and patrons and commissioners, plus art-market professionals, continue to determine – collectively and individually – cultural and market values of artworks, and do so often only after an artist’s death.
Moreover, artists operate today in a global art ecosystem devoid of internationally harmonised art and artist’s laws and industry standards regulating artists’ interactions with indispensable gatekeepers. Unlike most authors and performers in leading creative industries (music and sound recording; film and video), however, who have customarily formed collective associations to negotiate basic business standards with their collectivised industry gatekeepers, most visual artists operate as solo practitioners – even if some are also voluntary members of a collective for sharing information and support.
Being solo means that to survive – perhaps even thrive – in the contemporary art ecosystem, artists ideally need to acquire and apply appropriate skills to secure sound transactions with individual art-world gatekeepers, and they especially need to possess abilities to use suitable legal tools as naturally as painters use brushes. Most art schools worldwide do not embed, alongside core creativity tutoring, courses in education and training in relevant legal and business dimensions of professional practice for successfully navigating life after art school.
As for public sector commissioned work, mutual benefits for artists and commissioners can be achieved by demonstrating tried and tested good practices. Of paramount importance in this regard is the understanding and appreciation that a written contractual agreement should not be viewed as being a legalistic straightjacket, but rather as a jointly constructed unique aide-mémoire and project management checklist, which may guide the parties through their respective responsibilities and rights during the commission process – from concept through to completion.
An especially challenging issue arises when commissions involve the origination of new artworks that commissioners may wish to reject if they have not been developed and completed to meet their expectations. In such circumstances, there is understandable tension between, on the one hand, artists being confident they will be paid for delivering their artistic skill and labour, and, on the other, commissioners being confident they have a ‘right of rejection’ of the new work.
Such a mutually exclusive dichotomy may be reconciled through artists and commissioners agreeing contractual provisions along the following lines: specify an overall project timescale, with key staging points for artists receiving interim payments for work done and expenditure made (and contingent provisions for slippages and/or variations); on payment to the artist of each stage payment, the commissioner has opportunities to view work done, make constructive suggestions, approve progress to the next stage, or terminate the remainder of the commission. In these ways, artists would be paid in stages for work done, and commissioners would have built-in rights to monitor progress, and commit to or reject paying artists for working on each next stage to completion.
It is hoped that a-n’s new code will include material and guidance especially aimed at helping artists not only to negotiate with individual would-be commissioners of new creative projects, but also with exhibitors and buyers of completed works as well as agents and dealers representing them in art market places. Furthermore, such content could also be used by artists, individually and collectively, to assure gatekeepers of mutual benefits that good contractual practices can achieve.
Finally, the code could perhaps serve a higher purpose: as advocacy material aimed at enlightening cultural and education
policymakers within national and local governments. In particular, to urge reconsideration of their austere policy approaches to visual art sector funding and education, which in recent years appear to have been driven by a misguided belief that the visual art professions do not make valuable cultural and economic contributions to society.
© Henry Lydiate 2023