Almanack
Online articles drawing together the art world with wider social, economic and cultural issues The Artquest Almanack (2018 2020) was an online journal that drew together the art world with wider social, economic and cultural issues, setting the arts…
Love & Money
There has been an unprecedented amount of media coverage of Banksy’s Girl with Balloon (2006) shredding incident since it took place at Sotheby’s London’s evening sale of contemporary art on 5 October 2018. But none of this…
Bergen: Holding in the Gaps
EVA ROWSON (Bergen, Norway) is Curator of Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall – the live programme of music, clubnights, performance and more at Bergen’s largest gallery for contemporary art. Her work as an artist, producer and curator…
Charlotte Marra and Patrick Goddard: on navigating the art world
The art world can be intimidating and complex to those who are new to it. What do emerging artists need to know it avoid its pitfalls? With little or no…
Scarcity
On 3 September, the United Arab Emirates’ Department of Culture and Tourism announced the ‘postponement of the unveiling of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi’, and promised that ‘more details will be announced soon’. No details have yet been given…
Style, Content and Plagiarism
‘Cultural appropriation’, ‘unethical borrowing’, ‘plagiarism’ and ‘rip off’ are recent headline grabbing media comments criticising a photoshoot of Rihanna published in Vogue Paris in December 2017. In July 2018, Twitter user STEVE JXSEPH @STEVEJXSEPH posted on…
Blockchain
It is a decade since the conceptual invention of ‘block chain’ technology, which envisaged the creation of a permanent and continuous digital list of records (blocks) of transactions linked (chained) using encoded cryptography to prevent modification of data. Implemented…
Jojo Taylor: Go Thee Rhino and Make your Dreams Come True
Whenever I feel like giving up, I take a look at a piece of photocopied paper, with a picture of a rhino on it and these words. Go Thee…
Outpost
Monthly studio visits by the Artquest team, advising artists on their careers and viewing portfolios Due to the COVID 19 pandemic, this programme was replaced by Artquest One to One for regular advice sessions for artists in London. Artquest…
São Paulo: Searching the edges
Holly Willats is the Director of Art Licks: a not for profit organisation based in London that provides support for grassroots activity and artists through its magazine, commissioning programme, and annual festival. Willats has recently…
Lisbon: salt air
Holly Willats is the Director of Art Licks: a not for profit organisation based in London that provides support for grassroots activity and artists through its magazine, commissioning programme, and annual festival. Willats has recently been carrying…
Reputation: Art & Artists
Last month’s column explored the fragility of the public reputation of art business professionals in the digital age, highlighting how traditional laws of defamation are invariably unfit for the purposes of deterring or preventing social media…
Reputation
‘It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.’ As legendary business magnate Warren Buffet says, reputation is hard won yet fragile. His remark responds to…
Fair Deals
Cultural tourism is a rapidly growing sector of the broader tourism market and has become a thriving worldwide business. A key component of this expanding trade is art tourism that has significantly contributed to the globalisation of the…
Terms and Conditions
The social network revolution of the past two decades of digital and technological innovation and exponential growth has been embraced by artists to transform their communications with each other and their viewing audiences. But few of us…
Art? Pension? Trust?
Summer time is the silly season when most journalists and politicians take long vacations and news media are filled with stories that are trivial or nonsensical. During the past few months an art news story has emerged…
Berlin: history, hedonism, and wildness
Over the past two months, I’ve been in touch with seven Berlin based artists, asking them about their experiences as artists in the city and how they understand queerness in relation to their work. Common…
Conservation Questions
Ethical practices of art conservation have become a renewed subject of debate following publication of a pre conservation image of Salvator Mundi, c1500, which was recently attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and subsequently sold for $450m at auction…