studio1.1 collective began in July 2003 with no particular battle-plan; started in actual fact by accident, using the space because it was there. We have developed a programme by instinct, evolved with a range of shows as diverse as possible, presenting artists at any stage of their career, from any country, in any discipline; though increasingly we find ourselves working with artists emerging into the marketplace and finding themselves somewhere to one side of the mainstream. Sharing our own position, that is. Our commitment is to the work itself, and to fostering the three-way relationship between artist, artwork, and viewer; looking for what Cage, in another context, called ‘the quality of encounter’. Art isn’t a distraction, or an act of consumption, but a relationship.
‘Art attempts to evoke something that you are not yet. Entertainment only talks to that person that you are now.’ Richard Foreman.
To continue down the path of citation, we have to say that these days we work in the spirit of Gramsci's 'pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will'. Surrounded, as we seem to be, by art that's been down-graded to the level of short-term investment, we cling to our position at a critical distance from the search for the Next Best Thing. Sound-bite self-promoting art that aspires to an edginess that is blunted all too soon doesn't hold any interest for us at all. Our aim is to offer a platform to artists who share our belief in the power of art to ask questions of the world. An art that through those moments of anagnorisis or ‘recognition’ can profoundly add to an understanding of our relationship to the world as we think we know it.
 60x45cm 09.jpg "WILLIAM STEIN \"Birth\"")
