Escapees from the arts in Britain are multiplying: artists of every type resettling the cheap old farmhouses of Northern France, the Dordogne and Languedoc/Toulouse. Location no longer matters very much since the opportunities to show and publish in London itself are limited. Performance Magazine issued its final edition in January. Although the Arts Council is toting around the money for another magazine concerned with the time-based arts, there are no takers. Other British journals are focused on a London-Paris axis seizing on transitory market modes. The radical critiques such as Block and Ten 8 publish infrequently. There is no serious theoretical journal in Europe either. Most are either shiny art-market shoppers-guides, or hermetic writing for a very small circle. Viv Westwood has started her own journal for her fashion and designer friends to provide them with something to discuss other than shop-gossip. Perhaps this type of small circulation specialist text is the order of the day? There is no voice for the arts in England which is all embracing and more than a newsletter.
Indeed, some of the experimental regional public galleries are in trouble as well, chiefly the Third Eye Centre in Glasgow which has closed.
"So what is the news and where is the money?" demands young art. It is impossible to find anything heading anywhere except into mystical or environmental issues. In the past, these have never produced much more than polemics and illustration. In fact, some of the most interesting exhibitions of the past year have been the student shows themselves. The flag of Goldsmiths College is being hauled down: its market success diminishing since art-critics now claim that its type of minimalism is only a... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline