A long time ago in a town far away, I stumbled around zombie like, bouncing from emptying my bank account on art materials, to desperately trying to satisfy my three books a week addiction. The time and the place for this madness, was a bloated, buoyant London art world, during the final days of the eighties 'boom years'. These various acts of economic recklessness and theoretical overload, were my incompetent effort to demonstrate my commitment to the cause during the Freeze driven heyday, when everyone was desperately trying to shoot up some "Modern Medicine". Fast forwarding past my thankfully brief attempt to be taken seriously by those who took themselves real seriously, I find myself swigging my Finkinbrau beer, and mulling over how I went from thinking nothing of pouring all my time and money into art, to weighing up the pro's and con's of spending £25 on publicising Beerrmonsta or, having a good time. The influence of two groups of artists, curators and writers, lie at the root of my current approach.

THERE ARE NO FLIES ON US

The committed, politically radical artists of the late eighties, were dedicated and engaged in a interventionist programme for art, which ethically and morally rejected the vapid hedonism and rampant commodification of capitalism, and its faithful lackey, the art market. Becoming what could best be described as a cultural intelligentsia, their methodology grew out of legacies, such as conceptualism, Marxism, Feminism and post structuralism. Developing extensive and valuable critiques of the exclusions and abuses of power, which had been carried out under modernism march forward, they had effectively halted its 'progress'.

Taking their cue from artists such as Victor Burgin, Barbara Kruger and Hans Haacke, this heterogeneous body of artists invested heavily in the emancipatory potential of photography (Benjamin's Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction was required reading) and eagerly devoured each new theoretical text, producing painstakingly constructed institutional critiques.
For these artists the article of faith was staying as far away as possible from anything which visibly smacked of official modernism, the font of all artistic evil, and simultaneously keeping a highly detached, scrupulously, ironic eye on capitalism's ideological mouthpiece, the entertainment industry.

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE ONE OF THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE?

As committed, responsible and earnest as the politically engaged activist was, there existed simultaneously their infinitely more powerful, omnipotent rival, the neo-conceptualist, Goldsmith gang (as they lumpenly came to be know). As the 'bright young things' of the art world, they made much of their wanton immorality, of being happily apolitical and of their self regarding unethical complicity with the bête noire of the left, commodification . Savvy self publicists, astute catchers of sponsorship and business, artists such as Damien Hirst organised, with true eighties entrepreneurial flair, highly professional shows in "alternative sites", which with their full colour catalogues and glossy adverts, insured the big boys critical and financial attention, while simultaneously giving them a run for their money.

While the politically engaged activist had looked to the alternative site as means of escaping the ideological power of the modernist museum space, the entrepreneurial neo conceptualist, made sure there was nothing even remotely alternative about their spaces. Their strategy of fabricating fake institutional galleries in London's Docklands, does as Dave Beech has said, now look like something of a "sick Thatcherite joke"1 , but at the time it's flashing message of willingness to jump into bed with cultural commissars insured these artists achieved success and notoriety.

As the cultural intelligentsia went further and further into institutional critiques, the politics of representation etc., the neo conceptualists swiftly evacuated conceptualism of everything which had been troublesome and irksome to the art establishment. Bastardising the notion of the "idea", these artists made a saleable fetish of conceptual arts sleeve wearing 'cleverness', sprinkled on a visual, frequently spectacular aesthetic and passed on the hermetically sealed, self referential package to a culture industry, ravenous for products which guaranteed a symbolically high return on little capital expenditure 2 .
Both these positions exercised considerable influence (not always overtly) over my practice and thinking. Of the two self pronounced opposing positions (I don't actually remember much open hostility), it is in retrospect the card carrying radicals who exercised the greatest symbolic and real power and domination. This occurred first and second hand, primarily via close proximity to the media department at the Slade School of Fine Art during the years 1988 - 92. The initial experience of the commitment to theory and discussion was liberating, especially having endured the closures of academic modernism, however what became painfully obvious over time, was of the closures of the discourse, whenever and wherever it was deemed to have wandered aware from the 'issue'.

I'M SORRY THAT IS INCORRECT

For Marxists, Liberals and Feminists engaged in pinpointing abuses of power in the service of emancipatory politics, this may seem somewhat perverse or unlikely, but nevertheless my strong recollection is of the cultural intelligentsia's moral and ethical righteousness running a highly prohibitive, puritanical regime. Primarily this involved an authoritarian partitioning of whole realms of experience as inconsequential, marginal or trivial. Specifically this was directed at guarding against pleasure; being ethical, moral and political meant scrupulously steering clear of losing it. While the cultural intelligentsia had systematically taken apart the exclusions of modernism at a formal, empirical level, they had shot straight past the ideological exclusions which occurred in the maintenance of arts autonomy from the contingencies and pleasures4 of the everyday. Consciously or unconsciously much work produced by this increasingly academic intelligentsia, validated and consecrated the dominant institutional protocols of 'proper artistic consumption’ while simultaneously declaring its scrupulously clean radical credentials. Ultimately it was hard to shake the notion that this heavy imbalance, stemmed from both an insipid class bias, where unofficial sites of pleasure or interest, were often snobbishly dismissed as unworthy of serious attention, and a damaging embrace of self denial (did you hear the one about the black, clad theoretician discovered willing away a lunch time playing Mortal Kombat. Beetroot, he explained it was research for an upcoming paper)5 Many young artist have decidedly rejected the more extreme excesses of these two positions. For them the self imposed exile, sleeve wearing radical opposition of the cultural intelligentsia, with its slavish devotion to exhaustively researched critiques and its reliance on the prop of theory, is as stagnant as the blandness and sycophantic suckling of power, endemic to professional institutional culture. The feelings of guilt which prompted many artist to neurotically rush into trying to justify their work by consuming Lacan's entire output in a week, are now seen for what they are - the quickest route to grey hair and an ulcer. Similarly looking at the suicidal plunges into debt prompted by trying to turn a disused toilet factory in Plumstead into a facsimile of the I.C.A. , with the desperate hope that Jay Jopling might turn up, many have reasoned, none too surprisingly, that it's just too high a price to pay. For in a culture industry, where the level of exploitation of artists labour has reached staggering heights (you want cibachromes for the show, you can pay for them! How many galleries actually pay a fee?) is it any wonder artists, not sufficiently comfortable on inherited income, have of necessity turned their back on these two positions, preferring instead a more informal, low key approach to exhibiting.
Loose groupings of artists, such as The Smallest Gallery in the World, Something Stirring (both based in London) and Beerrmonsta (Glasgow)6 have in differing ways, on small budgets, guaranteed a good night out with a dose of art thrown in. Common to all three is the location of the pub, which while not invested with the radicalism of the 'alternative site', nor looked on, as a viable spot for catching art world fat cats, is appropriate for artists who don't regard art as innately 'special' or 'superior', but rather look at it as one amongst many forms of culture.

I'm uneasy about making any grand claims for these shows, or groups, because to even think of trying to codify aims, strategies etc. would seem to fall into the trap, which ultimately smothered the two camps I’ve spoken of. However, probably one of the few things which would unite the artists involved in these groups, would be an agreement that in the mumbling of the mantra "I cannot be arsed to spend all my time and money on art, there are more important things", the emphasis would be on the all. I’m not so disingenuous that I’ll pretend ‘suckcess’ and a ‘career’ aren’t objectives, the only difference is in how I interpret what exactly ‘success’ and a ‘career’ might mean today.