Whatever Happened to the Stuckists?
After many months build up to the “Triumph of Stuckism” symposium in Liverpool, I was curious as to how the event went down. But I could find no review on the Stuckist website. So I used Google to search the site for the word triumph – this threw up eight results, one for Triumph of Stuckism and seven for Triumph of Painting, Charles Saatchi’s show.
No mention on Naive John’s website, the guy behind the symposium. No mention on Google News. No mention on John Moores University site.
Maybe it wasn’t a triumph…
December 11th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
Depends on your definition of ‘triumph’ I guess.
In terms of promotion I cannot compete with multi-millionaire media moguls like Charles Saatchi, hence the apparent lack of visibility on Google. I am one man and have art to make a well as organising and promoting such events. But I digress…
Here is a review: http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/issues/misc/reviews/triumph_stuckism.php
In addition the exhibition attracted large numbers of students and public alike, including Lancashire Girls Grammar School, who I did a presentation for in the gallery space. Some of these students are doing their A-level projects on Stuckist artists as a result.
Since the symposium I have been contacted by local artists who have, in addition to asking for more information about Stuckism, shown an interest in forming their own local Stuckist groups. Student feedback has been overwhelmingly positive particularly amongst nascent art historians.
One of the exhibiting artists, Peter Murphy, has had interest from Christie’s New York and I have been offered shows in Manchester, Berlin, Barcelona, Denmark and Reykjavik.
There has been talk too of John Moores University hosting a permanent archive on Stuckism.
All of the above happened as a result of the exhibition and symposium. I consider that to be quite an achievement, maybe even a triumph.
Yours Sincerely,
Naive John, Liverpool Stuckists
December 11th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Sorry you didn’t find a report on the Triumph of Stuckism symposium on stuckism.com. This is partly because the latter web site is that of the original Stuckist group that I founded and the symposium was a venture independent of that, organised by Naive John of the Liverpool Stuckists. Stuckism.com (now edited by Peter McArdle) does cover as much as possible of Stuckist acitivities round the world, but there is a major problem of human resources and the lack thereof. We are a movement of artists without backup and admin staff. Artists do actually have art to get on with, which means time is pressured. Sometimes things slip through the net, because the limited time and energy available has been taken up by something else. In this case it all went into promoting what was then the forthcoming Go West show at Spectrum London, with considerable results in terms of media coverage. It’s just a question of priorities.
The symposium and accompanying exhibition were well attended and Naive John told me that he had very positive feedback about both. He has promised a report and summary for stuckism.com but it hasn’t arrived yet. I consider the triumph to be that a major university is prepared to give its backing to such a symposium in the first place and, as well, during a prestigious event such as the Liverpool Biennial 2006, which the Triumph of Stuckism was part of. If you wanted to find out more, you could have emailed stuckism@yahoo.co.uk .
Charles Thomson, co-founder of Stuckism.
December 12th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Glad to hear it all went well NJ – I fully understand your position. My question was posed as I had a genuine interest in the event, but was frustrated at the lack of publicity/information. Would be nice to see some pictures.
CT – hard to believe that such a media-savvy person as yourself would expect me to email you for info. Still, no biggie eh? All’s well that ends well