CAREER SUICIDE: TEN YEARS AS A FREE RANGE ARTIST Why do some artists spend their whole careers doing stupid stuff like mutilating mannequins or painting old bits of wood with baffling phrases? Why does everyone in the art world get paid, apart from the artists? Why do most art students spend years doing their MA, closely followed by them doing sweet FA? Who are the HoWiAs, and what the hell do they think they’re doing? How and why did a bunch of paintings that looked like vandalised portraits of SpongeBob get taken so seriously at an international art fair?

NOW, AND IN THE NEAR FUTURE (2011):

I’m very slowly working on a new novel. My non-fiction book Career Suicide is now available as a print-on-demand book and a download. The book is about the reality of working in the art world for most artists, away from the glamorous and curatorially acclaimed end of the spectrum. Find out more about it and read an extract from the book here. My major recent project for 2009-2010 was Magickal Realism, a live video and performance project inspired by the Angelic Actions and writings of Queen Elizabeth I’s court wizard, John Dee. The first performance was at Colchester Arts Centre in late February, with subsequent showings in Southern England and in Germany. I’m also developing a whole series of performance lecture works based on equally interesting undercurrents of the history and culture of the British Isles. In January and February I worked at KINO KINO Centre for Art & Film in Norway.

I’ve also started working collaboratively on Market Project, a diverse group of East Anglian artists and curators who over the next year or so will be supporting each other and researching ways for artists to make a more sustainable living from their work. Our first public event for artists and other arts professionals was this May at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, shortly to be followed by another in Cambridge and then one in Colchester. This artist-led and artist-centred research project is funded by Arts Council England via the Eastern region’s Escalator scheme.

I have a blog for random, non work-related writing: ADOXOBLOG.

I also have a blog for reviewing and commenting on art exhibitions and events: Career Suicide, which continues some of the themes I write about in the book of the same name.

Recent exhibitions and activities- Detroit Institute of Arts, 'Sync: Art Meets Technology' at NextEnergy, Detroit, MI, 23rd June 2011. Market Project, 'Collecting the Uncollectable' public discussion event at Aid & Abet, Cambridge. Text for publication accompanying the exhibition Art as a Full time Hobby, from 30th June, Aid & Abet, Cambridge. ArtSway Associates: Beyond the Commission Symposium, Arts University College at Bournemouth, Saturday 16th July 2011. Beyond the Commission exhibition at The Gallery, also AUCB, 18th July- 12th August 2011. Market Project, 'Too Many Artists' public discussion event at Firstsite, Colchester, November 2011.

PRESS AND MEDIA COVERAGE OF ME AND MY WORK INCLUDES:

a-n, Art Monthly, The Art Newspaper, BBC local radio, The Big Issue, Cabinet, Channel 4 Television (UK), China Daily, Dazed & Confused, The Evening Standard (London), The Face, Flux, Frieze, i-d (UK), IDN (Japan), The Guardian, The Independent, The Independent on Sunday, LBC, Mac Format, MAP, Metro, QTV (China), Realtime (Australia), Resonance FM, The Sci-Fi Channel (UK), Scotland on Sunday, SFX, The Times (UK), Wired.

Repetitive Beat Generation

Steve Redhead

Rebel Inc., 2000.

The Animate! Book: Rethinking Animation

Edited by Benjamin Cook and Gary Thomas

Lux, 2007.

Collaborators: UK Design for Performance 2003-2007

Society of British Theatre Designers, 2007.

The Berwick Gymnasium Fellowships: An Archival Record

Art Editions North / English Heritage, 2008.

Lengthy interview, text and many images in this book.

Video Vortex Reader

Edited by Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer

Institute for Network Cultures, 2008.

Nature After the Genome

Edited by John Dupré and Sarah Parry

Wiley, 2010. Cover image is from my film and book Three Times True.

BOOKS WITH IMAGES OF MY WORK AND / OR CRITICAL WRITING ABOUT IT:

BOOKS BY ME:

Top row, L to R: Career Suicide: 10 Years as a Free Range Artist (non-fiction book about the art world), Uncanny Valley (Collected short stories), limited first edition of the Three Times True book (images and texts inspired by genomics, from the video installation of the same name), second edition of Their Heads Are Anonymous (novel), Monkey Boys (novel).

Second row: Situation Normal (photography 2006-2011), second, unlimited edition of the Three Times True book.

You can contact me by emailing:

Alistair (DOT) Gentry (AT) googlemail DOT com.

Messages are always welcome at the address above but it’s a good idea to include the current date in your subject line, otherwise your mail may be filtered as spam. I’m always very happy to receive comments, observations, proposals to show or commission my work, or questions about it. <Français> Les messages sont bienvenus à l’adresse au-dessus de mais c’est une bonne idée d’inclure la date du jour dans votre ligne sujet, autrement votre courrier peut être filtré comme Spam. <Deutsch> Meldungen sind an der Adresse über willkommen, aber es ist eine gute Idee, das Tagesdatum in Ihrer abhängigen Zeile einzuschließen, andernfalls kann Ihre Post als Spam gefiltert werden.

<Nippon kara desu ka?>

<Putonghua>

I’m a free range writer and artist from the UK. My work is diverse and has been seen and heard in digital media, on radio, television and the stage, in art galleries, at film festivals, in print and on the net. I make and show work across Britain and internationally. Group exhibitions include ‘New Forest Pavilion’ at the Venice Art Biennale 2005, ‘Blink’ at Gasworks Gallery, London in 2006, ‘Broadcast Yourself’ at Hatton Gallery, Newcastle and Cornerhouse, Manchester 2008, plus many other shows and festivals in the UK, Hong Kong, China, the Netherlands, Poland, Estonia, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Canada, the United States and Japan.

A lot of my work involves oratory and storytelling in one form or another, sometimes in the form of performance lectures or roleplaying. I’m particularly interested in traditional and contemporary folklore, esoterica and Forteana of Britain, Europe and Asia, legitimate mainstream sciences, and the fringe or pseudo-sciences that go along with them. My recent works have extensively researched factual backgrounds and use scientific or academic forms and research methods, either earnestly or satirically. Over the past few years I’ve spent quite a lot of time living and working in Japan and China, most recently Tokyo and Yokohama in late 2008.

I’ve been artist in residence for ArtSway, New Media Scotland and the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum at the University of Edinburgh (2006-2007), among others. In 2004 I was awarded an Arts Council England / English Heritage Artist’s Fellowship. In 2006 I was commissioned to make the film Qingdao 58 Middle in China. A year later I returned to China to work at Contemporary Art Terminal/He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen.

I’m the author of two published novels (Their Heads Are Anonymous and Monkey Boys.) Uncanny Valley: Collected Short Stories was published in 2008. I was involved publicly as an editor (and behind the scenes as a board member and advisor) with the new fiction site Pulp.Net from its foundation in 2003 until it went on hiatus at the end of 2009. I made my first film in 2000, with Joe Magee: Hypnomart for Channel 4 Television’s ‘Animate!’. I also regularly take part in readings, talks, lectures and participatory arts work with people from school age upwards.

I’m an Associate Artist at ArtSway Gallery. Read more about ArtSway Associates here. I’m also an Artist Member of the Contemporary Art Society. See my portfolio on their site here.

My Wikipedia page. I’m on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, too.

My page at Artfacts. According to them, as of February 2010 I’m officially the 27,739th most significant artist in the world. I don’t know if you can imagine how thrilling it is to be in the lower fifth of a listing of the top 30,000 artists in the world... but despite my sarcasm and mockery it's definitely still better than being the poor bastard at number 235,248, the current lowest position. The art world can be vile, sometimes.

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