On Doughnuts and the 10%

A curator once said to me that the more time you spend in the art world, the less it makes sense. A case in point? I often get asked to write about building a sustainable career as an artist and speaking as a failed artist this strikes me as ironic. But what can my experience offer others?

While much has remained the same in the art world over the last decade – namely the addiction to overproduction made possible by unpaid labour – there have been some important changes. The art world has always been an extractive economy, but now there’s a feeling that people have had enough. While care has become something of a buzzword, its omnipresence is a welcome reminder of just how many people want to (re)build a more inclusive art world.

Artists typically need four things to make work: space, time, money and dialogue. I think of these conditions as a kind of fertiliser that cultivates a career to keep it growing. 

I would urge artists to look at each and think: what is enough?How much money do I actually need? If you have lots of time and no space, why are you making large-scale sculptures? If you have a large workspace but no dialogue around the work, why aren’t you starting a pizza club and inviting other artists to your studio?

A practice is a constant negotiation between these conditions. Too much of one can upset the other. Think about the resources you have and trade with others to find a balance.

You can build a castle or make a garden. A castle is monumental but static, visible but separate. A garden is diffuse and perennial. The logic of the castle is independent, while the garden is interdependent. Be like the garden: build relationships and be an ally. Cultivate interdependence rather than going it alone and creating a moat around yourself. An art practice – like a garden – is a precarious thing that requires the sustenance of collaboration and friendship to be sustained.

Who is your art for? If it’s for you, that’s fine, but be clear about who you’re speaking to. Writing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, author Nina Simon suggested: keep things simple, use what you have, understand who your community is; listen to them first and then ask them second. Simon was talking to institutions and curators, but her reflections can apply to everyone. Who is your community?

No one cares about an artist’s work more than the artist. Make them care. Care for others. Be caring. Care is a form of attention, and looking is the deepest form of care. Pay attention to your peers, look at their art and they’ll look at yours in return.

What does the work actually need? Understand its logic. Form and content often get confused, but I think of content as what you do and form as how you do you what you do. Content: a painting of a cat drinking a cup of tea. Form: is the work big or small, refined or messy? Is it playful or polemical?

As a curator I’m trying to amplify the logic and form of the work. If the work is messy, then perhaps an elegant white cube environment isn’t the right context. Interrogating how the work is produced, displayed and distributed is a good place to consider what you don’t have and understand what you might need.

‘Do you need to be on social media to build a career?’ is the most common question I get asked. The quick answer is no; remember, the art world existed before social media. There are many other ways to create visibility for yourself.

I remember reading somewhere that artist Barbara Hepworth only made art for 30 minutes a day and Phyllida Barlow’s best time in the studio was in the middle of the night when her children were asleep. The book Daily Rituals (Mason Currey, Alfred A Knopf, 2013) is a fantastic resource on the habits of famous writers, musicians, artists. It’s striking how many only worked for a few hours a day on their creative pursuits.3 Work incrementally and accumulatively.

Artist Otobong Nkanga advises her students to put 10% of their income from their work aside as a financial cushion. The writer Stephen King said that every time you edit a draft text you should cut 10% (Stephen King, On Writing, Scribner, 2000).

 For every ten applications you make, you may get one positive response. Counting up and down, putting aside, marking out time; art is a numbers game.

In thinking about sustainability, I suggest that curators, funders, policymakers, collectors, teachers and gallerists need to do the thinking with artists. This is a collective question that requires collective answers.

If you make art, you’re an artist. It’s that simple. Keep making and opportunities will present themselves. 

Economist Kate Raworth’s theory of the doughnut is a visual framework for thinking about a sustainable economy. It foregrounds mutuality rather than extraction, reframing the production of value. Importantly, it counters human addiction to constant growth and expansionism.

This concept can be applied to an artist’s practice. What conditions do you need to make the work you want to make? Raworth argues that we become the images and metaphors we put into the world.

Artists it’s over to you, make the world we want to inhabit.

This essay was originally published in 'Aggregate' in 2022.

The publication and accompanying exhibition marked the second cohort of artists part of the Freelands Artist Programme – an initiative run by Freelands Foundation to champion artistic practice and support relationships and collaborations between artists and arts organisations across the UK.