The The Urge Urge 4. Arrive at the private view of a gallery that has ‘green’10 credentials and bemoan their new age methods. Claim that really going organic involves adapting to the ecology of the urban environment. Give them a demonstration of your homemade street pigeon trap (oil drum, mighty white bread,
Do you get the Urge? Are you a noble savage in disguise? 1
Most artists though, seek to repress it. But what exactly is the Urge?
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members £500 for a signed picture of Dan.
The Urge is a deep and irresistible desire to take your clothes off in an art gallery. You can’t do it in the real world because they might lock you up. But that’s one of the truly great things about art: you can take your clothes off in public.
6. Insist on using a wooden phone and laptop. These you never tire of telling people, have been carved by your own bare hands using a
The secret to success in the art-world is all about embracing the Urge, the inner animal. Curators love to see a bit of caveman. At the very least you may get a show on the eighth2 Walsall or a temporary performance caravan with Fierce Festival.3
screen with a sharpened shoehorn purchased from Timpson’s. 7. Chop off a small body part.12 A great troglodytic conversation starter on the local art scene dinner party circuit.13 Keep 14
Below, art world think-tank BAZ offer 16 tips on how to make it in the hostile 4
8. Develop a stone based collaboration.15 Wall paintings commissioned. 9.
1. Turn up to a private view wearing no trousers or pants. Instead use an old yogurt pot (big or small, you decide)5 in which your bits can gently nest. Use some string to keep it on.6 When someone goes to shake your hand, offer them your yogurt pot instead.7
Try to pay your Artists Newsletter magazine subscription by taking boxes of pebbles, bones, feathers and dried dung to their marionette HQ in Hull. 10. Boil up a mixture of stale bread, Jesmonite, chewing gum and Event Legacy Lager.16 Smash any gallery projectors that are showing poor quality video work (I.e. anything that fails to have a beginning, middle and an end).
2. Develop a sophisticated font from twigs. Spend six months writing an application to New Contemporaries using this ‘twig-font’. Try to sue New Contemporaries when they reject your application as illegible. 3. West Midlands call out.8 Impress them by wearing no clothes when they visit.9
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11. Get rid of your bed and move into the garden. Dig a hole in which to sleep. Stare in to your neighbour’s windows until they close
12. Convert your front window into a gallery space; spend your evenings sitting in the gallery with no clothes on whilst reading your homemade copy
13. Return to a rudimentary form of toilet paper, such as Art Review
14. Develop your own primitive language that only you know how to speak. Insist on speaking this in meetings with the Arts Council. Accompany with signs that appear to continually suggest you would like to sniff the shoes of your relationship manager.17 15. When at a talk, or any other discursive event, throw stones at the speaker if they start mumbling. 16. Build a drum by stretching old gallery tote bags around a Ruth Claxton offcut. Carry it around at all times, especially on public transport (remembering to point out the rarity and relative good condition of bagger). When in peak commuter movement, beat the drum to the sound
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