Maurice Carlin In his explorations of artistic structures and processes, Maurice Carlin has variously utilised digital video conferencing for collective drawing sessions; he has adapted ancient Chinese relief printing in order to ‘record’ the surface of high streets and studio floors; and he has live-streamed the production of a 1:1 scale image of a vast warehouse floor using layered CMYK inks. Maurice is a mainstay of the Islington Mill family and since 2007, the independent peer-led educational structure that he co-founded, the Islington Mill Art Academy, has operated as an active working response to both the introduction of higher education fees in the UK and to the ongoing debates around the contemporary relevance of a traditional art education. The Academy does not differentiate between teacher and pupil, replacing that structure with a pooling of skills and knowledge, striving for diverse and not necessarily ‘artistic’ outcomes. All of Maurice’s work seeks to consider artistic practice by questioning the structures that art sits within, refusing to consider art practice in any kind of isolation but rather looking at how the artist has come to make their work in the first place and how existing structures within art and the wider world impact on the work and on the artist’s life. Islington Mill Art Academy was Maurice’s own route to education, thus further enacting the ethos of Islington Mill as art practice intertwined with life. A number of Maurice’s works have been incorporated into, or have been conceptualised around, ideas of shared ownership. These concepts are long-term motives for Maurice, and together with curator Helen Kaplinksy, an initiative was formed entitled #temporarycustodians, to consider various models of shared ownership over the last two years. With his large scale installation Performance Publishing: Regent Trading Estate (2013), Maurice set out to specifically examine alternative models of arts distribution and ownership. The next stage of this long-term project will be The #temporarycustodians Trust, in which Performance Publishing will be placed entirely into the trusteeship of a collection of individuals who will take responsibility for the life of the work. At the heart of this exercise is a desire to actively position both the life of an artwork and crucially, the continuation of artistic practice at the centre of any new distribution/ownership structures. The #temporarycustodians Trust will open up this productive interrogation about the care and custodianship of art, and this phase of the project will allow participants to consider and actively engage with an experiment in a different type of ownership. The 135 unique prints which together make up Performance Publishing are now being offered up to the care of individuals to act as temporary custodians.
Performance Publishing: Regent Trading Estate, 2013, installation view. Photo: Joby Catto
Maurice Carlin mauricecarlin.com