In 2007, Artman arrived... Created by the Council of the High Arts, a hero to fight for art and expression!!But they hadn’t got to that point without some background...
by Ben Hunt
as first published in Mailout between 2007-2012 Olympic Village....... Page 2 Danny the Manic.... Page 3 The complete Artman strip.... Page 4
In 2007, Ben Hunt was working with Prescap and had been asked to provide a strip for Mailout the sector magazine for participatory arts. Rob Howell, the editor asked Ben to do a strip about referring to the affect the successful winning of London to hold the 2012 Olympics... whichseemsoddlyapt!! The final strip is in 2012!! Ben was asked to provide another strip, as Rob wanted to have more comic strips in Mailout. This was Danny the Manic and was referring to the challenges facing the arts world with regards to an aging population. After this both Rob and Ben came to the conclusion a regular character and strip was needed.
Olympic Village was a response to the impact of London 2012 was expected to have on the arts and other lottery funded projects and funding streams. Most of the money was to be diverted into the Olympics, and this strip played with the idea that if this had happened in Ancient Greece, resulting in the cancelling of major Greek contributions to culture...
If Dennis the Menace was now in his 70’s wouldn’t he be an old crazy man by now? What provision was there for the elder person? With an aging population shouldn’t we consider those members of our society who are still active and able, but often pigeon holed as being past it or uninterested...
And so to Artman, these are the full strips including one unpublished before... The art world would never be the same again...
This was never previously published
I feel I should explain... This issue was supposed to be a bit off the wall... So this is the top of the Mailout contents page, and Bella is looking down at the text below make sense now?
And with that Artman was lost to us all! Still stuck in a gallery, a work of art himself... What a fitting end... Perhaps, one day, when art needs him most he and his band of friends, the beautiful Belladollar, the daring Dramachick, the delightful Diva-8 and the terrific Tweetman, will rise again and fight for
ART Ben Hunt 2007-12, with thanks to Rob, Sue and Lyndsey for pointing out all the typos!