In an article entitled ‘Can you do me a quick cow’s head‘, the Guardian looks at how artists are using teams of people to create the art they concept. They say that artists have become so ambitious with the scope of their projects and the materials used that they have to turn to art studios like Michael Smith’s to get work done:
Michael Smith, an art graduate of similar vintage to Hirst, stretched canvasses for tutors and then, by word of mouth, became fixer and fabricator for dozens of young British artists. “If someone dropped a bomb on Mike Smith’s studio,” sculptor David Batchelor once quipped, “it would change the face of London’s contemporary art world.” At Smith’s studio by an old gasworks on London’s Old Kent Road, 12 full-time staff brave hot metal and flying sparks in a warehouse almost the size of a football pitch.
Smith is very discrete. He admits that, over the years, some of his clients - Rachel Whiteread, Gary Hume, Gavin Turk, Keith Tyson, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Mark Wallinger - have been sensitive about publicising the fact that he makes works for them. “In a way, it’s more to do with the demands being made upon them, and the nature of the art world,” he says. Indeed, fast turnover is essential if a hot young artist is to make the most of their quite possibly fleeting time in the spotlight. “The number of opportunities offered to exhibit their work outstrips their ability to produce it,” says Smith.
Smith won the Turner prize last year. Well, Wallinger won it for State Britain, an exact replica of peace protester Brian Haw’s banners in Parliament Square. Wallinger photographed the rambling protest before it was impounded by police in 2006. Smith’s team worked from those images to create a replica, which reportedly cost £90,000, dwarfing the £25,000 win. There was almost no mention of Smith in the press, with Haw’s protest being described as having been “lovingly recreated” by Wallinger.
The fabricator didn’t mind. Smith is full of praise for Wallinger, saying his client produces a lot of his own work but takes on help because he uses so many mediums: film, sculpture, painting, installations. “It would’ve probably driven him insane if he’d tried to produce it himself,” says Smith, who was once a sculptor himself. “I’m really comfy with it. I enjoy making things.” He finds it “liberating” to be under no obligation to explain and promote a work. “We can produce State Britain and don’t have to take responsibility for the whole artistic endeavour. We don’t have to answer questions of whether it is art, who it is for and why it is relevant.” He sounds relieved.
Can you do me a quick cow’s head? | Art & Architecture | guardian.co.uk Arts
