>> ARTNOTES

NUMBER CRUNCHING
The ongoing economic downturn continues to focus minds in the art world. Not a day goes by without another rumour of an institution on the verge of liquidation. So far, however, the market for contemporary art does not seem to have collapsed in a way that some had feared, and others had perhaps hoped. While prices within the art market may be undergoing a correction, the money markets are in complete disarray, and many collectors feel that its better to have their money in a blue-chip artwork than a blue-chip bank (such as Lehman Brothers) or an investment fund (such as Bernie Madoffs). Despite the gleeful efforts of New Yorks Gallery Death Watch blog, which is modelled on the Dotcom Death Watch website that had employees of new media companies transfixed at the turn of the millennium, galleries seem to be pruning staff assistants and technicians, mostly rather than going under. While even such established galleries as White Cube and Lisson are cutting staff numbers (following the lead of the auction houses) there are yet to be any high-profile failures. Indeed, Lisson director Nicholas Logsdail, when discussing the current state of the art market, said that, its more stable, in a funny way, because its not dominated by herd instincts and speculative money. Expect commercial gallery exhibitions this year to involve fewer labour-intensive installations, however, and to run for somewhat longer. The auction houses, on the other hand, may yet be another story. While they are in the process of sending out relentlessly upbeat press releases about their not-as-bad-as-they-couldhave-been February sales (full report in AM next month), details are emerging of just how seriously they have been hit by the price guarantees that they were offering just as the market peaked. Sothebys, for example, is in danger of having its credit rating downgraded to junk status by the aptly named independent ratings agency, Standard & Poors. The 265-year-old auction house declared $50m in guarantee-related losses over recent auctions and its share price has dropped 84% in 18 months. It has also been forced to into restructuring its debts, leading with a near-doubling of the interest rates it pays compared to its previous deal. As we have all had to become familiar with financial jargon, so we begin to understand news such as the report that Sothebys leverage ratio is expected to reach 5.0 by the end of September (up from the current 3.5) ie it will have five times more debt than equity. Coupled with this gloomy news is the revelation of just how good a deal the Royal Academy got out of the Christies-owned gallery, Haunch
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of Venison, for the use of the RAs Burlington Gardens site. As previously reported (Artnotes AM321), Haunch of Venison is taking over the space for three years while its existing home is refurbished. It is reported that the gallery will be paying over 4m for the use of the prestigious address, which the RA acquired from the former Museum of Mankind in 2001 for 5m. The building was badly damaged by fire in 2006 and the current agreement not only ensures that Haunch of Venison will renovate the space but will also allow the RA to run its own exhibitions there for three months of the year. Perhaps this extravagant deal has caused Haunch of Venison to be more prudent with its finances; the gallery recently challenged a VAT ruling that imposed import duties and high VAT charges on video and light-based works. The gallery was successful in its action and a landmark decision has ruled that such artworks are now classed as sculptures and therefore liable for the same reduced VAT rate.

STUDIO CUTS
Around 35 artists in the Can, Egerton and Oldknows studio groups, all of whom are based in the Oldknows former lace factory in Nottingham, are being evicted. While some of the artists have been there for 20 years, it is a painful irony that their lease has not been renewed because the landlord wishes to turn the building into a centre for creative industries, which, as one affected artist, Paul Matosic, puts it: seems to involve putting in loads of plug sockets, laying laminate flooring and stripping the walls back to bare brick oh, and some heating. In these office-style environments, office-style creative industries can function: web design, graphics and magazine publishing. They are not suitable for the dirty business of art. The artists were not consulted on the situation, the buildings lease was simply signed over to the Stone Soup Project, a film-and-music-oriented training programme/foster care agency with links to South Nottingham College. The situation appears to be following a well-rehearsed mechanism to gentrify run-down neighbourhoods: artists move into down-at-heel areas, improving the locale, then developers move in on the now-desirable neighbourhoods and consequently price out the artists. In this instance, Matosic describes the process clearly: The notion for developing the building as a centre for the creative industries stems from the profile that we have developed for the building over this time. When we moved in there were no other creative industries in the building, indeed the term had yet to be invented.

EDUCATION CUTS
The University of the Creative Arts, which is the 2005 amalgamation of numerous colleges and has sites at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone and Rochester (see Artnotes AM317), is considering proposals to cut 80 staff. Even across five campuses, this is a deep cut, and apparently a response to poor Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) ratings and falling levels of student recruitment. Quite how such cuts would improve RAE results is a question that hopefully the management is considering. The University of Westminster is proposing to close its Ceramics BA course; recruitment of new students has already been suspended (see Letters). The course is a flagship of its type, having run for 50 years and been deeply influential in contemporary ceramics over that time. What is perhaps most concerning about the universitys proposal is that the course is academically successful, consistently scoring highly in the bureaucratically treasured RAE ratings. Indeed, the only motivation for closure is that the messy business of ceramics production is not as economically efficient as other, more lecture-based courses. As one senior manger apparently told staff when attempting to justify the closure, the trouble with clay is you cant store it on a memory stick. Its an ominous sentiment long-familiar to art school staff, but raises a concern that is now becoming urgent; universities priorities have increasingly been set towards business goals rather than academic goals. Is there a point in the future when all practice-based courses become extinct?

GIGANTIC ANIMAL NEWS

Mark Wallinger has finally been awarded the commission for the 2m Ebbsfleet Landmark Project. His widely covered plan to produce a lifelike 50m-high white horse overlooking the Kent town won out over proposals by the other shortlisted artists, Christopher Le Brun, Daniel Buren, Richard Deacon and Rachel Whiteread. Funding is not currently secured, which may yet scupper the project, but for the moment it is full-gallop ahead for Wallinger, who now has the challenge of producing a realistic horse that stands at over twice the height of the Angel of the North. Looking for an alternative angle, the Guardian sent a reporter to ask the horse whisperer, the American horse trainer and author Monty Roberts, for his thoughts on the sculpture. The man is a genius, Roberts said, theres an incredible sense of balance and symmetry to the horse. I dont know if he even knows what hes done in terms of the skeletal balance and symmetry of the horse. Roberts obviously wasnt informed of
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Mark Wallingers proposal for the Ebbsfleet Landmark Project

Thorbjrn Holmlunds proposal for the Stoorn tourist attraction

Wallingers previous meticulous paintings of champion racehorses, his racehorse-as-artwork A Real Work of Art, or the fact that the proposed Ebbsfleet horse is based on a painting by George Stubbs. www.ebbsfleetlandmark.com Meanwhile, in other landmark animal sculpture news, this time from northern Sweden, tourism developer Thorbjrn Holmlund has recently been granted permission for his mountain-top project, Stoorn, a 45m-high statue of an elk that contains a restaurant, exhibition venues, concert hall and modern conference facilities. This is such unbelievably good news, Holmlund said, giving Wallinger a lesson in how to display excitement about a project, my whole body is shaking with joy. www.stoorn.se Further afield, another huge animal sculpture is facing a less promising future. Colorado locals have started a Facebook campaign to have a 10mhigh horse sculpture removed from Denver International Airport. It is to be hoped that Wallingers project does not follow a similar course to that of this ill-fated mustang. The artist Luis Jimnez, from whom the sculpture was commissioned back in 1992, was fatally crushed by the artwork in his studio in 2006 and, less than a year after his widow oversaw the project to conclusion in 2008, the sculpture has inspired such vitriol from the local community that they have even taken to writing

protest haikus, including the following representative sample: Ugly devil horse / horrifies the traveler / shames our fair city. The fact that one Ebbsfleet local is quoted as saying that nobody has asked whether he wants to wake up every morning looking into a giant horses arse suggests that the Ebbsfleet Landmark Project story still has legs.

GALLERY NEWS
The Public, the troubled arts centre in West Bromwich, has suffered another blow as Arts Council England has refused to double its grant to 1m per year the amount that Sandwell Council claimed it required to remain open and in fact ceased its annual grant altogether. A short-term lifeline was thrown as ACE provided an additional one-off grant of 3m to the council in order to finally open the centre fully, but its running costs will not be supported by ACE. The project, which cost 60m to build, was initially a private venture until it went into administration in 2006. ACE has so far funded The Public to the tune of 30m, while the local council has provided 18m. However, this new cut in funding has forced the gallery into administration again, leaving its creditors out of pocket. For example, Canadian photographer

Shari Hatt was commissioned to produce new work for an exhibition this month, which is now cancelled. Of most pressing concern is the fact that the artist agreed initially to pay her own expenses (for flights from Canada and production of the artwork) on the understanding that these would be reimbursed and now she is left to deal with the administrators in an attempt to recoup her costs. At a time when the government is keen to promote self-employment and small businesses within the creative sector, it seems worryingly common for this group to suffer crippling financial losses when public programmes are mismanaged, even though the losses involved may appear trivial alongside the sums spent on capital expenditure, management and consultancy. The ambitious but troubled development by Peacock Visual Arts of a new Centre for Contemporary Arts in Aberdeen continues to run into difficulties as competing plans for its proposed new site have come to light. While feasibility studies continue, the organisation only has funds to run its programme of events until April. www.peacockvisualarts.com In contrast, and showing how successfully public galleries can be run, Sheffields Site Gallery is celebrating its 30th anniversary this

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