ART LICKS comes from London and is new in our shop. It's a beautiful independent print. We asked editor Holly Willats a few questions about her magazine.
How would you describe your magazine?
The Art Licks magazine was founded in October
2010, and is a quarterly magazine that features writing and work by emerging
artists, curators, galleries, project spaces and collectives. Art Licks is not
written about these people – it is written by them.
Art Licks is a discursive space for the voice
of artists and curators to sound out new and experimental ideas and projects,
offering support to young creative people and new spaces at a critical point in
their career whilst giving the reader a personal insight in to the emerging
arts scene.
This personal insight and decision to focus on
emerging talent all makes for a new consciousness.
What inspired you to start a magazine?
In the
UK, the arts have taken quite a beating from the current economic climate, and
the new government. There is a lack of funding and support for young artists,
curators, and non-profit making organisations and project spaces. This is very
disheartening when you consider this young emerging scene is the next
generation of art opinion-formers in the UK. However, they are just getting
things done on their own initiative - setting spaces and projects up themselves
and getting by on very little funding, if any. I find this, not only really inspiring,
but also very exciting; these individuals don't have any ties so there is no
false agenda to please funders- they are running these spaces purely out of
their interests and, not wanting to sound clichéd, but their passion.
This
really inspires me and I think it is very important to support these young creative
individuals and new spaces– so I set the magazine up as a
way to invite these
young artists, curators, and gallerists to write about their work and ‘spread
the word’ whilst also making this information more accessible to a wider
readership.
Why did you choose the format of a magazine over
publishing on the internet?
The Art
Licks website was launched in January 2010. We then started the tours and
magazine a little later, both in September 2010. We had tried publishing
writing online by inviting artists and curators, but I just had a gut feeling
it wasn't working. Oddly enough, and people may disagree with me here, but I
actually found working with writing online quite limiting. People's attention
span for reading online is very low, and the texts were often quite long. You
are also stuck with fitting something to a screen, and so on. So we stopped
that, and mulled it over for a bit and then decided that the printed magazine
was the best way to go.
The
magazine complements the website and vice versa. The website is very much about
delivering information on exhibitions with its weekly listing, and so is not so
detailed. However, the magazine is about starting a dialogue with people, with
the space and time in which to do so.
People
seem to feel that print has had its day, and it's all about being online now.
But I think there is still a lot to be done with print, and to experiment with.
In my opinion, it's not exhausted.
What are your plans for the future with Art
Licks?
I’m very excited for October as we are holding
a two-year anniversary event for the magazine at the ICA. I’ve invited all the
contributors over the last nine issues to get involved – some are showing work,
some are performing, reading, showing films, DJing…It’s going to be a fantastic
event and a great opportunity to get everyone together.
That’s the near future – we have some other
plans for next year, so watch this space.
