It's Autumn

Everything is changing but nothing is changing!

TLDR: I have been struggling with the fact that we all seem to be entering and perpetuating systems that we can see fundamentally do not work. Sometimes I feel crazy because I’m like…why are we persisting in institutions that we have clearly seen to be faulty.

I’m in London trying to get back into some kind of routine that is not centred around being on the internet or networking. In what has felt like my most adult year yet in terms of responsibilities, I’ve also been really loving the free will that comes with being a grown up that works for herself (kind of). I love that on weekends I can choose exactly how I want to spend my days and I can go to the farmers market and walk around the shops and go to dinner with my friends. But some days I really miss the pandemic. Of course I understand the anxiety and the devastation that it caused, but to be selfish for a moment, it’s also the only time I’ve had as an adult to actually think about and build my ideal future. I agonised over and wrote my first FF Projects business plan in the pandemic, I started seeing my therapist regularly, I took so many calls every single day, just asking people how they got to where they were in their careers. I cooked and baked from cookbooks I had forgotten I even owned. (I’ve probably opened a cookbook twice maximum in the four years since then). I would say my most consistent feeling as an adult is one of overstimulation, and there was a clarity in 2020 and 2021 that I constantly long for.

But I guess my point is that the pandemic could and should have marked a fundamental shift for us. I feel like we should have used those two years to take stock, figure out what systems worked and forged a new path forward. But instead, we literally went back to business. In the art world, the pandemic was the first time (to my knowledge) where big galleries were actually putting the prices of an artwork online. There was unprecedented transparency. PDF’s were flying around on Whatsapp, and people were actually buying. As we enter art fair season again, I wonder if we could have maybe gotten rid of at least 50% of the art calendar and found new and more interesting ways to connect art and audience.

I feel the same about fashion and retail too. Last week people kept asking me what fashion shows I was going to. And for me, I don’t understand how anyone is engaging in that whole circuit/circus 4 times a year. Are there no other ways to present clothes? Is the fashion show still relevant when it happens so frequently and often so uninspiringly?

Anyways, I previously touched on the fact that I felt like the art world was fundamentally broken and incredibly lopsided in favour of like 5 big galleries. And pretty much everyone else (that is not money-laundering) seems to be really struggling right now. Even the big guys apparently. But then people are just persisting with the same systems and hoping that something sticks. Frieze LA, Basel Hong Kong, Expo Chicago, Frieze NY, Basel Basel, Armory Show, Frieze Seoul, Frieze London, Basel Paris, Basel Miami. Now Basel Qatar. This is the art fair calendar that most galleries in the “Global North” are following. If they’re not participating in the main fairs, some might participate in satellite fairs that happen in these cities around the same time. Honestly writing that list tired me out, let alone all the costs, planning and logistics that go into it. I took some screenshots of an Artnet article about the costs to appear in Art Basel Miami.

Ever since I expressed an interest in working in art probably aged 20/21, I have been constantly been advised/urged to open a gallery. Obviously the past couple of years have been pretty bad, but if you asked me at 21, when I really had no clue what was going on, I would still have been like: this seems like a dumb system that’s not going to last for much longer. Yet, here we are. How do galleries still play such an important role? Why are artists not doing this themselves? Why are galleries spending thousands to appear at various art fairs all over the world? Does the quest for endless growth ever end? Am I the crazy one???

(I keep seeing Tiktoks and Reels about how statistically married women are the unhappiest group in the world. But then women keep getting married. Is it a hope that somehow you might be different? Am I the crazy one???)

I guess what I’m trying to say is that sometimes I feel like everything moves so fast and everyone is so obsessed with looking like they are moving forward, that they are not even stopping to consider what exactly they are moving forward into. The signs are all there, but people seem to be progressing through the world with their eyes closed. And I think that the space and time to consider that we had during the pandemic is long gone now. I don’t feel comfortable in this era of over-production, constant content, obsession with optimisation and growth, reverence for looking like you’re doing something rather than taking your time to actually do it.

I really wish for the clarity of mind to be able to build something that is actually representative of the world that it exists in. Or a better world even. I don’t want to blindly do things just because it’s the way things are done. And sometimes I feel crazy for feeling like that. So no, I am not opening a gallery. But I am constantly thinking about how to create the best format possible for me to exist in the commercial art world without engaging in this stale system.

But for today, I’m going to the farmer’s market now hoping that I will catch the last of the blackberries and then I’m going to Bottega to try on a jacket that I know I can’t afford.

I’ve been coming back to this photo again and again. My favourite photo I took last year on a crisp November day in the park. Feels like magic to me! Excited for seasons to change it means we’re alive