Introduction
The Torpoint Art Service has emerged out of the context of UK austerity with a new vision for how radical art practice can operate today. The aim is to fuse anticapitalist discourse and art practice through the unlikely medium of 'plein air painting' to create an art strategy based around the idea of 'breakage'.
The project is founded on three key ideas:
1) a desire to break from capitalism
2) to make a conceptual, theoretical and aesthetic break with the notion of the contemporary
3) to mark the shift in global political reality we have witnessed due to the financial crisis - austerity politics in contrast to the rampant expansion of neoliberal capitalism of the recent past.
We put out a call for applicants interested in radical art to undertake a six month programme of plein air painting. Applicants were asked to submitt a proposal in the form of a limerick and after careful consideration the Torpoint based artist John Maclean was selected for his limerick entitled "Don't Stop Believing":
From two thousand eleven sprout many last straws
Hands of the powerful went for the jugular hands of the people searched for the doors
Austerity beacons attract vampires like a lamp does moth
I propose to start again from Vincent Van Gogh
John worked as an artist and researcher in Newcastle University for many years before moving to Torpoint in 2012 where he lives on a houseboat moored at Carbielle Wharf.
The Torpoint Art Service is funded for a six month period during which John has agreed to produce plein air paintings in Torpoint and surrounding area (limited to a 1 mile radius around Torpoint). Each painting is to be accompanied by a work log text which John will send to the Torpoint Art Service, along with photographic documentation, for display, commentary and analysis on the TAS website.
The Torpoint Art Service is funded by I.D.S