ART, WHATEVER IT TAKES

Since the early pandemic in 2020, Rome Art Program has conducted a series of interviews, “Art, Whatever It Takes.”
Artists, Art Critics, and Art Historians living in Italy, the U.S., and U.K., share their insights during these powerful times.

Interview with Veronica Vossen

Veronica Vossen works between London and NW Scotland. She gained a doctorate in Fine Art & works with lens-based still & moving image in Art-Ecology context.  Veronica has exhibited in London & across the UK, often in site-specific locations & Science/Art collaborative projects at e.g. King’s College London, Univ College London.

RomeArtProgram: What is your definition of “Art” today?

Veronica Vossen: Art is creative thinking and response to the world around us. It must communicate, Its content addresses issues of contemporary concern, within the wider historical context and challenges preconceived tropes.

RAP: Art is dynamic and regenerates itself… how does it change, and how did it change us?

Veronica: Artists absorb and work not only within a cultural context but also within a social, historical, economic and political continuum of development and change. Art is a communicator of its time, of ideas, concerns, attitudes, values, cooperations and conflicts and therefore speaks to the present and the future. All forms of cognitive and creative production makes sense and makes meaning of some aspect of our individual and universal experience to engage and influence an audience.

RAP: When (and how) did you understand that art was becoming very important in your life?

Veronica: My father was a great photographer, capturing colour, light, form & texture of natural & man-made world, played back to us on slide shows he projected. This embedded in me a form of reflective visual awareness, absorbing visual impressions and ideas through focused examination of the world around. Increasingly, in teenage years, I found that the processes of art making and writing enabled me to make meaning for myself of the world around me.

RAP: What role does art play today? What are the “great figures” who have recently changed it? Do you feel close to any of these figures?

Veronica: Art today addresses contemporary experience and issues from the personal to the collective to the global. It is a creative tool for research, realisation, and communication. I find that art that is enquiring and activist in conception and practice, whatever the medium and processes, creates narratives to more fully engages our contemporary world I find Oliafur Erisson a great inspiration, in both the focus on current urgent ecological issues, the innovative structure of his studio’s work practices, and the elegant force of his exhibited work.

RAP: Are there still traditional figures such as collectors, muses, mecenate and patrons, in today’s art and society interaction model?

Veronica: All of these roles still exist today, although the concept of “a muse”, almost always designated as female, harks back to the dominance of the “male gaze” & seems unproductive and exclusionary as a concept today. Sponsorship through representation and funding is valuable. Art as a commodified object for “the market” however, often distorts the present day artworld with flawed values.

RAP: How have the new technologies and media culture changed art today, improving or worsening it…? What do you feel are your biggest challenges?

Veronica: Creativity, thought and imagination in art are constants. However, we now have an abundance of new tools to explore the past and present, to enable productive research and intercommunication of ideas. New technologies also introduce more diverse strategies, media and processes for artists to produce, exhibit and communicate their art. The ability to communicate and experience visual art across a global platform has immensely transformed the creative world. I’m interested in the possibilities of AR and VR, introducing new ways of accessing and experiencing creative productions, such as virtual immersive installations. The problematics are access and high costs of technologically complex media.

RAP: Art as a mirror of man, in this moment of emergency seems to be shattered …what do these fragments reflect now?… Shadow or light of the moment?

Veronica: RAP: Art as a mirror of man, in this moment of emergency seems to be shattered …what do these fragments reflect now?… Shadow or light of the moment?

RAP: [Insert interview question hereRAP: Understanding, interpreting, and then possibly judging the work of art; which is the right path when we are in front of a piece of art?

Veronica: Separate interpretation from judgement. One can experience an immediate inspirational, thoughtful, re-active or even visceral response. However knowledge of, and openness to, the artist’s context and intentions illuminates further, enabling a deeper engagement with the work.

RAP: Which is the real role of Academies and Art schools today? What can artists learn from these institutions today?

Veronica: These give time, resources and space to more intensively explore, experiment, discuss, learn and practice. They provide social starting points to building productive creative communities and networks. Increasingly art schools include development of professional practice, as opportunities proliferate for residencies, exhibitions, research competitions, workshops, community projects etc.

RAP: Art too has undergone a complex process of globalization; can having an authentic and genuine style be an advantage or a drag for an artist?

Veronica: Globalisation has shaken up previous exclusionary conventions, opening up an abundance of perspectives, styles and practices in contemporary art. Authentic individual style gives a genuine communication of diverse identity, experience and concerns.

RAP: How do Art Galleries and Museums position themselves today, and, in your opinion, how should they?

Veronica: The role of curator of exhibitions and collections has become more dominant and influential in the last few decades, with added development of the artist-as-curator role. Galleries and museums become centres not only of cultural discourse, but also of diverse social and political dialogues with art as a lens of its time, spaces where artists and the public engage. In recent decades, there has been a drive, certainly in publicly funded organisations, for productive engagement with a wider public, with the young, with diverse communities, that brings art and creativity more effectively into the public arena increasingly accessible to all.

RAP: “Figuration” vs “Abstraction”: which of the two is better descriptive of the period we live in? Which one will have a better future?

Veronica: These are not dichotomous; they are interwoven aspects of the visual.

RAP: Today we often speak of “emerging artists”; what advice based on your experience do you feel you can give to young artists?

Veronica: Emerging artists are not only the young. As well as developing your practice, develop genuine networks. (?nth number of Instagram connections is not a network). These are individuals and groups that you can have genuine dialogues about your work and its concerns, building productive partnerships to work, exhibit and communicate.

RAP: Art as a lens for reading the present, can it modify the space and time we pass through? …will art save us?

Veronica: Art is a creative and imaginative dialogue communicating to others and back to ourselves. Along with many other forms of productive engagement, if we are concerned with the world and to actively make changes for the better, art can be an agent for change and an expression of that change.

instagram.com/veronica.vossen/