Moura: response to a question about audience....

From: Leonel Moura
Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2007 16:02:50 +0000

This is a good point.* Probably one of the reasons why our kind of art is not yet being shown in the Art scene derives from the fact that there are very few people among curators, critics and gallery owners with enough scientific background to understand the works. People don't like to promote what they don't comprehend. Its human... Anyway my experience tells that the public reception is quite enthusiastic. Hence is just a question of time.

LM

*Carnie wrote: I think there are potentially big audiences for this type of work, pieces generated by science art collaborations, but one of the issues is the strangle hold commercial galleries have to an extent over public galleries. There is a great deal of pressure on spaces to show artists with track records and commercial success. The ‘product’ rules in commercial spaces and private gallerists use public spaces to promote and legitimise artists they represent. This I believe holds back art which is in a sense research led, radical , is to big to sell or is in someway difficult to appreciate. Little of my own work has been shown in art galleries, I have however shown in the Science Museum London, the Design Museum Zurich, the Amnesty International Headquarters, London, the School of Tropical Medicine, London, the Natural History Museum, Rotterdam etc. These venues do provide large appreciative alternative audiences. The Wellcome Trust in London has done quite a lot to remedy this with it’s past showing space within the science museum and will do so more with its new gallery spaces to be opening over this summer in the Euston Road, London. The new drive for research in the arts in British Universities through the Arts and Humanities Research Council has also allowed more challenging work to be produced beyond commercial pressures, but showing such work is still difficult.