Adele Beattie Art

Focusing on the state of our society today and our general ignorance to other human beings as individuals, Adele Beattie created ‘Planet Earth Complaints Department’ in 2008 in which the public were invited to write their complaints about the world to her anonymously. She acts as a mediator, making the writings into pieces of art.

Her work always involves some element of public participation and it is from the project ‘Fear’ in 2007/8 that this interest has evolved.

Artist or Curator?

Article by Lillian Innes

‘Planet Earth Complaints Department’; a place where you send your complaints about the world or anything and as if by magic, they are turned into art. Far Fetched? Apparently not.

The Artist Adele Beattie has set up this project to facilitate the public with a way of breaking through the barriers of the art world to freely express the small, whining artist in all of us. The complaints are turned into a [twice yearly] book and a video is made of the complaints being ‘released’ onto a body of water. But where does the art happen? What is it about this project that does not make it simply a social experiment?

The whole idea of public art has been around for a while now, as we see in the work of Roxanne Permar and Susan Timmins who collaborated with the public to create a notion of exchange and making things precious in their project ‘Domestic Dialogues’. This is a similar story. The complaints are collected from the public, at the public’s own pace, and then turned into these precious little glimpses into people’s minds. They are still essentially just people ranting. The kind that your mother will ring you to tell you or that fall upon deaf ears on a cold Monday morning back at work, but by suddenly appearing in a gallery, in the hands of an artist, they become art.

In an interview with James Bettaney, Beattie explains that ‘anybody should be able to create art and appreciate it…I want to create art with the public so that they are more enticed by it’. This statement implies that the public do not go and look at art or understand it as art has become so over run with complicated conceptualisation, and I do not disagree. When speaking to relatives about art I find myself having to almost ‘dumb it down’ so they do not feel so frightened and disheartened by it, because they feel that there is no way that they can understand it. So, in this way, Beattie’s work is successful. She shows the public that essentially the most important concept is the one that the viewer can see. If this differs to that of the artist who created the piece, how good can it really be? ‘Planet Earth Complaints Department’ really does leave it up to the viewer to make their own decisions but all the piece is deeply concerned with is getting people back into galleries. It is not about people spending vast amounts of money on it (certainly not as it is all currently consists of a book available for £20) and it is not about big, complicated meanings other than to get people back into art and to make the viewers see that without them, there really can’t be any art.

However, whilst all this is going on and the public are joining in, feeling free to take part in art and interact, we forget what the artist is actually doing. As far as I can see, there isn’t much more than curation happening on Beattie’s behalf. Is she just playing on the naivety of the public and getting by not doing any work at all? It may seem this way at first. Take, for example, Frank Warren’s ‘Post Secret’ books. They started off with just one man offering up an address for people to write their secrets to and now it has become almost like a craze. If you open one of his books you see page upon page of people’s art, yet no visual input by him. It is the thought behind it that counts. As you read through each person’s ‘secret’, you begin to find yourself amongst them, with your own secrets jumping up to the front of your brain, allowing you to feel released by the fact that someone has told it for you. It is the same with the complaints. There are all sorts of complaints in the book, and they all look completely different. And like ‘Post Secret’, you can place yourself amongst the complaints of others when reading through. But these are things that people don’t want to listen to. It is in human nature to want to know or tell something you can’t. This is why ‘Post Secret’ is selling millions of copies all over the world and to art snobs is not considered art. But with complaints, you will not find anyone listen to them. People feel like they can’t complain, especially in Britain, because nothing will come of it, if anything, negative things will happen. This is why it is so interesting. We need to be able to release the complaints that your friends are tired of hearing or that are simply too touchy to bring up in conversation. And this is where it happens-Planet Earth Complaints Department.

Basically, it is up to you. If you are looking for a way to get into art then perhaps this is for you. But what I will say on a personal level is that it has opened my mind to what art really is. I no longer am interested in all of this overcomplicated conceptualisation. I want to know what the piece is doing for me. How do I feel? How is this going to stick in my head? And will, most of all, it live up to its meanings. I hope this one does.

‘Planet Earth Complaints Department-Edition One’ is available at http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/635999

The Face behind ‘Planet Earth Complaints Department’.

 James Bettaney interviewing Adele Beattie

September 2009

JB- Adele Beattie is an artist and she is producing work at the moment that engages the viewer because technically, it is all the viewers’ creation. Fundamentally her piece titled ‘Planet Earth Complaints Department’ is based on receiving letters, the basis of which are complaints. People write to her with their various complaints and there is no set limit or boundaries other than that it must be handwritten. With these individual pieces of ‘art’  she has very recently turned them all into a catalogue which is working with the idea that it would go back out to the viewer and then opened up to the public for everyone to look at and examine these anonymous letters.

I’m just going to ask you some questions, pretty straight forward, OK, so can we talk briefly about our art work? What is it and what is it about?

AB- Bringing the art world to the public. Rather than waiting for art people to come to the galleries. I want people to feel free to come and do art. Anybody should be able to create art and to appreciate it. People these days probably think, ‘oh, no I can’t go and view that because I won’t understand what is in there’. But I want to create art with the public so that they are more enticed by it, so they can come into a gallery and think’ Wow, I’ve done that, that’s me there!’

JB- And what kind of elements put that work together? What goes into that in terms of how you do this? How do you get people to get involved with what you are doing? Is there a certain theme or pattern that you follow? Have you found that there is a re-occurring theme with the viewers?

AB- Ha-ha, yes, I have found that it is incredibly difficult to get the viewer to join and collaborate with you! Because people aren’t willing to do something that they feel they don’t have time to do or that they can’t be bothered to do. And that is the harsh truth. I just have to find something that people are willing to do on a day-to-day basis, or something absolutely fantastic!

JB- Can you tell me how things come to be, from mind to finished product?

AB- Honestly, it just crops up into my head. I take more inspiration from life and the things I do and like rather than other artists. For example, for ‘Planet Earth Complaints Department’ I got the idea from working in a call centre. I was sat there, bored out of my skull and I thought ‘wouldn’t it be good to do something with all these complaints’. I think that art is personal and that is another reason that I do this with the public. I want them to feel comfortable, and get to know a little about me before they write to me. In our studio, we are comfortable; we talk to the other artists around us because we know something about them and their art. It is natural; you are more comfortable talking to someone if you know something about them.

 JB- So you would like to get to know your viewers personally?

AB- I don’t need to know them, they are sending me all I need to know about them, little snippets of themselves. I feel that they would feel more comfortable if they knew something about me. They need to feel that they can trust me.

JB- I believe that you have a video planned? Would you like to go into detail about that?

AB- Well, if I start back to what my project is about, you pretty much covered it but the basis behind it is the fact that these things are personal, I’m entrusting the viewer to collaborate with me and send me their complaints. They are sent to me personally, they are handwritten, they are real peoples personal views about things and are being sent to me just the same as you would complain to a company etc. They are going nowhere. These People don’t know who they are coming to. They do not know what is going to happen with them. It is about the idea that your complaints are being ‘lost in the system’. It is this thought process that leads me to turn the complaints into paper boats and they are floated down the canal. It is a way of showing that they are just going round and round in a system, like the monotony of life. Each one is completely different but are all stuck in the same rut, just here to make their point and move on. That is what the video is about.

JB- So really, you are dealing with themes of working with a person as an individual?

AB- Yes, definitely. Even though I am expressing the fact that we are essentially all the same, in the same world for the same reason, I am also highlighting the differences we have, that is shown more in the book I will be creating. In terms of the paper boats, yes, there is individuality there as well. For example, all the letters come to me on different sizes of paper therefore making each boat different in simple ways that you wouldn’t generally notice.

JB- That is really interesting, not something I had picked up on whilst looking at your work before. OK, so last question. Where can you see your art going in terms of your practice?

AB- Well, Planet Earth Complaints Department will be ongoing and I think that it will take its own way. Because I am depending on using the public and other people to collaborate with me so it can be quite a slow process so it has to be ongoing. I have a lot of different plans to do with advertising and how I would display the pieces that are yet to emerge but I am hoping that more and more people would get involved and perhaps one day create some sort of global piece of travelling art.