about Crunchtime
image: Civilisation part 1 © Grace Ndiritu 2007
About Crunchtime2010
Crunchtime2010 arose out of the credit crisis but goes beyond the immediate to offer a portrait of the world.
Exhibition work will be shown in our gallery spaces. Visiting artists will carry out special projects on the sites and streets of York.
For gallery and project locations go to programme page.
Extract from brief sent to artists: When I conceived of the idea of Crunchtime2010 I was thinking of the current financial crisis, consumerism and its effect on society and individual lives. Yet this is not the only issue facing human beings but rather the one currently occupying our attention – how to stimulate growth and get consumers spending and banks lending – this against a background of uncovered greed, financial mismanagement, credit, debt, lifestyle, climate change, celebrity and spectacle, poverty and inequality, rampant consumerism, fragmentation of society, globalisation, pollution etc. All of these are part of a whole that we as individuals try to piece together and make sense of. They represent a network of issues regarding world and societal organisation.
Asking for artists’ responses to the global issues is perhaps a shorthand for how we as artists view what’s going on, what strikes us, what interests us creatively and how we express our experience of living in all this. I was not asking for answers or for artists to tackle the whole thing but to work from the aspects that interest and inspire them. Requesting responses from artists from around the world also creates the possibility of sharing and exchange about life and conditions elsewhere.
The whole event is designed to offer a mirror to the issues we are all face in relation to ‘the how and why of living’. (Robert Hughes)
It’s a snapshot of voices contained in work engaging with how the world and living is at the present time. We also anticipate that this will not necessarily be gloomy but can also cover positives, compassionate responses and possibilities. What we’re after is meaningful, skilful, imaginative and worthwhile artwork in this time of upheaval. It might be oblique, direct, analytical, witty, warm, personal, an alternative world model, highlight important issues, be rooted in the past, be about a single life or everyone's!. We’re asking artists we think and feel about things and what’s going on, and working with their practices to make art.
Graham Martin, Curator, Crunchtime2010