Support structures for fast-burning fuels💨
Two recent articles approach the same question from different directions: how artistic practice is sustained under unequal, extractive and exhausting conditions.
My article, How to Throw Your Own Party: Peer Mentoring as Infrastructure (download the PDF for the full article), grew out of my work as an Artist Advisor at Artquest and decades of conversations with artists. It argues that peer support is not secondary to artistic practice but part of the infrastructure that makes it possible, long before recognition and institutions come into view. Rather than waiting to be discovered, artists need to create the conditions their work requires themselves, together with others. Throwing your own party is not a stepping-stone to mainstream recognition; it’s a familiar pattern of artists building the conditions that institutions recognise retroactively.
I stumbled on the second article when I opened a newsletter and saw my 25-year-old face staring back at me from Despina Zefkili’s Fast-burning fuels: field notes on the cultural production in Athens, a critical essay about the contradictory economies of contemporary art. It identifies the pressure to adapt one’s work to funding agendas, institutional expectations and the constraints of project-based production, and argues that small-scale, self-organised formats can become structures of solidarity, self-determination and negotiation.
The essay begins with the 1990s collective Σώμα Πολιτικό (Body Politic), of which I was a member. We spoke out against an art system that felt alien to us, and were later recognised as forerunners of artist collectives in Greece. Zefkili uses the different trajectories of the group’s members to reflect on a longer history of cultural production: expectation, disappearance, endurance, compromise, class, gender, and the costs of sustaining an art practice. She pauses on my work in the EMST collection, placing it within the essay’s broader question of what remains visible, what disappears, and how histories are written or left unwritten.
We diagnose many of the same problems: the instability of institutional support, the amount of unpaid labour absorbed by applications and open calls, the pressure to package oneself strategically, the opacity of selection and funding processes, the dominance of personal relationships, and the exhaustion produced by chasing visibility through systems of support that are partial, conditional and extractive.
What struck me most, despite Zefkili’s call for institutions to do better, is the shared rejection of the fantasy that institutions will solve this for us. The two texts converge in arguing for collective infrastructures built from below: peer networks, self-organised platforms, small-scale structures and lasting relations of solidarity that don’t just mimic official institutions. Both recognise that such structures are fragile, partial and under-resourced, but necessary.
I found this especially galvanising because it suggests that something may be shifting. I’ve been making this argument for decades, from my PhD to the co-operative art school project, and it feels like this line of thinking may be gaining traction. There is no shortage of institutional critique in contemporary art, but it is still relatively rare to encounter such a clear insistence on collective infrastructure as a material necessity.
These questions continue to shape my work this spring and beyond. They come up in Making a Buck Without Selling Out, the six-week online course I developed with Cristiana Bottigella, co-director of hARTslane. We created this course for artists who want to build a sustainable practice on their own terms. Across six sessions and one-to-one tutorials, we look at voice and visibility, sustainability, opportunity and self-care, as overlapping pressures that shape an artist’s practice. We’ll work through artist statements, proposals, websites, funding strategies, opportunities, boundaries and longer-term direction in a small group setting.
🖍️ hARTslane presents: Making a Buck Without Selling Out 🧰
22 April – 27 May 2026, Wednesdays, 18:00–20:30
£280 / £240 / £200, Online
Alongside this, Art + Critique continues as an extended space for critical and contextual study in art practice. The course brings together lectures, seminars, workshops, writing, peer feedback and tutorials in order to think through contemporary art in relation to its histories, theories, contradictions and conditions of production. It is designed for those who want to develop a line of inquiry, deepen their critical framework, and situate their work within broader artistic, social and political debates.
🍒 Art + Critique: Critical & Contextual Studies in Art Practice 🚀
13 October 2026 – 2 March 2027, Tuesdays 18:30-20:30 BST/GMT+1
£400 / £490 / £580, Online with hybrid off-site visits
For alumni of Art + Critique, there are a couple of ways to continue beyond the course. One is the After-school Art Club, our monthly peer-support group and members’ club developed collectively by its members. It grew out of conversations about how to continue after the course, and how to create an ongoing structure for discussion, peer review, workshops, research and professional development.
The other is Pollinator, a free virtual five-week residency of mutual support. It brings together practitioners across art, culture, technology and social impact for weekly roundtable conversations and a peer-coaching process designed to build trust, exchange and longer-term relational networks. A few Art + Critique alumni joined the first round last autumn and came back very enthusiastic about the quality of the conversations and the generosity of the group. Art + Critique is part of Pollinator’s network, and alumni can join via my invitation. If you have not received your invitation please get in touch with me.
🐝 Pollinator, a virtual residency for Art + Critique alumni✏️
Enrolment open until 6 April for Art + Critique alumni
Finally, I offer tailored one-to-one support for artists, curators, writers and others working in the arts, whether you’re developing your practice, tackling a specific project, or seeking ongoing mentorship. Book a free 15-min introductory chat to explore how I might support you.
🧿 Consultations, tutorials and mentorship✨
Free 15-min chat. Sessions: 60min (£60), 90min (£85), 120min (£110)
See you on the waves 🌊
