Talking to the Taxman about Poetry

We fill out forms to make art. We navigate rubrics to quantify results. We tick tick tick boxes - ⬀Competent ⬀Not Yet Competent. 

We balance the desire to make relevant objects with just trying to make a living. We’re in debt. We’re balancing creative lives and aspirations as educators with urgent emails, parenting, mortgages, meetings and micromanagement with colour, ideas and intuition. We want to make works with meaningful relationships to the world around us.  We come to terms with the necessities of living and dealing with bureaucracy and compromise. As creatives, we voice our concern with how these priorities, agendas, and buzzwords affect us all.

We took the title of Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky’s poem- ‘Talking with the Taxman about Poetry’, written in 1926, which was a critique of the Soviet ‘New Economic Policy’ (this has a current, familiar ring to it!), as an inspirational starting point. The works aim to respond to the sensibility stated by the poem through the use of a range in materials, styles, subject matter, and techniques.

The exhibitors are practicing artists and members of CIT staff, Visual Arts and Design. As a cohort, we endeavour to have a group show every two years to collaboratively express ourselves in a meaningful way.

Image: Lars Wetselaar, Survey, 2017, Lead, 347 x 506 mm

Photography credit: David Appleton

Updated:  9 September 2017/Responsible Officer:  Head of School/Page Contact:  CASS Marketing & Communications