Art Licks Weekend 2018: Peripheries

About

For 2018, the Art Licks Weekend takes on the title, Peripheries, to explore how participating projects actively situate themselves on the edges of the art market and its structure as a way of establishing alternative creative working systems and new possibilities of access.

Within the last year, the effects of increased economic pressure have become more apparent as small galleries have closed, funding opportunities shrunk, and artists moved to other cities to balance studio and living costs. What is the alternative?, has become an ever-more urgent question.

Art Licks Weekend: Peripheries will consider how grassroots spaces and projects are addressing this with an alternative art economy, based on collaboration, friendship, support, exchange and care. For this year, we have moved our dates to coincide with Frieze – London’s annual core commercial art activity – so as to better contrast, discuss and positively address current central structures. As an alternative to competitive object-based narratives, Art Licks Weekend: Peripheries supports the development of immaterial practices and projects, with a focus on care and exchange.

We are opening up the festival to include the voices of further projects from cities across the country. Projects from regional cities can apply for 2018; whilst a special issue of Art Licks magazine will be launched that will invite spaces outside of London to articulate their position and approach to these topics.

Alongside this, Art Licks will organise a series of events for participants in the lead-up to October, to give time and space for those taking part to discuss shared concerns and methods, and to build on the support structure that the festival model creates.