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In 2002 Static undertook EXIT REVIEW, a deceptively simple project to provide every graduating fine art student with a review of their final degree show. EXIT REVIEW developed in response to the difficulties art students encounter as they move from art school to life beyond college. Art school protects students from realities of artistic practice, providing them with space to develop a visual language. While this space may be critically important to artist’s development, if we are to believe that context is half the work, then art student’s college work is incomplete as its engagement with the world is not yet considered. As a consequence, intelligent art students make art for art school. To address this situation EXIT REVIEW attempted to force reality on art students by exposing their work to scrutiny and public evaluation, in the hope of compressing their learning about how they want to practice and to recognise how their work may be constructed in the public realm through the words and opinions of others. EXIT REVIEW was also an attempt to accelerate the usual pecking order of who gets reviewed and has access to systems of visibility. EXIT REVIEW also explored the forms and languages of criticism and hierarchies of opinion.

EXIT REVIEW responded specifically to the context of Liverpool with its awkward relationships between art colleges and art institutions, and its worries about graduate flight. After considering the infrastructure of Cork and the aims of Cork Caucus, Static intends to applied the structure of EXIT REVIEW to Cork. Cork’s visual arts infrastructure is small and, like Liverpool, it seems that the art school, the Crawford, is seen as detached from the art institutions in the city and perhaps lagging behind current debate. Cork Caucus aimed to ‘provide something that will make a long-term contribution to the development of an artistic community’. While artistic communities are not fuelled solely by artists, it is important that the artists involved are active, critical and confident so that they can draw in others and put their abilities to work in the wider environment. Therefore it is vital that the art school plays its part in a critical culture, and its student’s are equipped to be critical, receive criticism and to understand the power of thinking critically. EXIT Cork is a tool to exacerbate the development of a critical environment.

EXIT Cork commissioned 14 reviewers to provide an average of ten reviews each of the student’s degree shows, so each student would receive 2 reviews. The invited reviewers are those who lead Cork’s visual arts infrastructure, in addition to a number of ‘outsiders’ through which ‘internal’ and ‘external’ opinion can be compared. By commissioning reviewers in Cork to review Cork’s art school EXIT Cork recognises and maximises Cork’s expertise, in addition to fostering the understanding that all players in Cork’s infrastructure are responsible for the generation of a critical culture.

Contrary to many of the projects within Cork Caucus, EXIT Cork adopts a conventional hierarchical structure with those with expertise operating powers of distinction over those with less. However, as in EXIT REVIEW the reviewers are perhaps under more pressure than the recipients as their abilities of communication are put to the test. Static believes that, rather than positing faux or utopian models of equality, honest reflection of inequalities may enable greater change. As a consequence Static considers that EXIT Cork may generate far reaching positive effect on the culture of Cork.

Links: http://www.corkcaucus.org/