It is no mystery that the realm of gallery art is elitist.
Indeed, the curated spaces of privileged artists and hyper-intellectualized concepts have always been inaccessible to marginalized communities and those who have not been “art-educated”. This inaccessibility to art has been further exacerbated in life during the pandemic.
Whilst pretentious gallery spaces (otherwise known as ‘closed-door art soirees’) have had their doors sealed to the public during COVID-19, mainstream mediums of entertainment have been galvanized. The physical accessibility to films, TV series, games, music and books are almost immediate, the intellectual accessibility to ideas and language is much more approachable, and the representation of the underrepresented – though there is still space for improvement – is far better in these mainstream mediums than in gallery art.
Some galleries have tried following in their footsteps. Their attempts at diversifying art and creating an online-viewing format, however, has been incredibly short-lived.
As society begins to ease into a new normal, art galleries are resorting back to their normal protocol. Needless to mention, they have failed to be more consistently and non-performatively inclusive of marginalized artists and art-viewers. But as well as this, galleries have also failed to account for the health-compromised, disabled, or even just the generally anxious person, who may not feel that gallery visits are entirely plausible right now.
London-based Guts Gallery is a leading example of how the art world may be alternatively re-imagined. After having experienced a sense of isolation from art spaces, the founder, Ellie Pennick, resolved to create a platform that would accommodate those who are often neglected.
Most recently, Pennick has been finding ways of navigating the artworld amidst the pandemic in a way that is forward-thinking, inclusive and accessible to all.
Their exhibitions ‘When S*** Hits the Fan’ and ‘Begin Again’ have thoughtfully and creatively explored art-viewing in the digital sphere. By hosting the exhibitions with set dates and times for people to “visit”, as well as providing the opportunity to respond to the artworks via a commenting section, Guts Gallery provides the sense of social space and interactivity that one would usually get during a real-life gallery viewing.
There are certainly downsides to virtual viewing. The visuospatial interaction between the artwork and the environment, the sense of form, the way that sound and lighting feed into the artwork, the sense of scale, and the quiet hum of people murmuring and walking around the gallery space all add a richness to the viewing. For a snobbish art critic, these features of in-person viewing are perhaps unforgeable.
To the average person, however, fancy art jargon about spatiality, scale, and form are merely gatekeepers that shut them out from enjoying art for art’s sake; it is just another way of making art an exclusive club for the privileged.
Guts Gallery’s new digital layout has rendered art as more akin to entertainment, rather than as an intellectual playground for the elite. This distance from intellectualism does not indicate a devaluation of art. Instead, this new format of experiencing art has removed art from its pedestal of pompous prestigiousness, and has piqued the curiosity of those who may not have been ordinarily interested in the exclusive world of “high art”.
By pioneering a new way of interacting with art, it seems that for once, the landscape of art-viewing is broadening out into a more hopeful and welcoming space, rather than becoming more contrived and elitist as galleries are sadly known to be.
