“Most artists can’t afford to be artists”, which inevitably leads to one of the eternal questions: how do you make art without a steady wage? How do you buy supplies, rent out a studio, pay rent and live/survive especially when the days of living on the dole and housing benefit are long gone? In Poor Artists by Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente (aka The White Pube) attempt to answer this question and many others - or maybe attempt to approach these questions (and some of the answers) in a less obvious way, “We see it as a series of interviews with ourselves and other people, told as a story”. It’s not a poor artists self-help manual (although, why not?), more a quest into the murky underworld of contemporary art in the company of Quest Talukdar and her adventures meeting anonymised people who work in the art world, including artists, Turner prize winners, art teachers, gallery owners. In the process revealing what goes on behind contemporary art’s facade. It’s a place where rich patrons and companies congregate, where a piece of art is an ‘acquisition’ and the artist just an appendage to be treated as a pet or a pest. It’s a place where more artists battle for less funding. Where the best art is ‘consumable art’. It’s a place of compromise and self-criticism - but, sometimes, it’s also a place where people collaborate and support each other and create because they need to scratch the creative itch. By the end of this great book, our hero, Quest, has come full circle, studio secure, the external noise pushed aside, art all important, “I wanted to use my hands. I wanted to get excited about the details. I wanted to stay offline. I wanted to get old. If galleries are where art goes to die, studios are very much alive; even though the world feel impossible, art is the only reason I’m still here too.” Poor Artists never had it so good. Totally recommended.

Poor Artists – by Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente (aka The White Pube) publ. by Particular Books - £20.00

Steven Long