Art of Survival conversation (continued from Ella Gibbs’s page)
Sean Parfitt: For me it’s about surviving as an artist and playing those games and how that becomes interesting in itself. For me, it’s not a strategy for living because, deep down, I knew the nature of the job when I decided to be an artist. I knew there was no money in it, and the reality is, I could actually go and get a job where I could live fairly comfortably. But this is my decision.
Alasdair Hopwood: I think that’s why all of us have come to these similar
conclusions where you start to make work that’s about that process. And as Paula says, all of us have probably had that reaction where our life is our work. You then start to make work out of that process, that process of living and trying to make ends meet.
SP: But we’re in the luxurious position where we have that choice to make.
AH: So you’re describing a Ranulph Fiennes model whereby someone from a moneyed background took themselves into a situation after suddenly thinking “this is what I’m going to do.”
SP: For Ranulph Fiennes, who walked to the Arctic, it was about an endpoint, but what the public glean from his journeys are the books and everything that describes his situation.
Sophie Hope: What’s interesting for people who take these adventurous
journeys is the way they can survive financially by selling the stories. The
documentation, the photographs, the stories that they can tell when they come back alive will fund the next trip.
Barry Sykes: Then everyone else enjoys the vicarious survival situations, through which they might learn tactics for their own survival or from the admiration of the human sprit, but at the same time you’re passing the buck to someone else. There’s some one else doing it for us, there’s another box ticked for the human race and we can actually sit back and read the stories. He can do his adventure and funds it by writing a story for people who can read about but will never actually do it.
(continues on Barry Sykes’s and Sean Parfitt’s page)


Alasdair Hopwood's practice deconstructs cultures of display, the role/image of the artist, and populist notions of accessibility. These broad interests have been expressed through writing, curating, administering, and producing exhibitions as well as through more conventional studio-based activities. He has exhibited widely in the U.K. and is currently Arts Editor of sleazenation magazine.