Doing the right things for the right reasons: Looking for authenticity in Punk and Stuckist practice

Abstract

My practice-based doctoral project, researched between 2006 and 2011, asked if the rapidly expanding art movement known as Stuckism had an approach that could be related to Punk 'attitude' in the late 1970s. As an active member of the Stuckists, I have had to engage with the same sense of iconoclastic hostility that played such an important role during my time as a Punk musician from 1977 to the present. Whilst Punk operated, first and foremost, in the context of popular music, Stuckism is a creature of the visual arts, a response to dominant trends amongst gallery and museum directors rather than an appeal to radicalized, media-oriented youth. I therefore built my methodological approach on the hope that the 'narrative turn' in contemporary social studies and cultural anthropology offered me a persuasive mechanism for capturing the ongoing development of my practice as a painter with Stuckist and Punk affiliations. As my creative activities have contributed to the idea of Stuckism, I explored how the narratives of identity that I associate with Punk attitude have helped form the identity of the group. I also believed, however, that my own personal experiences had relevance within a wider context, as I felt there was an opportunity to explain Punk attitude through Stuckist practice and vice versa. I had read a number of, what I felt were, misrepresentations of Punk attitude and experience; mostly this was because the practitioners themselves were often absent in these discussions. I wanted to put that right. As the conversations with these practitioners began to develop, the concept of authenticity became a major theme, and this ended up being a significant factor when investigating the link between Stuckism and Punk.