Arthur Roberts

Monument to the International Coffee Growers

No! longer can we stand the self glorification of dodgy portraits made in stone and marble, steel or concrete! Committees of patrons paying sunday painters handsome money to immortalise their idols or heroes. Karaoke art in our faces, playing the same dreadful tune every day on our streets. Art devised by committee, art by numbers, art on its knees! The art of the lowest common factor, safe art, froth. Fans and followers of pop stars or captains of industry share their passion with the populous by raising funds then running to the least passionate of sculptors who can formalise a recognisable likeness. It pays the mortgage! The streets are awash with this X-factor trite, the balance has tipped, we no longer think or contemplate art, we just recognise the celebrity and move on. The tourist industry needs, the business community needs, the appreciation society needs, the B list artist delivers for a decent wage and the public live to love the result. Better still find a B lister from abroad, recruit an army of volunteers and call him international and glory in his genius. Nice furnishing for the city which steers away from upsetting anyone's sensibility, formula for the masses. Honour our favourite son, build a likeness, commission a sculpture! Corporate patrons fuel the art of bad sculpture in partnership with local authorities canvassing the popular vote. See those sponsors and benefactors becoming judges, hear their arrogance of ignorance who then in turn fertilise the landscape with the average. Give the prize to the cohorts of the business men, let them hold the trophy and parade it in a thousand workshops. The balance and focus has switched to community art, nice art, that being art by consensus, art that pleases the sponsor, the local authority, the development company and the arts council.
Monument to the International Coffee Growers
Yes! The struggle must swing towards real achievement, glory in the true human spirit, celebrate the reaching, the searching the finding! Demonstrate that the individual workers make the wealth and establish systems and structures which enhance not exploit. Make these monuments stand proud to clearly illuminate our debt. Praise the pioneers, the campaigns and the makers. Take inspiration from the unfathomable fabric of nature, colour and light, the music of the universe, the structures of life itself. Challenge convention, stand proud and fight for a new language which penetrates deeper into our minds and souls. Let's learn from the past and construct a better fairer future. Make the art confident and allow it to fail spectacularly, see the accidents and glory in its unique achievements. Worship the heroics of the workers, the makers the doers, praise the invention and salute the visionaries. Abandon the tired effigies of heartless leadership and petty politics and project the big ideas that mankind can and will strive for. Turn our backs on the drab, protest at the conventional and refuse the mundane! From the waste and found make the art, symbolic coffee sticks can build the monuments to the growers. Monuments constructed throughout the world that reach to the clouds and scream for justice and equality! Let's fill our hearts with the poetry and music which unites, find and export our common threads, let's rise as one. From inner cities to remote mountain ranges build the temples of progress, inspire the future generations and lay the foundations to build a dynamic fair functioning world. Invest in the workers, make health and education our world priority, exchange and understand, share the wealth and promote equality.









Arthur Roberts
Monument
to the
International Coffee Growers
2009
Six Costa Coffee Sticks
Acrylic Paint
Painted Wood
Acrylic Box
H 24cm W 16cm D 16cm

www.oxfam.org
www.amnesty.org
www.greenpeace.org
www.maketradefair.com





The work explores imaginary synthetic environments which draws its inspiration from the machine, landscape, celestial skies and the microscopic world. This comibination fuses to create a new spiritual mix reflecting our time.

There is no running away from history; the ghosts of modernism are present within the evolution of abstraction. We take fragments from the past and build new horizons for tomorrow. The layers of paint are equal to the layers of time, which has travelled before us.

More than ever painting is relevant today within our high speed society, we crave a need for stillness, to wonder, to dream and drift in our universe of imagination'.