A SPECIAL COMMENT
Since our inception, Big RED & Shiny has always been created by artists as a way to discuss our local community and how it fits into a larger art world. Most of the people who contribute to this project are artists. Naturally, we don't always agree, we don't necessarily like the same things, and we certainly care about what happens here and want to encourage growth and positive change.
It is inevitable that an artist-run publication like ours will eventually find itself reviewing its own. In this issue you will find reviews of three artists who are, or have been, regular contributors to Big RED & Shiny. Two of the reviews were written by the publisher. As artists who are engaged by the work, we felt it important to discuss these pieces, based on the ideas raised by the work itself. In the same way that it would be wrong to cover shows based on the pressure of a gallery, it would be equally wrong to ignore a show because an artist also contributes to Big RED.
We have always tried to ensure a "separation of church and state" attitude regarding the dual roles of artist and contributor. At a fundamental level this would be impossible - our contributors are often the ones who propose pieces to us. Our content is submitted by artists and art-lovers choosing to write about what they find important. In fact, there would be no Big RED if the artists who contribute here are off limits; we want artists to engage with and challenge each other.
We keep a solid wall between ad sales and editorial decisions, and while we support all galleries in their efforts to support artists, ad sales are not a factor in choosing writers and pieces. We take advertising from galleries as a means to continue our work, but we did not start this project to be a mouthpiece for galleries.
Big RED is a place for artists to talk about art, so we take great pains to make sure that all artwork is treated equal, and all artists are given the same critical eye. The editors work hard to provide what readers demand: a critical approach to art that privileges ideas over hype, discourse over commerce.
