George Vasey

Sassiness as an Artist-Led Strategy

You can also read this piece here on George Vasey’s website.

Picture a sassy person, and we might think of someone with a perfectly timed putdown — a charismatic somebody with the gift of the gab. They do the unexpected, verbalising what others won’t. Sassy is closely allied to words such as gall, audacious and nerve. Its original meaning, dating back to the 18th century, is a synonym for ‘talking back.’ The phrase implies temerity, a refusal to accept one’s lot. While sassiness is often ascribed to a person, I think it can also describe a collective approach or organisational value.

Take the artist-led gallery OUTPOST, which, in 2024, celebrates 20 years of programming. Situated in the centre of Norwich, the gallery has garnered a national reputation for supporting artists, writers, curators, academics, and other cultural workers, often at the start of their careers. OUTPOST’s organising principle has remained unchanged, relying on a cooperative committee model with a flattened hierarchy. Its approach differs from many artist-led spaces in that it presses the reset button every two years, with committee members serving for a limited time. The model is influenced by Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, allowing for a continuously evolving constituency. This temporary community enables fresh energy and ambition unencumbered by institutional memory. Each generation can talk back to this inimitable thing we call the art world, taking up space and redefining sass in their own image.  

I’m sure there are many words that spring to mind when OUTPOST’s expanded community think about the gallery but sassiness is the word that comes to my mind. The term has often been historically gendered and racialised, but its meaning has recently broadened. Sass conjures an impudent and sharply-witted figure. I think of it as a fundamentally disruptive strategy: interrupting monologue and disengaging dialogue. Sassiness takes up space and claims counter-authority when status is denied. It is often a strategy of the disempowered and iconoclastic. In talking back, sassy refutes the role of the subservient subject. Dandyism, sarcasm, the flamboyant and disjunctive, and the impolite are forms of sass that mess with codes and upend expectations to delegitimise or bypass authority. 

We can see examples of sassiness across artistic forms. When Gustave Courbet was refused entry to the academic salon, he put on an exhibition over the road with rejected artists. More recently, we can look to BANK’s caustic editorial put-downs of gallery press releases that poke fun at art world pretensions. Likewise, White Pube’s typo-laden phonetic memoir criticism offers an iconoclasm that bypasses traditional forms of editorial authority. In music, Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol in protest at his record company: all exemplary forms of sass. You catch my drift; sassy people disregard authority by making their own rules. They unapologetically take up space and claim something that wasn’t offered.

This sense of speaking back and claiming an artistic counter-authority is pervasive in the communitarian spirit of artist-led organisations such as OUTPOST. Being an artist (or an emerging curator or writer) can be incredibly disempowering as one waits for the support of gatekeepers for a breakthrough. I’m an artist-turned-curator and vividly recall the closed doors and unanswered emails that greeted me when starting out. Like others before me, I put shows on in my front room and volunteered in artist-led spaces to build my community. I may be introverted, but as my mum often said, shy bairns get nowt. Silence wasn’t really an option. As David W Marx succinctly writes, “Hustling is a virtuous necessity for those without capital; detachment is a privilege.” (Marx, W. David. 2024. Pg 245)

The exhibition ‘OUTPOST at 20’ celebrates OUTPOST’s 20-year anniversary. The show charts the gallery’s history through its archive, encompassing catalogues, installation shots, and press, accompanied by testimonies of former committee members and collaborators. Collectively, it paints a picture of collective hustle: an ever-changing community run on goodwill, pot noodles, beer, and ambition. Anyone who has worked in the cultural sector will also recognise the sheer amount of invisible physical, administrative, and emotional labour that goes into keeping the gallery doors open — made possible by long unpaid hours. Learning through doing and making something from scratch. This is characteristic of sassy methodology: making demands and taking things into your own hands.

Powered by a pipeline of new graduates from Norwich University of the Arts, OUTPOST’s programming remains impressive, balancing national visibility and local grassroots activities. It supports artists through its members’ open call, provides graduate pathways and offers early-career solo exhibitions to artists working nationally. Its membership show has often called on big-name selectors to bring additional glamour. This strategy was initially informed by EAST International, an annual open submission exhibition run by curator Lynda Morris until 2009, who also nurtured and supported OUTPOST in its early stages.

OUTPOST’s attitudinal sense – its ambition allied to a continued DIY ethos – has, I think, cultivated its success. Many people who have never visited the gallery will know OUTPOST. Its public profile has been shaped by its unique design philosophy initiated by Robert Filby. Think of OUTPOST, and custard yellow – or the index code #FBF696, specifically – comes to mind. Each project is accompanied by a bespoke typeface that spells out the artist’s name and title, helping carve out the gallery’s unique identity. Many have engaged with OUTPOST from afar, exploring exhibitions through the accompanying artist interviews that are synonymous with the gallery.  

OUTPOST’s name, a synonym for a remote place, allied to its physical distance – a two-hour train journey – from London adds much to its identity. Recasting the peripheral, regionalism becomes strategic, an idea as much as a place: a way of doing differently. The theorist Irit Rogoff once stated that there is ‘no position without a location’. In this sense, a location can be tangible or intangible. This ‘strategic regionalism’ (Ostrander, 2013, Vasey, 2016) bypasses dominant centres of cultural activity towards a form of ‘minor curating’ (Hunt, 2010) that ‘affirms the parochial’ and ‘stutters against the prevailing order of things.’ We can look to Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung’s ‘pidginized curating’, which further echoes this strategy from a decolonial perspective, calling for a curatorial vernacular that is regional, situated and resistant to canonical conventions. Sassiness, strategic regionalism, minor curating, and pidginization are characterised by a sense of intimacy, as well as grassroots and disruptive forms of engagement that work against the status offered by a dominant and institutional culture.

An intact medieval city, cheap (er) studios, and an ever-replenishing cultural community. Gatekeepers as willing artistic champions. A strong cultural lineage. Its peripheral status. Whatever it is, Norwich is more than a location; it is a resource and method; a model for being and doing in the minor key.  

When considering how we might do things differently, it is useful to consider what we’re setting ourselves up against. What exactly is at stake? Here, I think we can draw analogies between sassiness and Max Weber’s understanding of charismatic authority.

Put simply, the most traditional form of power is status, which one can be born into (through inherited wealth or social privilege) or occupy (through a job title). On the other hand, charisma is the ability to build rapport and influence through personality. It is the power of the upstart. We can also add community power into this mix, acting with others to create collective authority. While status is the most overt and traditional form of power, it is also the most vulnerable (you can tell people what to do, but it doesn’t mean they’ll do it). In this sense, charisma can effectively destabilise status.

Here we get to my main point: sassiness is a form of charismatic counter-authority that destabilises status, creating new values and innovative models. While status is power over someone, charisma and community are power with others. They offer ways to build fresh coalitions and solidarities where fresh artistic and social values can emerge.

This is the OUTPOST way: a collective form of charismatic sassiness that bypasses what is and thinks through what might be, taking up space, speaking back, creating networks, and doing things differently. Thinking through regionalism as a strategy.

In writing on OUTPOST, I speak from some personal experience, visiting the gallery and engaging with the programme over many years. It has been a rich resource for my research. I’ve worked with many artists who got their first break at OUTPOST and worked with and became friends with many of its former committee members, who are now scattered across the art world. My partner, Elinor Morgan, is a former committee member, and she talks fondly of her formative experiences at the gallery, rocking up to art world events with her “Norwich gang.”  

OUTPOST’s impressive alumni and legacy reaches much wider than its immediate artistic community, shaping the careers of many artists and cultural workers over the last 20 years. Encountering ‘OUTPOST at 20’ and witnessing the collective hustle, I’m reminded of what can be achieved by leaning into sassiness and bypassing traditional gatekeepers.

OUTPOST now operates in a curious space. At 20, it’s gained its own status, a ladder on many nascent careers. Former committee members have become directors and curators in some of the most prestigious UK institutions, and artist alumni have gained considerable success. OUTPOST’s impressive national stature, operating from a regional base on a shoestring budget and continued voluntary labour, is a testament to its ever-evolving but always prescient commitment to supporting untested talent.

While other artist-led spaces of the era, such as Grand Union (Birmingham), The NewBridge Projects (Newcastle), and KARST (Plymouth), have professionalised and formed traditional staffing structures, OUTPOST has remained volunteer-run, persistently pressing the reset button. It is a charismatic community that takes things that aren’t offered and speaks back to this strange thing we call the art world. It is an outpost as location and strategy. It continues to play the minor key when everyone else is playing major chords. Here is to the next 20 years. 

Bibliography:

-Marx, W. David. 2022. Status And Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change. New York: Viking Press.

- Hunt, Andrew (2010), ‘Minor curating?’, Journal of Visual Art Practice, 9:2, pp. 153–61.

-Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. 2023. ‘Pidginization as Curatorial Method 

Messing with Languages and Praxes of Curating’. London: Sternberg Press.

-Vasey, G & Willats, H (Issue 23. 2018) ‘Peripheries’, Art Licks.

-Howard, C (2013) ‘Towards a Strategic Regionalism’ https://www.in-terms-of.com/toward-a-strategic-regionalism/ Date accessed 4th June 2024.

- Ostrander, T (2014) ‘Presentations (on Strategic Regionalism)’ https://freshmilkbarbados.com/2014/04/11/fresh-milk-xiv-tobias-ostranders-presentation/ Date accessed 4thJune 2024.

OP at 20

By Gemma Spall

To have the chance to step back and take in the entity you’re a part of, something so discreetly huge, something which you’ve poured hours into and learned so much from in return, something you can never fully admire from within the hamster wheel itself, feels emotional. And up until now, to the point of being asked to write something for OUTPOST’s 20th birthday, I'd never really given myself the chance.

In 2020 I dropped out of an MA in Curation, a decision which left me feeling much like a failure. To compensate for the disappointment in myself and the university system, I started to look for art world experience elsewhere and began volunteering at OUTPOST as a member of the Steering Committee. I quickly came to realise that the postgrad education I had left behind could not come close to the authenticity and complexity of education I could access whilst volunteering at OUTPOST. 

Because OUTPOST, from the inside, looks much like life does: messy and raw. The continuous programme of exhibitions and events is relentless, and there often isn't time for the absolute perfection you may find in other public art spaces. Luckily for us, OUTPOST is also incredibly forgiving and I am grateful to have been allowed to grow, develop and make mistakes whilst working with so many brilliant artists and curators. So it’s thanks to OUTPOST and its chaos, community and art that my confidence (and faith in my life choices) returned.

                           ^^^

OUTPOST is made up of many parts. The cold, modest, sometimes spider-infested gallery containing a vibrant history of over 165 exhibitions and countless residencies, events, and happenings, sits tucked away on Wensum Street. Its treasure trove of a studio building houses over 80 artists (a significant portion of the cultural ecology in Norwich) further down the road in Anglia Square. And then there is the Steering Committee, a beautiful, ever-changing amalgamation of the most generous, dedicated people you will meet. People who give up their evenings and weekends to fight for creativity’s right to exist.

Once a member has completed their two year tenure they join a long history of cultural facilitators, making room for new experience-thirsty art-junkies to make their mark. And it’s within these individuals, in their memories of the laughter and the late nights, the booze runs, the ferrying of benches up and down Magdalen Road between exhibitions and events happening back to back between the studios and the gallery, that OUTPOST exists most compellingly. 

As I’m digging through old unidentified slides on the light box in this archival show, it’s clear how much of our history is lost. I’m transported to unknown moments from OUTPOST’s past, where I am left to create my own stories about the artists, facilitators, and all the relationships that have formed inbetween. I grieve all the undocumented tales, facts and figures, and hope that the keepers of these memories value them as much as I do mine.

My involvement on the committee spanned the COVID era, a time marked by uncertainty, gallery closures, and emergency online meetings. This period placed an uncomfortable strain on the committee, and the difficulty of recruiting new members meant that for much of the lockdown era just four volunteers were running the charity. This meant that keeping the organisation’s community spirit and momentum intact proved to be a challenge - I had been thrown in at the deep end. COVID could've killed OUTPOST and while it may have temporarily and drastically damaged its capacity we managed to keep it going. 

Now, on the other side, is what feels like a rebirth. It’s 2024 and we have a gallery crammed full of friends, both old and new. Sarah Horton, a member of OUTPOST’s 2004 founding committee and now a lecturer at Norwich University of the Arts, stands in the gallery sharing her memories and singing praises for the present describing this birthday show as elegant. She reminds us of the uniqueness and diversity of artist-led spaces but also the immense admin-heavy workload which comes with it. Of the under-praised volunteers who shoulder the burden of care for this organisation and have rebuilt an extraordinary and generative community.

She reminisces about the many brilliant art school graduates who have passed through these walls and muses on how OUTPOST crucially fills the gap in post-graduation support in Norwich. The studios allow practices to continue, and the various events and exhibitions offer opportunities for research, professional development, and networking. Undeniably, Steering Committeeship is much like an informal Graduate Scheme.

Now a Trustee, I still have a seat at the table, though no longer on the frontline. From this position, I observe with pride a Committee dedicated to equity, access, and inclusion. They ensure OUTPOST remains responsive and democratic. They move through the chaos of its constantly changing team gracefully, all whilst examining the structure of the organisation, challenging any outdated foundations. The strength of this rolling committee lies in the continuous change brought in by new perspectives. 

On the reading table, among numerous texts and publications pulled from the archives, is a conversation transcript between founding member Kaavous Clayton and artists Abbott and Barsby discussing their upcoming show, The Hot 60. The premise of this show is to exhibit 60 ideas that will potentially remain just that–ideas. Suggesting that the act of existing as an idea, as intent alone, is powerful enough. 

This birthday exhibition is also a melting pot of ideas. The iconic yellow posters each homage to an idea that was born into existence and nurtured by OUTPOST into something physical. Dozens of exhibitions that return to the gallery once more as an idea on a piece of paper - photographs, publications, interviews, posters - I am overwhelmed by the quantity of ideas in the room. It seems an accurate account of the human (read artist) condition; having many ideas and intents, but never enough time to realise them all. 

It’s OUTPOST's job to contribute to the unpicking of the countless ideas that reside in artists' minds, to tease some of them out, and to give them space to grow, stretch, and be presented for public digestion. In this room, countless ideas, risks and experiments have been hung, and in between each layer of paint, I can testify that these walls are fully and infinitely committed to the uncompromising presentation of contemporary art.