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FEB 27 - Poor Artists: The White Pube in conversation with Fran Disley

FEB 27 - Poor Artists: The White Pube in conversation with Fran Disley

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Thursday February 27th
Bluecoat Arts Centre
6-8pm

Why make art? Faced with a capitalist system that has turned art into artwork and creative expression into cut-throat competition, why do so many artists try anyway?

THE WHITE PUBE are Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad - online firebrand art critics with a decade's experience of holding the art world to account on issues such as class diversity and institutional racism, while pioneering a singular approach to writing about art and creativity. 

POOR ARTISTS is their first book, a novel which also functions as a guidebook to the structurally-fucked inequalities and absurdities of the contemporary art world. Both wildly funny and deeply depressing, it is an urgent and important read for anyone connected to the creative industries or frustrated by the political and social hellscape of 2025.

Following aspiring artist Quest Talukdar from childhood obsessions, gallery visits and school art lessons towards her professional debut, POOR ARTISTS is a surreal odyssey through a fun-house reflection of the art world, taking in sentient mountains of discarded artworks, artists who live in disappearing magical castles and flesh-eating gallerists. Quest learns profound truths about money and power, and must decide whether she cares more about success or staying true to herself.

Blending imaginative storytelling with dialogue from anonymized interviews with real people in the art world who have all had to wrestle with the same decisions – including a Turner Prize winner or two, a few ghosts, a Venice Biennale fraudster and a communist messiah – POOR ARTISTS is a powerful testimony to the emotional, existential and financial experience of artists today.

Frances Disley is a multidisciplinary artist based in Liverpool with a practice that spans sculpture, participation, performance and installation. In collaboration with others (plants, trees and people) she uses her practice as a vehicle to explore networks of solidarity and mutual support.

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