The art world can’t structurally be changed – too much money at stake.

Interviewee: Grant Kester

Kester: I don’t think that that the mainstream art world can really be changed at any deeper level: there is simply too much money at stake for the values that are propagated in that world to be really challenged. This doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been growing interest in various forms of socially engaged art practice over the last decade, although it’s usually presented in the neutered context of “social” art practice, since the concept of engagement or social change remains déclassé. At the same time, this has opened up access to institutional and discursive platforms that didn’t exist for engaged art in the 1980s. So there is some room to manoeuvre on the margins, but I don’t see any reason why the mainstream art world would ever offer unequivocal support for this work.