Anthony Gross
"Goldsmiths very much created a culture of self-organisation, with myself and friends organising our own shows."
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"I had always wanted to come here since finding out about Jon Thompson and then being impressed by a later generation including Brian Griffiths, Gary Webb and others from that time. Goldsmiths clearly allowed me direct access into the London scene at that time. Goldsmiths very much created a culture of self-organisation, with myself and friends organising our own shows. I really valued that there were no specific departments such as painting and sculpture, etc. This is fundamental as fine art has for me such a wide range, for example from the digital to architecture. The personal network of friends and collaborators that the course created for me was the most important aspect. I found myself forming a close bond with fellow Goldsmiths art students that still exists today as all our careers evolve side by side. This has been the most valuable aspect of Goldsmiths for me. Working with this supportive network of piers I started temporarycontemporary with another alumni, Jen Wu. As a response to a perceived lack of an alternative scene it went on to produce over two dozen exhibitions locally, inviting artists and curators, and expanding the networks globally. This yielded projects in most of the London Institutions (see 'Event Horizon, GSK, Royal Academy) and two new venues near Goldsmiths. The Old Police Station is a space for student graduates to try out their first exhibition proposals and to find post-college workspace. This on-going project hopes to support Goldsmiths students as well as other colleges in London. Thinking about what could form a full range of art activity in the area led to creating Enclave nearby in Deptford, which creates a semi-professional and professional internationally accessible art gallery context for Deptford. It is designed to provide the missing link in an artist's professional development, with white cube spaces, curated gallery programmes, hopefully a residency space and so on into the future. As an artist, I have taken on board these ideas and brought them into my animation/film-making, resulting in a fictional look at urban planning in South London, filming locally to really explore the surrounding patina. I applied this approach to Detroit as another example of a similar urban context, which led to new film works and in 2013 a retrospective of films shown at The Pompidou centre, Paris. Whilst I did not have immediate commercial success coming out of Goldsmiths, what it allowed me to do was work on and build long-term strategies that have built up over the years into a complex and compelling involvement in the art scene. So I am very much continuing my Goldsmiths days in the world at large."
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