ABOVE: British artist Andrew Savage indirectly got UK government funding to shoplift items for a photography project, Stolen White Goods, including rice. This, however, just a picture of some rice, not Savage stealing it.

British artist Andrew Savage has raised a mild kerfuffle about his project with Ikon Gallery that apparently incorporates shoplifting into its range of performance. Some have questioned whether such work is worthy of taxpayer support. Now, as the BBC notes, it’s not like the British Council gave him a bag of cash and told him to go knock over a Tesco; Ikon got a package of funding, out of which it paid several artists, one of whom is Savage. He is doing a series of projects on consumption and possession, which will culminate in a book, Stolen White Goods.

Savage says his work doesn’t condone shoplifting, although that seems more than a little disingenuous on his part. But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and concede that his work is essentially anti-consumerist, anti-theft, and all the other good things that he wants to extol. The problem for us is that he refuses to say whether the “stolen” items to be photographed—rice, diapers, flour, and other “white goods”—are actually stolen or not. This coyness is irritating, making the whole statement neither one thing nor another. Either acknowledge the artifice of the photographs, or go and steal some rice and risk the consequences, but don’t sit on the fence singing “I’ll never tell” to get some weak publicity.

LINK: BBC > Artist got cash for ’stolen’ work