Mike Lim

In 2014, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced that the United Kingdom's Creative Industries were worth £8 million an hour to the UK economy; to place such a definitive value on our creative resource, recognises its potential to be lost.

Untitled, Mixed Media, 2014 questions whether the continued application of financial mechanisms to the Creative Arts is devaluing their inherent worth. 

Where Britain was `Great' - London will be Greater. Amidst widespread cultural capital gains during an era of Creative Obesity, a speculative boom spreads within London's Creative Class. The recently formed Worshipful Guild of Arts rapidly expands within the City of London as cultro-economic dependency grows. However, when it is revealed that certain prominent London artists are buying their own work at auction to inflate their hype, the integrity of the London Market collapses. Investors pull out, unable to trust existing value systems returning instead to material cost. As cultural credit dries up, London's economy crumbles with it, ushering in an age of Cultural Austerity. 

The response: Neo-Pragmanticisim, the departure from irresponsible creative freedoms and the return to the expression of regulated emotion and controlled imagination. The curated workspace, overwhelmed by administrative bodies rises from the foundations of its existing ancestry, built in the image of the trusted vernacular.