Wish you WEREN'T hear? Paranoia or institutional prejudice?

Just reflecting on my piece "Wish you were hear" at the Interim Show and some odd vibes I got from Central St Martins. My piece imagined a world where mental health was normalised, and people might routinely send postcards with messages about their mental health. The piece featured a postcard rack with eight different designs, some of which had blanks, allowing people to add their own message. The piece invited people to take the cards and either keep them or fill in a message and post it on an adjacent pinboard.

My fears that people might not interact, where wonderfully unfounded:

In total, 188 cards were posted, and a further 366 were taken away! The messages ranged from silly, to rude, to very funny, to deeply heartfelt. Despite my fears, and despite being in a public space open all night, only one person drew a cock (thereby fulfilling a bet I had) and nobody stole the pen (which is really surprising to me!). 

People who interacted with it loved it, and said so. People found it funny, engaging, and moving. People said they felt a strange sense of shared trust... It was everything I could have hoped it would be, and a lot more that I hadn't imagined (full reflection and write up coming soon!).

And yet, I can't escape the feeling that Central St Martins and the staff hated it. 

I am very prone to paranoia, especially when it comes to art... But I got a very strange vibe that they were embarrassed by it. I got the feeling they found it messy, and not art. My paranoia was fuelled by a few things:

• None of the staff seemed to want to visit it or talk about it (but then, perhaps that's standard practice? Talking about anyone's art seems weirdly taboo)
• None of the staff seemed to want to go anywhere near it (but then, it was tucked away from the main area)
• None of the photos of the event featured it (but then, lots of art wasn't featured)
• One member of staff who was responsible for the area it was in seemed keen to avoid catching my eye (but they were probably busy)
• The only member of staff who had to come to the piece simply said "wow" (but they were in a rush, and actually they did look at a few cards... And actually there was a large picture of a cock in the middle of the corkboard at the time!)
• And it was given a prominent position, just in front of the one of the entrances, and I had more space than a lot of exhibitors could have dreamed of...

So probably just paranoia... But my piece was definitely 'off-brand' for CSM, and perhaps 'off-brand' for the art world as a whole - it wasn't clean white walls and a few objects tastefully placed with little foothold to offer the viewer in understanding it - it was a riot of humanity, it was messy, it was loud, it was quite vulgar - in short it was 'fucking inappropriate' and therefore I can only declare it to be a huge success :)