Tacita Dean has her space. Now it’s time to make room for other artists

In your editorial (19 March) about the artist Tacita Dean you state that she has a complicated relationship with her home country, Britain, and so she moved to Berlin. While this does reflect her feelings about the “British cultural suspicion of contemporary art” as a reason to leave in her case, many other artists also left London to work in affordable spaces in Berlin when their studios in London became unaffordable. A pattern is repeated: artists move into a run-down area; their vibrancy and economic activity make it attractive to property developers; and then the artists can’t afford to stay.

This has happened to my own studio complex in Wood Green, north London, where 70 artists working in a thriving community in the Chocolate Factory were recently forced to leave their studios. The axe will fall on the rest of us soon and dozens more will have to leave as the building is being “developed”. There is an appeal to Haringey council, supported by local MP Catherine West, to create a centre for the arts, including artists’ studios, when they consider the new Wood Green development plan. Ballymore developers, recognising that people like to live in interesting places, have included studios in their development on City Island. Hopefully Haringey will recognise the creative and economic contribution that artists can bring to an area, and also make an affordable space for future Tacita Deans to work in London and not have to take their creativity elsewhere.
Susan Rosenberg
London

• While Tacita Dean may lament the status of artists in the UK, she surely cannot lament the gushing blanket media saturation currently being heaped upon her. This is certainly the case with the Guardian and Observer, both of whose latest art review columns (a week’s reviewing space) have been entirely devoted to her, and which have both also published recent major features on her, plus your editorial. This is reflected in rival publications too. So her complaint about artists not being taken seriously rings a little hollow set against her ample record of state patronage, including 32 works in the Tate collection, nomination for the Turner prize, Turbine Hall commission, and now simultaneously across three major art institutions. Contemporary art, I’m happy to say, is now more mainstream in the UK than ever, but what is lamentable is the limited and predictable attention from critics and arts editors who duplicate precious coverage space and barely step outside the zones of control dictated by the monolithic system of UK state patronage and uber-galleries.

And if anyone’s interested, my current show at Flowers Gallery, London, continues until 7 April.
John Keane
London

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