response to John McDonald: “‘Politics is an embarrassment in much contemporary art – an exercise in selling prepackaged opinions to the converted.” Gee John how original. We all know any attempt by an artist to engage in the ‘political’ can end up being cliched and glib … I personally have questioned in my art work wheter it possible to address political issues without resorting to pictorial cliches. BUT I think people end up seeing criticality in art as dead because they are willing to just go along with the system, and not think about broader issues There are limitations to what we can do (like introducing more enlightened legislation)but we still need to find ways to get what we feel into the public arena – outside the smaller circuits of ARIs for example…