Artist paid £20,000 to look at women's bums

IT'S bottoms up for an acclaimed Swansea artist who has been handed a £20,000 grant to study women's buttocks.

Arts Council for Wales chiefs have defended their decision to award the money to Sue Williams after one MP questioned it.

Sue makes plaster casts of her own and other women's bottoms, but said it was just a small part of her research, based on her experiences in Africa.

"Their attitude to bottoms became a problem for me, because I was having my work censored by the African government," said Sue, who works at Swansea Metropolitan University's Dynevor Centre for Art, Design and Media.

"It made me understand a lot more about the culture I was working in.

"There, the bottom is treated with respect, whereas over here in the West it's treated as trivial, sensational and sexual."

Liberal Democrat MP Adrian Sanders has already questioned the award, but Arts Council for Wales chief executive Nick Capaldi said they were delighted to be supporting an internationally renowned visual artist.

IT’S the butt of a thousand “Does my bum look big in this?” jokes. Which is probably why artist Sue Williams thinks the female posterior is “treated as trivial” — as well as sensational and sexual.

Surely that’s been going on a long time — even in the art world. Rubens’s nudes are as well blessed as Jennifer Lopez in that regard.

It is the role of art to challenge and make us question the things around us. Or behind us.

The problem is that it has to be funded. Without private patrons, that means spending taxpayers’ money.

Artists do not get rich on the public’s cash. The multi-million pound sales that hit the headlines — such as farmyard animals in pickling fluid — involve private and very rich individuals. And they can spend their cash as they wish.

But it is quite right that, at a time when so many of us are struggling to make ends meet, and are worried about losing our jobs and our homes, the way public money is spent will come under even more scrutiny.

Sometimes it does seem that, while private companies sweat over every penny they spend, the public sector still does not understand the need for really tightening the purse strings.

And handing out cash to look at ladies’ bums is hardly likely to persuade us otherwise.