Awake, Awake : Why Local Art is the Ultimate Antidote to the AI Slop Apocalypse

This week, I had the absolute delight of spending some quiet, solitary time in the Victoria Art Gallery (VAG) in Bath, reviewing the current Bath Society of Artists 121st Open Exhibition. I wasn't there as a VIP; I was there doing my groundwork. As part of my VAG volunteering duties, I will be leading two lunchtime tours on 29th October and 5th November, and I wanted to really be with the work.

I have a personal history with these shows. I’ve exhibited once, and I’ve been kicked back twice. But I’m not bitter. That is all part of the deal. Life is not a static thing—it is a continuous, unfolding process.

What hits you when you walk through this exhibition is the sheer artistry and raw creativity of everyone involved. These aren’t international artists. These are creators like you and me. The sheer skill, the amazing commitment to ideas, and the pure joy of making something is incredibly inspiring. If you want to be uplifted, and if you want to be inspired to open up to your own inner artist, you have to go.

These physical, real shows, these quiet moments of contemplation, are becoming increasingly vital. We are currently drowning in a world of AI chatbots designed to strip out the human world of genuine insight, only to spit it back out at us as fake, meaningless, monetised content. It is a world stripped of humanity—otherwise known as joy.

We are now all suffocating in the attention economy where the most "successful" chatbots will be those that keep you glued to your screen, swallowing adverts, and buying stuff you don't need with your attention held hostage for as long as possible. The most successful tech companies will be the ones that make their customers completely dependent on chatbots for information, news, advice, or even simulated insight or connection.

For me this is the great filter in action. Perhaps our end isn't destruction through war and violence but through a gradual siphoning of what it means to be human - all of us ending up ‘hollow’ you know - ‘that’s how the world ends not with a bang but a whimper’  sort of thing. Look around - some fundamental part of our humanity is being lost right now in a new world of AI slop. It’s a world where no one creates, reads or writes. A world without artists, poets, musicians, or performers. Instead, we are fed endless, hyper-personalised entertainment delivered by algorithms that empty us out and never leave us alone. We are facing an apocalypse of distraction and triviality, a tsunami of brain fog, a world driven mad by competing algorithms.

We can all see this happening. People are being farmed. What we think and feel is being systematically manufactured and manipulated.

But what the Bath show reveals—if you actually go and stand in front of any piece—is that it is still entirely possible to change all of this from the inside out and  be totally here. It is possible to be aware and awake to who you are, and what you too are capable of doing.

The first step out of the fog is learning how to discriminate, how to decide, and how to see for yourself. Every single piece of art in this show has that exact purpose at its core. 

Go along and see what might be possible for you, too. And if you are around, join me for my lunchtime tours—hope to see you there.