Londontown 5: Going on Record

Written by S. Hargis

I was back in NZ for 30 minutes this morning...in the form of a talking head via Skype. This was because I was very kindly asked to talk to a group of artists about statement writing.

I’ve been writing statements for artists in a professional capacity for five years now, as a gallery assistant, a gallery director and freelance. Before that I was writing statements and essays for friends in art school. One distant day in the future, I might even finish my website so you can read a few. The point being that this month, for the first dedicated amount of time, I was focusing on the actual value and purpose of something I had been doing for a decade.

I’ve seen as many statements as I have exhibitions, because there an unspoken rule you should provide some nice, black and white writing to accompany a collection of works once on public display. This is a tradition I have always enjoyed and yet never felt easy about. As much as I love writing, I am unnerved by the supposed necessity of translating one form of expression to another. It’s the equivalent of requesting an image with every book you read, and we all know you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Does it seem fair to prompt someone who expresses themselves visually to provide written back up?  Should written language be required when visual language is already being employed?

To be honest, I can’t decide and I am intrigued by any possible justification. Perhaps the purpose of text in general is to provide a framework of understanding between all things subjective, all experiences shared... I don’t know. But on the subject of the Art Statement, given what experience I have, here are my thoughts (in text form):

• The space a work is shown in, and the way in which it is presented, is the basis of curatorial practice. The curator guides the viewer’s engagement with the work. So their practice is to inform through presentation, to visually guide. Isn’t the concentration on and perfecting of this process a better way to provide context for work than with text because it also sits within a visual or experiential language?
• A statement offers the chance to show the life of the work, not of where you are seeing it now, but where it was in the mind and hands of the artist.
• I dislike the idea of a statement justifying an artwork, but can it even do so?
• A statement is at its best when functioning as part of a collaboration with the work, a craft in its own right, beautifully reflective and considered, speaking of the same ideas as the work, in conversation with the work, not speaking for it.
• For conceptual art, the visuals act as the statement for the writing, secondary and descriptive to the ideas in the text.
• Perhaps no artist should write their own statement, it’s doubling up on forms of expression. The dealer and curator serve to exist between the art and the audience. It’s a craft requiring a connection with the artist and a passion for their work.
• In a world heavy with information, where every work created can be seen through the shadows of another, should the statement be a suppository to lighten the academic desire for reference?

Top five bad statement writing habits:

5/ Using the word ‘juxtaposed’.

4/ Using only a quote or poem without explanation.

3/ Going over the two paragraph mark.

2/ Verbiage: writing a lot of big words that don’t actually say anything.

1/ Printing it out in a script font.