Writing About Writing About Art.

I like art and I like words, on all levels: creating, experiencing and thinking about them. Its difficult to say if one is better than the other, that would be like comparing an apple to a pear; they are just different. My preference see-saws between the two.

Sometimes I like words more than art because they have the potential to be more utilitarian, it don't have all these needless, superfluous decorations and images to beautify the ideas like art. This is only a thought I have occasionally, of course because I also relish in vapidly illustrative forms, like artwork on kitsch home wares and common culture tee shirt image designs. On my days of loving words and their simplicity that trumps visual art by in terms of communicating ideas, I usually eat simply also, taking pleasure in bread, butter and water, and prefer to walk places rather than catch trams for destinations a short distance away.

Its difficult to choose what format the writing will take. I could revel in sarcasm, hiding big concepts behind juvenile bravado, but does anyone take that seriously? Will the distance between myself, the writer and the audience cause them to think I'm a fool as opposed to just posing as a fool? If I write too seriously, too academically, I feel fake. A fraud dressing up words in sheep's clothing. As you can see I've never been very good at mixing my metaphors. That path in between entertaining and intelligent when writing is not an easy one to navigate.

One desire I have when writing is to match the form of my writing to the subject matter, for example: when I'm writing about a repitition, I'm tempted to follow suit and write in a repetitive fashion. On one occasion I was writing about how art academia can be needlessly complex and I had to fight the urge to write in an overly complicated, convoluted way. Needless to say I still feel a twinge of desire to write the word 'write' a lot.

Truth of the matter is that most big art ideas or concepts can usually be described in plain English with just a word or a sentence, and this isn't a failing of the art works ability to be conceptually rich and complex, but more of an achievement of language and human understanding, for example, 'relational aesthetics is just art that uses people and human interaction and that (the actual actions between people) or the documentation of the interaction as the art', 'post structuralism is the super melding of everything because the structures and hierarchy of different subject matter no longer exist', 'Romeo and Juliet is about a love so great that not even life is worth living without it' and 'Mash-ups are musical collages'. Complex can be made simple quite easily.

Blogs are notorious for being opinionated, but, I don't think I've ever read a newspaper article wasn't opinionated also. Its what we do as human beings when we communicate.

The biggest problem is that the author knows their own thoughts and opinions, whereby which they have little value to the author because they are common, so the difficult part is the justification of writing and recording thoughts to be transmitted to others. I end up evoking one part of the spirits of dead punk rockers and one part of Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox and just screaming 'Cuss it! I'll write what I want! Whoever has a problem with it: cuss them!'. Every piece of writing written about writing about art should end with both a reference to punk ideology and a Wes Anderson film. You can't get more opinionated than that.

ARTICLE- "art is full of :-) at the moment"- Ace Wagstaff

"art is full of :-) at the moment"
Ace Wagstaff
2009-03-31


Is it just me or are there less and less people attending gallery opens and art events at the moment? Its a little bit sad. I thought it might be just me or my overly imaginative paranoia assuming that as soon as I turned up to an exhition, everybody left, mainly in fear of having to socialise with me. Thats not the case though. Thats rediculous. I'm a fantastic conversationalist. Ahem. Personal social insecurities aside, I can understand why gallery attendee numbers may be down at the moment, what with all the bleak news (bush fires ravaging half the state, a colossal death toll, the country sinking into a recession and the world economy imploding), it wouldn't be very considerate if we were enjoying something as socially inessential and lavish as the arts, especially in a time that calls for us to be collectively frugal and solemn. However, I feel (notice the emphasis on the "I") the melbourne art scene has been pretty full of win at the moment. I havent been to many openings, which is hazardous in an industry like the arts, which is more like a social arena that requires individuals to see and be seen, but I have seen many shows the day after, after the wine spills from the night before have been cleaned up and all the obnoxous, heavy, hot air that was issued forth from superficial conversations the night before has dissipated, which is a much more pleasent way of doing things to a degree.

Welcome to my fave's from the last month:

At Craft Victoria on Flinders Lane, the Chicks on Speed are exhibiting in the gallery space. On second thoughts, they aren't really exhibiting, they arent really using the gallery as a plinth to show their work but more as a communial space for people to interact and engage in the creative act, keeping true to the Chicks one Speed DIY ethos. The girls are running a variety of practical workshops throughout their stay in the space and invite visitors to try their hand with some needle and thread on a massive banner collaborative banner thats covered in all manner of sewn on media varying styles of stitching any time during opening hours.
http://www.craftvic.asn.au/gallery/2009/chicksonspeed-exhibition.html


"Cock and Bull" curated by Kate Daw and Vikki McInnes at the Margaret Lawerence Gallery is all about the boys. And lies. And the lies boys tell. And its about art. Its is art. Woah. The title of the exhibition ties in nicely to the all male cast, John Beagles and Graham Ramsey (Beagles and Ramsey), Jon Campbell, Tony Garifalakis and Matthew Griffin, as well as being a reference to a fictional autobiographical novel in which most of the humour comes from exageratedly complex explanations and epic, chapter-length explanitory detours ("The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" by Laurence Sterne). Beagles and Ramsey have a zillion video works playing on tables which is a feast for square eyes. Matthew Griffin's video projection in the back room is a highlight that features Griffin playing as a small handed potter, the artist as all concept and small skill, reapeating the same action to created the same object in a sisyphean loop. Jon Campbell has converted a false entrance of the gallery into a brightly coloured, circus like doorway, complete with offical looking signage above it loudly exclaiming "INSUFFICIENT FUNDING".
http://www.vca.unimelb.edu.au/EventList.aspx?EventTypeID=4


Dale Frank's exhibition "The Big Black Bubble" at Anna Schwartz is colour. Beautiful, big, glossy, sublime colour. The works size is awe inspiring, the shortest edge on any of the works being two metres. The largest work dominates the space at two sixty by five hundred, a mass field of black, varnish on linen, titled "Ryan Goslyn" after the movie star (from such films as the irratingly romantic "The Notebook", feel-good american high-school football and racial issues "Remember the Titans" and indie flick "Lars and the Real Girl"). The dried surfaces hide liquidy pools of varnish and oil, oozing away beneath the lush coloured gloss facade. Like I said: beautiful, big, glossy, sublime colour.
http://www.annaschwartzgallery.com/works/exhibitions?artist=15&year=&work=11640&exhibition=282&page=2&future=&projects=&current=1&c=m


Westspace has a hatrick with Ieuan Weinman's "The third wave of Stupa building", Nicki Wynnychuk's "A flag and a flagpole" and "A life Quite Ordinary" by Charles O'Loughlin.

Weinman combines the the method of painting through layers into a method from which to create a video work. This duality of mediums, painting and video, is strengthened by exhibiting the painted image on canvas as an installation, tacking it directly to the wall, as oppsed to stretching on a timber frame, which lets it flow down and over the floorspace and also places the screen of the accompaning videowork within the canvas, each giving the other strength in the combined concept and message of "The third wave of Stupa building".
http://www.westspace.org.au/program/ieuan-weinman.html

"A flag and a flagpole" divides the space with invisible borders, boundries, between four impromptu made flagpoles and flags in seperate areas of the space. Each constructed from found materials from in slash near the exhibiting site, bringing the normally superfluous collateral of the community outside and around the gallery, into the space and elevating it from common, invisible debris into a symbol, nay, a bearer of authority and power... but whose? The community inadvertedly responsible for the materials? The artist for the act of creating the idea and the object? The gallery which temporarily owns the artifacts through the act act of housing them? I foresee the answer being a much more complex one than these propositions and those greater answers probably belonging to an intellectually loftier idea relating to society, power and government. Good. It gives the work more weight than I can give it here in this article.
http://www.westspace.org.au/program/nicki-wynnychuk.html

In "A life Quite Ordinary" O'Loughlin has timed and recorded his daily activities and who he's interacted with, then redusced that information to numbers and colours and mapped it out, exhibiting the graphs as images without keys or legends. The idea that these multicoloured lines are true recordings of what their title suggests is quite convincing even though there is no real evidence. That is perhaps my only lament with the work, is that they appear to have such mathematical exactness, and I sort of prefer a little ungrounded magic or mysticsm with my science.
http://www.westspace.org.au/program/charles-o-loughlin.html


How very blessed we are to have all this fine work on display all at the one time, and the exhibitions coming up in the next few days promise to be grand: "Us Vs Them" an exhibition featuring Tully Moore and Taree Mkenzie at TCB Gallery, "Drawing Folio" group show curated by John Nixon and Justin Andrews at BlockProjects and, the upcoming "Hamstrung: Creativity Within Constraints" at Platform curated by Anusha Kenny. Yep. Melbourne is rockin socks aye tee em. Now I should really go as my 'cold-and-flu-day-and-night-relief' nighttime tablets are kicking in and wakefulness is fading. Yours Sincerely, Ace.

ARTICLE- Of Temporarily Not Writing Art Criticism- Ace Wagstaff

“Of Temporarily Not Writing Art Criticism”
2008-07-14

Art criticism, or perhaps the attempt to indulge in art criticism is “neither a recreation of nor a substitution for artistic experience”[i]. So what the hell am I doing trying to critique art? Being a supposed practicing artist, a post graduate student in a diploma of education course and now, attempting to maintain a constant critique of local artists run spaces and their exhibitions, I feel I am not really succeeding at any. Reel Big Fish echo my lament in their song “Don’t start a band”, informing those of potential not to begin anything creative, nobody wants to hear it or see it[ii]. I cant help but feel that there may be a degree of truth in this contradictory and obviously cheeky tune. I don’t even want to hear myself, why would anyone else? (bare in mind its also not my intention to write an article of self loathing but merely explore my dismay and creative block to write at present).

I have seen a lot of exhibitions and galleries in the last two months but haven’t felt either inspired enough to write of anything seen or that which I have written I feel hasn’t been any good. Obviously I do not want to make an enemy of every artist which has exhibited in the last two months in Melbourne and must inform you that these two observations are not fact: I’m sure what I’ve seen has been fantastic work and the problem lies with my inability to engage by asking the right questions of it and myself in order to form a half decent analysis of the work[iii]. When it comes to art criticism to be able to apply a series of higher level questioning is essential[iv].

The answer to getting on with viewing, enjoying and writing about art may be connected to another problem in my life. Perhaps there is a subconscious disappoint about never getting that NERF gun for Christmas as a child or the fact I’ve never had sex with maple syrup and table tennis paddles. Hmm… both are entertaining possibilities but I know they are mere untruthful distractions to seduce me away from focusing on the topic at hand and prolonging the inevitable truth as to why I cant sit down and write (which I don’t think I have the confidence to acknowledge to myself let alone divulge so publicly by writing it here).

I want to swear, Im frustrated. I want to unload a barrage of F--k’s, S--t’s and maybe even a few C--t’s but I know it would be futile. Pointless. Barbaric. All I've done is succeeded in sounding, no, writing, like a selfish, pretentious, opinionated, little twat. Maybe I should break something instead but again, a barbaric action is probably worse than screaming profanity. Best not to do anything I guess. I feel like I cant do anything, like Rivers Cuomo, I don’t do anything, I like to think that punching or swearing will not make any difference in the scheme of things[v]… not like uncouth, stupid people who know who to act and are satisfied through their impulsive yet purposeless actions. Destructive actions, in all fairness, are about as useful as art criticism.



[i] Hamblen, K. A. 1984, Studies in Art Education, Vol 26, No.1, National Art Education Association.
[ii] Reel Big Fish 2005, “We’re not happy ‘til you’re not happy”, ‘Don’t start a band’ 3:18.
[iii] Gall, M. D. 1970, The Use of questions in teaching. Review of Educational Research
[iv] Krathwohl, D. R., Bloom, B. S., & Masia, B. B. (Eds.) 1964, Taxonomy of the educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook II: Cognitive domain. New York: David McKay
[v] Schuftan, Craig 2008, “triple j: The Culture Club - Weezer's fanfare for the underground man” (http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/triplej/cultureclub/cc_weezer.mp3)