On this question of artists explaining/conceptualising/justifing what they do by intelectual juggelery to others. I am able to see it from a slightly different position because I can use time, looking back 20 years or more at this issue.
I remember being a recent graduate or emerging artist trying to establish their practice (how ever you want to describe it) and there has always been a focal issue as to why I’m not getting exhibitions/commissions/funding etc.
First it was that the art world was all about who you knew, not what you knew.
Then it was all about physical presentation of your work (I’m talking pre digital cameras). Could’nt afford to produce expensive laminated folders with printed inserted information sheets. How good were your slides?
Then it was websites did you have one yet, it showed some kind of status? Even though it did not portray you as you wanted to be seen.
Now it’s this issue of how you think? Is it clever enough, critical, conceptual. The language has to be right. All these things are really just things to be cross about if you did’nt get what you wanted.
TIME is the key to all this anxiety. Its much easier to look back at a body of work which may have taken two years, more to accumulate after leaving collage. Look back after time and its is easier to see what you did and why you did it. The complex issues in everyones lives prevents the creation of artworks but artworks still come out. They take longer and have limitations. These limitations shape the type of work that is made. Half a garden shed or the kitchen table forces a type of work, as does only a computer.
The other thing is that: ‘The Work’ plus ‘Something Else’ is what may edge that funding or commission. What that ‘something else is’ is not nessacerily how good you are at writing conceptual critical intelectual justifaction for your work. It may be that you have completed a substancial body of work and documented it well so you can present it clearly to interested people. Which is a totally different thing.
I am trying to help when I say Rome was’nt built in a day. The last thing I was going to say is I think artists are made by the lives they live, not what they were taught in collage.
