I’ve been thinking about names. As the artist, untitled is fine, I make the work, spend time with it, know it intimately and no name is needed; I move through relationship phases, by turns falling in love, hating it, arguing, collaborating, but there’s no need to name it any more than there is to use the name of your lover in bed, who else would you be talking to? But I’ve decided that when my work goes to a gallery it needs a name such that the viewer who has only just met it, has an opener, a way in with which they can strike up a conversation with the work.
‘Untitled’ is obviously not going to cut it; ‘Boy and Ram’ identifies it, but does it get us any further than introducing someone at a party as ‘Man in a Shirt’? The picture is about parental decisions and shows Isaac, freed, running down the mountain with the unlucky ram left in his place. I was pondering the nature of sacrifice and betrayal and how Isaac and Abraham rebuild their relationship after this event. My first title was ‘Sacrifice’, but whilst not taking the viewer anywhere, it imposes a fixed concept on the viewer when they need to bring their own meanings, memories and experiences into the conversation. When work leaves the possession of the artist it starts to acquire its own narrative independent of the artist’s intentions and maybe the title needs to be a conduit to that too, even if eventually its identity does become ‘Boy and Ram’. So to send it on its way into the world I would like to rename this piece ‘Isaac, Why do you run?
