I was asked to write a piece for our degree show catalogue…and this is the final piece I have written.
I decided I wanted it to be like a stream of consciousness …kind of note like.
Writing.
Writing…the quest to express something of life…to translate a notion, an experience, a record of something we don’t want to let fade into the distance…. the distant past. Through this natural….or strangely unnatural urge to create, we all as future artists… are yearning for this translation…this ability to make something that replicates an element of what is already there…. or to invent something that shows elements of what we see could be there.
On occasion, this urge can only be portrayed through language. Sometimes words are the only way… the only way to find… or even come close to describing…to creating… to fulfilling this urge.
Language is everywhere. It is vital within the visual art context…You may not realise it…but subtly it is everywhere…from the titles we give our work, to the pieces written about it, to the conversations that surround it. It is the beginning of the art…the core. Only from the words, the thoughts created in the mind…and then transcribed out onto the paper of your moleskin notebook …and then…only then does it reach materialisation. It is the beginning and the end… the bookends that encase our practice…and at the same time, the thread that runs through and binds, holding the object and intention together
At times, nothing but the simple complex forms of words could possibly transcribe and portray what is yearned to tell you… intensions of giving something to this world.
Of bringing you in to ours and thus forming a bond…a bond only reached through the connection of an idea.
Sometimes things cannot just be translated into an image. A visual image just isn’t enough…it cannot describe fully… it cannot control like a word can… It cannot take you completely in…and then…if it chooses…chuck you out on to the street… fed up with the unreality or the rational that you bring to it. Words surround us daily. They have the power to encircle, to grab hold of you…and not let go…until they feel like it. A photograph can signify memories…you can see the look in the eyes, the location, perhaps the occasion…yet…only a series of letters, that make up words, that make up a sentence, that make up a paragraph, that can completely entangle you. There is no escape once you are in…yet if you could …you probably wouldn’t choose to.
Sometimes reality just becomes overtaken by the signs of reality…or the debris…of what we leave behind. The real…the facts and figures…the experiences I long to cling on to…grab hold of…become a work of fiction…or what we want to remember and what precise moments we choose to let stay in the edited version of our past.
Something more is needed in the image than you can ever create visually.
Text can sometimes be the only way to show more…give a smell, and air, a lighting a composition that images have to leave out.
You cannot keep building.
