My first attempt at art writing was a tremendous failure. Hooray.

References:

Kraus C (2016) The Cult of Freedom, Flash Art website, accessed 9 October 2024. https://flash---art.com/article/the-cult-of-freedom/

Moffat T (2021) A Haunting [site specific installation] Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery website, accessed 17 October 2024 https://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/exhibition/a-haunting/5udri

These meanings are widely agreed upon by people who sometimes haven’t even had the chance or made the effort to engage with the work on their own. Huge amounts of even textual narratives are completely ignored in order to get to the ‘point’ at their centre. Everyone and their mother can tell you about how 1984 is all about surveillance. Few of them can elaborate however on the discussion of language, education, hermeneutic injustice, control of the truth and religion in the text, because they haven’t read it.

Interpretation can be excavation, and excavation is almost always simplification. It’s interesting to think about who this effects at large. Marginalised artists and writers often have their work reduced to identity politics and memoir, no matter how large or small a role those elements play in their work. Discussion of Sylvia Plath’s entire oeuvre, but especially Ariel, is often reduced to simply being about her depression and death by suicide. Australian Indigenous art is often discussed in a very ethnocentric way even today, and has its value therefore reduced to the realms of the spiritual and the symbolic. Or the pretend. Its interesting who isn’t reduced though. Picasso’s abuse of women, many of whom he claimed as muses, is a widely known fact. However, his art, despite stemming from real life abuse, is separate from him, and said abuse, and still celebrated. Let’s call this ‘the Plath v Polanski effect.’

References:

Sontag S (1966) Against Interpretation and Other Essays, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.

On a school excursion to the NGV, I came across a piece I continue to this day to refer to as my favourite work in the gallery. If I was asked why though I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you. 

I was eighteen. Standing in a room with beautiful art all over the walls. One almost took up an entire wall. And yet it saw only my profile, as I was staring straight at a much smaller piece positioned next to the door I’d just walked through. 

‘Musical Moments’ is a painting. 

I remember looking at the girl, at the man behind her, and the setting. The way the piece imitated the way our eyes lose focus on background elements while looking at something in front of us.

It was an excursion for studio art. I had very recently begun to take an interest in painting instead of just drawing, and so naturally was suddenly noticing how beautiful and masterful all the paintings in the gallery were. Few would stick with me. One of them that did was this one. I knew it would at the time. ‘Look Jake,’ I said to my table buddy.
‘Oh nice,’ he said, before walking off to look at something else. I stayed with it for quite a while longer.

Its remained a favourite painting of mine ever since. Every time I’ve visited the NGV since then, I’ve made sure to go and see it. I don’t rush straight to it though. I like to wait. I take extra time in the white room right before it. Looking at everything. Delaying seeing something I’m excited about in the moments right before. I’m like this with a lot of things. I’ve never eaten much chocolate on easter for this exact reason.

On our site visit to the NGV for class I did exactly this. I was looking around for something to give my presentation on as well, but mostly I was delaying the moment of joy I knew I’d experience seeing ‘Musical Moments’ again. You can imagine my disappointment when it wasn’t there. I don’t remember anything about the piece hanging in its place. Only that I hate it. More though, I hate the giant wall piece that’s still there. It might stay there forever. Looking down and mocking me for daring to grow attached to something that was only there for a moment.

References:

Mackie C (1905) Musical Moments [Painting, oil on canvas] National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, VIC

For me writing on art has certainly been a very researched creative experience. I’ve drawn on my own memories to recount experiences both recent and distant. I’ve had to do a good old google to find out about parts of history I was unsure about. Due to the topic of my piece I wanted to be able to back up all my statements and claims with facts.

Writing on art in general, for anyone, I think would probably entail research of some kind. Whether in the traditional sense, to find out about the artist and the historical, social or political context of the work, or in another kind of more meditative way where you really consider the ideas or feelings that the art stirs up in you. Maybe you’re thinking about the materials you can see. Maybe about an experience it recalls. And perhaps by this logic almost all writing can be a form of research in a sense. While writing is often described as ‘therapeutic.’ Perhaps more meditative and considered forms of writing could be considered a form of personal research though. We come to conclusions about our selves and lives in our journals. Memories come back to us, jogged by writing on a subject seemingly unrelated to ourselves, only to discover some strange and forgotten correlation. ‘Writing is recalling,’ (Knausgaard 2013).

Thinking about creative research in  a new way has definitely made it something that will be part of my practice in the future.

It’s not a huge part of my piece but for some of it I did in fact travel. Something I haven’t done for the express purpose of writing before. While yes, I was going into the city that day anyway, I took a detour and went out of my way to go back to ACCA to see the piece I was writing on for a second time. I wanted to view it again for a few reasons. To soak up the atmosphere, to just watch it again so I could more accurately write about it. To do a closer reading of the plaque explaining it. But also to find a sense of closure, or resolution to my thinking on it. To get it. Really get it. 

Travelling for writing isn’t something I’ve done before. In both fiction and non-fiction, when drawing on places I’ve really been to, I just use locations I already have a strong idea of. Or I google them. But after that experience in the gallery, I’m interested to try actually writing scenes in the locations that they take place in. For a Melbourne based story I’m thinking of writing, I really want to capture the city. I think the best way to do that would be to just soak it up in person. In a more deliberate way than I have been doing already. 

References:

Gerard P (2017) The Art of Creative Research: A Field Guide for Writers, University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Knausgaard K (2013) Completely Without Dignity: An Interview with Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Paris Review website, accessed 17 October 2024 https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/12/26/completely-without-dignity-an-interview-with-karl-ove-knausgaard/

I think I’d need to read my piece again as it is to decide whether I considered it an example of success or failure. But I think I can say with near absolute certainty that I failed at taking risks with the piece. This is perhaps a worse revelation than realising I don’t like it. There are no risks in the form of the piece. Resting contently on well-established laurels, the piece reads as a standard creative essay. With a notable lack of emphasis on the word creative. 

I think the biggest risk in the piece was its subject matter, which only seems a risk to me. I don’t usually write about race and for some inexplicable reason have often avoided writing about it. Perhaps due to my assumption that others will assume I’m biased. And I’m perhaps I am. It would make sense. Because of said assumption, I also assume that my piece doesn’t seem to be a risk at all in that regard. Why should it be? I’m black-ish. It’s natural I should have something to say about race. A harsh pill or hot take to force down people’s throats. What seems a risk to me appears as natural and even potentially lazy to others I would, again, assume. So perhaps for this reason it can’t be classified as a risk at all.

The saddest thing about failing to take risks in writing, is that the only thing you stand to learn is that you should take more risks. Which you probably already knew.

As Knausgaard says, there are no exercises to practice writing, it’s all the real thing. ‘Failing, not succeeding, not being able to make it work, failing, failing, failing—but not in order to get to the core at some future time, that would be half-hearted, and the half-hearted is the antithesis of writing, no, failing must come from risking everything, in all earnestness, with the utmost of effort,’ (2021)

References:

Knausgaard K (2021) What Writers and Editors Do, The Paris Review website, accessed 17 October 2024 https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/01/05/what-writers-and-editors-do/

 Crazy that a museum or gallery something akin should pay an enormous sum of money for a piece of art that is a pyramid of stacked oranges. They paid so much more than it would’ve cost to buy an equivalent amount of oranges and stack them in the same way. Why? Because the name is the key

Context is king. In the world of art.

While a rose by any other name may smell just as sweet, it would lack the recognition and perhaps acclaim that a rose enjoys. 

And roses smell kind of bad anyway so I doubt stripping them of their name would do them any favours.

Again, the name attached to something, or rather the context and our previous associations shape all our interactions with the world. Not just with art. Hence it feels wrong to kiss someone who shares the name of a parent, and unpalatable to eat a chocolate that looks like a turd.

The name sardines, given to work that only features the word “sardines” was meant as what? Surely the question “where are the sardines though?” Has been asked many a time by viewers looking upon the work.  “But there aren’t sardines in it,” has almost certainly been a conclusion some have come to after staring at it for a while. Is it named for its absence. I doubt it. The piece is not called elephants or nazis or city scapes or blimps. Not even whales. It’s called sardines.

Strangely, or not so strangely really, I come to think of the banana in the NGV. Again, it’s the context and the name being paid for. Not the oranges. Not the banana.

References:

Louw R (1967) Soul City (Pyramid of Oranges) [installation] Tate website, accessed 17 October 2024 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/louw-soul-city-pyramid-of-oranges-t13881

Goldberg M (1955) Sardines [Oil on canvas] Smithsonian American Art Museum website, accessed 17 October 2024 https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/sardines-40531