Why do so few write or talk about art writing, writing about art, writing art?
Why isn’t there a discussion about this practice? To discuss art writing, writing about art, writing art ... as what? What does it do, as writing or as
art or neither or both? It’s true - this writing confuses me. I am complexly perplexed as there is nothing simple about it. So, what does it do?
Explain Extrapolate Exhume Extort Encapsulate Envision Empty Endure Extend Encode Evolve
Extoll Exchange Engagement Evidence Encourage Enmesh
Why do all the words that come to mind begin with E?
I have been curious about this for a long
time ... For the question has become, not what does this writing do but why do I do it? For rather a long time now, why do I do this writing? And I do it
persistently. Or perhaps there is an anteceding question - does a writer really ‘do’ writing? An art writer, a writer who writes art, perhaps does something
other than ‘do’ writing. It is a practice that involves making art, reading art and writing art in ways that other writing may not and in ways that other
writing most definitely does. This sense of ambiguity, of fold, of in-betweenness and exchange emerges from art writing ... pretext, context, intertext,
hypertext, postext.
One of my favourite
musings about art writing (or writing art) comes from Edward Colless who points to the quandary of a writer who writes art not as an academic nor as a
critic nor as a theorist but as something else:
Returning to this text over and over, I continue to peel questions away. This is an inquiry waiting, wanting, needing to happen ... If art writing is shapeless, worthless, unfinished, purposeless, what then, is art? It - this formless inquiry - feels like a Gordian knot. I am tugging at threads which do not yield. What of catalogue essays? What of reviews? What of artists’ writings? What of text art? What of art journals and magazines? What of artist monographs? These art writings differ from each other: So - obviously - art writing is a multiple and fractious practice. Is it complement? Is it extrapolation? Is it mimicry? Is it integral? Is it collaboration? Is it evidence? Is it artefact? Is it meme? Is it biography? What is this thing I am reading?
It is a loss to argue that these texts exist purely for the purposes of extrapolating and contextualising works of art, for merely supporting commercial interests or the careers of individual artists. Rather, these texts can provide localised junctures in the unravelling of critical thought and its implication in contemporary art practices including exhibition. This implication of and within locality is evident in the Soapbox-Institute of Modern Art publication, Heterostrophic edited by Franz Ehmann and Ihor Holubizky. This book is like a catalogue that has no exhibition to accompany. The editors’ essays point to issues of place, identity and text, of making art in a city which is ‘coming of age’, attaining some long sought ‘critical mass’ after decades of ‘brain drain’ which saw creative people seek their fortunes in the larger southern cities. This is the second publication focusing on local artists that Soapbox has released and as an artist-run space, Soapbox takes full advantage of print media to promote discussion and ideas about contemporary artistic practice. It’s part of the ethos of the gallery’s director, Ehmann whose own practice includes books and multiples.
From Soapbox and, indeed, Heterostrophic, an acute awareness of place and politics emerges. Ehmann is a seasoned dissenter, an often cantankerous voice whose sheer commitment and faith in the critical necessity and value of studio based practice keeps Soapbox going. In his essay, ‘Heterostrophic: Situations and Positions’, he writes, “The work of contemporary art as inquiry demands of itself an acquittal, a discourse to free itself from the ordinary, should contemporary art be an over painting and a writing in and over historical world forces, the dialectic force is a sign to break freedom from traditions.”2 Overwhelmingly, it’s the artist who talks about the work of art, who acknowledges the time and effort it takes as work. So often in artist monographs, especially the formulaic offerings which seem to have become the norm, artists silence themselves as if they have no authority to speak of their work. Very few, at least locally, persist as artists who write, as artist-writers or writer-artists whose voice matters in a discussion about their work. It’s a peculiar manifestation of a persistent myth which according to Brian Wallis is predicated on the perception of “the artist as a ‘gifted’ or ‘natural’ man (the representation being predominantly male) beyond the normal conventions of society and hence beyond (or ‘prior to’) language.”3 Within the logic of this myth, the artwork speaks for itself because the artist cannot, will not or does not have to speak.
Comprised primarily of colour plates of installation based works presented at Soapbox, Heterostrophic provides an insider’s view of the gallery’s exhibition program. It’s a look at how artists practiced, appropriated and adapted installation for their own ends in the moment of the late 1990s: the last minutes of the 20th century in a kitsch subtropical city whose mythology gave it the nickname, BrisVegas. An it’s interesting to read through the ‘oral histories’ recounting how this city earned that name. It’s the stuff of legend and who can say with certainty? Heterostrophic features photo documentation of works by Eleanor Avery, James Avery, Britt Knudsen-Owens, Caitlin Reid, Arryn Snowball, Leon Waud, Franz Ehmann, Joachim Froese, Kim Demuth, Sam Sexton, Jewel McKenzie, Natalie Billing, Chris Rathborne, Neil Degney, Carl Warner, David Crouch, Nameer Davis, Chris Handran, Barbara Penrose and Terry Summers. Through such encounters with/of art and text, there remains a belief that community is possible through experiences of the same: that somehow sharing the same artefacts such as reading the same text or walking through the same installation engender shared experiences. Bearing in mind the idea of the ‘heterostrophic’ that informs this publication, sharing does not mean permanence nor does it mean sameness: it confers passing or connection rather than sameness. These artefacts are milestones on a nomadic itinerary. Johanna Drucker alludes to this in her discussion of the journal M/E/A/N/I/N/G of which she said “[T]hrough dialogue and articulation [the journal] succeeded in producing a community for whom it served a vital purpose: [meaningful] exchange around personal and professional issues directly related to the experience of the artists who wrote and read its pages.”4 The story is easily mapped onto Soapbox and its publications ... I hope the same might be said of fAf as well.
In this book, almost a picture book, the writing is a mystery: for some an irritant, for others a reprieve. As Holubizky says in his essay, ‘How to read this book’, “one of the many burdens for artists, of art-making, is to be overwritten.”5 So Holubizky’s fragments punctuate the book, making no promise of connection between text and image. How do you read this book? Perhaps you look at the colour plates first, ignoring the texts, flipping through the pages and reading the detail of every image, projecting it into your inner VR to occupy the space reconstructed in your head. In your imagination, you can, in turn, project yourself into that space and walk around, look, read, recreate. Perhaps you read the texts first, glancing cursorily at the images, looking for a cue from a word rather than being caught by a punctum in the image. Meaning is ever so elusive in these pages. Perhaps you read it all in order - without hypertextual intervention into the form of the book - one page after another, regardless of whether that page holds text or image. Perhaps you are looking for the key to the ordering as if this is some obscure narrative or riddle that does not relinquish its secrets. For Ehmann, “the field to gaze upon these works and to experience them is to feel them yourself or to write your own version.”6 Text and image are bound together as if locked in a double helix.
As an editor of an arts journal, as an art writer and ocassional curator, I am sometimes astounded and sometimes dismayed that the economy of writing art warrants no debate beyond, as occurred several years ago in my home state of Queensland, a one-off government project in which it was pointedly stated that the primary purpose of art writing is to promote art and develop audiences. Though I continue to write art, I have written a great deal less since this statement was made, unrelentingly banal and without resistance or challenge. During the federal government’s recent Contemporary Visual Art and Craft Inquiry chaired by Rupert Myer, submissions on art writing were canvassed. The Inquiry acknowledged that art publishing and writing is an integral part of the contemporary visual arts and craft sector in Australia, “providing an essential forum for documentation and criticism and for the promotion of contemporary work nationally and internationally. It contributes to education and audience development, marketing and advocacy.”7
In a similar vein, Urszula Szulakowska’s study, Experimental Art in Queensland, 1975 - 1995, mentions various writers and writing which have flourished with experimental contemporary art practices. An almost mercenary relationship is alluded to: “In order to enter the permanent canon of Australian art, an artist has to be provided with a critical text by a writer who is actively networked in the southern critical circles.”8 Again artists are silenced and overwritten. The writing is assumed to add weight to work, especially for those from less fashionable geographies. A hierarchy is charted between literacy and postliteracy, between word and image, between centre and periphery. The ‘weightier’ the writer, the more likely interstate and international recognition. In contemporary, artist-run and experimental galleries and artspaces, for example, the catalogue essay has provided an important means of contextualising, defining, evidencing and preserving an artist’s work. It melds with the supporting documentation of an artist’s work, merges with the sanctioned professionalisation of artist and grant-seeking. Yet despite the seeming ‘use-value’ of these texts, these writings also evidence the criticality of localised practice/s as fractures. A study, the details of which elude me at present despite some feeble attempts to locate it on the web, once found that in galleries, visitors spend significantly more time reading didactic panels than they do looking at artworks or an exhibition. In this context, art writing may be regarded, as Martin Gayford and Karen Wright suggest, a translation.9 Yet, ‘translation’ seems somehow too literal ... akin to the differend, a linkage between genres.
Art writing is a practice, a form, a critical practice which, like the meaning of the word ‘heterostrophic’ is specialised yet diffused, autonomous yet relational, intellectual yet non-institutional. That is, a spiral (a shell) that appears to be moving in opposite directions simultaneously. Some refer to this as the work of the critic, but there is much more at play, more than the revelation or documentation of the work of art or curatorial premise. Experiments in art publishing like Heterostrophic, join the countless other artist publications which have become increasingly abundant since the 19th century when The Germ and The Yellow Book were released. As artist intiatives, their publishers join with other artist-writers and writer-artists who have felt the scratching and pressure of overwriting from granting bodies, commerce and institutions. It is not only an act of criticism but also a gesture of intent, a merging, a fracture, a web, an excess, a slippage, a conversation.
NOTES
1 Edward Colless, The Error of My Ways, IMA Publishing: Brisbane.
2 Franz Ehmann, ‘Heterostrophic: Situations and positions’, Franz Ehmann & Ihor Holubizky (eds), Heterostrophic, IMA Publishing: Brisbane, 2002. 112
3 Brian Wallis, ‘Telling Stories: A Fictional Approach to Artists’ Writings’, Brian Wallis (ed), Blasted Allegories, New Museum of Contemporary Art and MIT Press: Massachusetts, 1987. xi
4 Johanna Drucker, ‘M/E/A/N/I/N/G: Feminism, Theory, and Art Practice’ in Susan Bee & Mira Schor (eds), M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings, Theory, Criticism, Duke University Press: Durham. 2000. x
5 Ihor Holubizky, ‘How to read this book’ in Ehmann and Holubizky (eds), op.cit. 4
6 Ehmann, op.cit., 113
7 Report of the Contemporary Visual Arts and Craft Inquiry, Commonwealth of Australia: Canberra, 2002. 284
8 Urszula Szulakowska, Experimental Art in Queensland 1975 - 1995, Griffith University: Brisbane, 1998. 165
9 Martin Gayford and Karen Wright (eds), The Penguin Book of Art Writing, Viking: London. 1998. xv
