Introduction

This project was developed in response to the issue of Art-Speak. For many years, despite being an averagely intelligent person (an analyst by training), I have been surprised how often I am unable to understand the explanations given in galleries and in art catalogues. I have come to know this type of text as Art-Speak.

The project also reflects my experience of working with artist friends on their "texts". I'm also indebted to Man de Li's website, the first of many online pieces I found about Art-Speak (see below for links to a couple of others) and to BANK Artist Collective's inspiring Fax-Bak Service for art press releases). Why add to these? Well I won't add too much.
My project involved the development of some Art-Speak blurbs. These were developed largely by mimicking "Greenbergian" text (After Clement Greenberg). There are many components of Greenbergian text - abstract ideas, obscure references etc. One of the key components however is the use of sentence structures which, at a simplistic level, are contradictory. In abstract terms:

"This work is X but also Y"

Where (at some level) X and Y are actually opposites. In one way this makes the text meaningless but in another way it also "super-charges" the meaning. That is it becomes "poetic". The reader can bring whatever meaning they like to the text. In an example from the text used in this project, one of the works is described as presenting and discussing:
"weighty sociological and counter-spiritual issues, with a superficial clarity poking fun at the rules, conventions, possibilities and alternatives. In consequence this discloses the ambiguity all the more compellingly"

Key here is the use of the terms "weighty" and "superficial" and the description of something "disclosing ambiguity". Such formulations leave so much room for interpretation that they actually convey very little information. What does a weighty issue presented superficially actually look like? How can ambiguity be disclosed?

Another example would be:

"This work functionally separates the sentimental nostalgia of more traditional sculpture, creating two opposing forms, whose distance almost dissolves when observed. "

If two things are at a distance then what do we mean when we say this distance dissolves. In practical terms it means nothing. I have no idea whether the two opposing forms are distant or near. What does functionally separating nostalgia mean? Separated into what?

This is not a criticism of artists as I believe most if not all artists would want their work to speak for itself without the need for explanation. Art-Speak is a product of the art market and is therefore attributable to gallery owners, promoters and critics.

I am particularly interested in this aspect of Art-Speak because it reminds me of the text used in horoscopes. An example just pulled from a website now would be:

"Someone close may be instigating domestic change. Though you might not like the idea of upheaval, you might be pleased at the idea of a fresh start."

How can someone not like upheaval but like a fresh start? This is, on a practical level, contradictory but works for horoscopes in allowing people to bring their own interpretation to something. It works in horoscopes; it works in Art-Speak.

So Mixed Show takes samples of this Art-Speak, adds fake titles and artist names (another project!) to create an essentially fake show. To emphasise the point being made these are attached to building site boards in Edmund Street (Walworth/Camberwell/Kennington area), London, so that they appear to be about features of the boards (scratches, holes etc.).

Any meaning stems largely from random juxtaposition of the board features and the text; although the titles are descriptive. Obviously I chose more interesting features but there is no "art" in the sense of something being created. Any creation comes from the mind of the viewer and the combinations of words and features.

Other texts (just material immediately available on a google search for Art-Speak).

http://blog.eyemagazine.com/?p=139
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/05/artspeak-its-complicated

I also commend to you the Art-Speak generator which can be found at:

http://www.pixmaven.com/phrase_generator.html

Had I been aware of this I would have used these instead of making up my own....

Abjection...

Andreas Holzer and Terry Knight
Abjection... 2012
Steel lock and chain on shutter board
110 cms x 25 cms
Private collection


A parody game involving different identities was the starting point for this work which reaches out beyond the art world using the familiar distribution channels of street culture and mass media. In their earlier work Holzer and Knight used ironic extremes in order to imbue them with a sense of sub-cultural content. This works best, as in this case, where the division between sense and intellect is blurred; providing an imaginary stage for the activity of escape.
Contact: edmundstreetgallery@yahoo.co.uk

Walking Beside Me

Penrose Ilke
Walking Beside Me 2012
Emulsion on shutter board
150 cms x 120 cms
Private collection

Following the current demands of conceptual art that language and communication should be analysed as strictly as the images of the media dominated present, this work focuses on abstract questions of everyday encounters. It presents and discusses weighty sociological and counter-spiritual issues, with a superficial clarity poking fun at the rules, conventions, possibilities and alternatives. In consequence, this discloses the ambiguity all the more compellingly.
Contact: edmundstreetgallery@yahoo.co.uk

Enter the field...

Ivan Kennington
Enter the field... 2012
Shutter board and emulsion
110 cms x 25 cms
Private collection

This work provides a clear demonstration of the return of the real into art. It starkly illustrates the issues associated with the unknown in abstract and its performative undercurrent. This distorted vision at first seems familiar but then reveals itself to be oppressive and untruthful. With these nightmarish allegories the artist is activating contemporary associations and social references. The moment of beauty which we are then asked to re-evaluate becomes increasingly unresponsive.
Contact: edmundstreetgallery@yahoo.co.uk

Outsider

Henry Mcleod
Outsider 2012
4x4 and shutter board
40 cms x 25 cms
Private collection


This work proposes the criteria and offers a narration on the universal theme which it has come to symbolise. In staging the obvious as well as the unexplored aspects the artist renders the motif visible. Fundamentally equivocal the subject matter is situated within sequences and repetitions, overlaid and proportioned by the underlying form. This uniquely problematises the act of depiction, requiring the observer to simultaneously accept the palpable reality and then, negate it.

Launch

Rilke Ashington
Launch 2011
Steel, cement and shutter board
150 cms x 15 cms
Private collection

Here the artist has developed a personal, almost surrealistic theory of sculpture which is revealed in a coded yet decipherable manner. The artist's work begins with a simple enough subject and form which then unravels in the mind of the viewer in a dreamlike manner demonstrating the inter-relationship between the work and its antithesis. Helping us see the bourgeois mentality which partly connects itself with its observers, but from a distance.
Contact: edmundstreetgallery@yahoo.co.uk

Parallelo twin

Fiona Capri
Parallelo twin, 2012
Emulsion and shutter board
210 cms x 190 cms,
Private collection

This piece presents a re-ordering of the nature of reality and fiction, space and image, spectator and work. Rather than being witnessed in slow-time, in a given place, the piece focuses on a work viewed through its own fiction. This offers a positive-negative framework for the schema of the quoted message and has become a trademark. Demonstrating a language which evokes themes of discrimination, opposition and thoughtfulness it imbues the work with a very public “why?”.

You asked

Ray Liebersmilch
You asked. 2012
Plastic, vinyl lettering, emulsion, shutter board
45cms x 60cms
Private collection


This work's obvious sensibility to perception, body and environment provides the dominant emotion. The basic representation of experience incorporating analogous signs and symbols concentrates the signal-like meaning, notably absent in other formats. Broadening the concept of the analysis of meaning from an investigative to a descriptive phase, the work repossesses the sense of a virtual urban area; a walkthrough installation.

Recess

Pat Reedy
Recess, 2012
Steel box with shutter board surround
160 cms x 190 cms,
Private collection

Since the early 1990s the artist has been displaying a succession of street interventions in hyper-real environments. Over the courseof the intervention the work subtly take up its position, moving very little and inhabiting the space like a living picture. Each viewing is unique often embodying a cinematic or filmic quality dependent on the play of light and background environmental noise and questioning the meaning of media, environment and the self.

Di-solve two

George Mallick
Di-solve two. 2012
Masonry and shutter board
100 cms x 100 cms
Private collection


In portraying this work the artist consciously renounces elaborate or perfectionist techniques in favour of an assemblage of related materials often foreign to established artistic traditions. The theme tackled is the heroism of the “everyday” and the piece ironically questions our attitude to stylistic features in the market driven art world. The work often assimilates new materials reflecting the social and cultural framing of its location.

Pulsar

Eugene Esther
Pulsar, 2012
Shutter board, emulsion
110 cms x 110 cms
Private collection

This work functionally separates the sentimental nostalgia of more traditional painting, creating two opposing forms, whose distance almost dissolves when observed. The sensitive tonality of the poetic fiction presented by this rendering is marginalised. Easily mistaken for more routine forms, these are in reality alluding to a higher objective. Removing the emotion which is often at the core of the work, it's easy for forget the distinction between art and the world it reflects.
Contact: edmundstreetgallery@yahoo.co.uk