Appropriate Blurry Teen-ish Camera-phone Photo

I think I like my handwriting.

Happy Pictures And Fantasy Worlds Made Of Strange Objects

I had two relatively separate ideas whose direction I was unsure of. Firstly, I wanted to take instructions from a "non-artist" and put time and effort into ideas that they may not have put much thought into. I was questioning whose thoughts and opinions regarding the creation of art were more "valid." This was in response to the fact that people who were not art students seemed to treat my half-arsed doodles with more respect than their own half-arsed doodles, while I valued their doodles because I found whoever drew them interesting as people. I was thinking about ideas like carving other people's doodles into stone (which may be difficult, practically, but I'd still like to try it), or making elaborate oil paintings out of them. I had various related ideas, such as somehow immortalising people's Facebook statuses, which are generally casually written and not intended to be taken seriously.

Alongside planning this, I was creating little magical-looking worlds and happy, childlike images out of "strange" objects such as scalpel blades. I like the challenge of incorporating practical and slightly unpleasant-looking objects into bright, happy things, retaining the contrast but aiming for some sort of coherence. However, I was slightly concerned that my choice of objects would just project the aura of trying too hard to be controversial, so when someone in Friday's artist salon mentioned that it could all possibly seem slightly contrived, I couldn't disagree.

I think the perfect solution would be to get other people to choose the objects. That way I am working with or against any kind of "ugliness" or "beauty" or "crudeness" or "maturity" they present, not anything I have chosen for myself. This sort of links the two ideas, and maintains my theme of avoiding censorship for the sake of honesty (which is more childlike).

Another Experiment That Is In Danger Of Being Immature

I'm presenting this as three prints from slightly different angles, with a visible flash (which is in different positions in each photo). This is both for hygiene reasons and because I like the repetition (from a distance the pieces would just read, "FUCKING PESSIMIST, FUCKING PESSIMIST, FUCKING PESSIMIST"). The full caption is, "The next time someone calls me a fucking pessimist... there's still pretty much nothing I can do about that." The statement is intentionally ironic, so it's not supposed to be taken seriously. The contrast between the blood and the crayon is intended to reflect the contrast between the fury and the defeatist mentality.

I'm not super sure about this piece, because I think there's a danger of people thinking, "Actually, this is stupid and immature because the statement IS pessimistic," as if that wasn't the whole point.

Peter Liversidge, Nathan Witt, writing, John Campbell, webcomics

(Peter Liversidge's "Proposal for the Jury of the John Moores Painting Prize 2012")

One slightly irrelevant observation I first want to get out of the way is to do with the possessive word "its." In the recent past, almost every piece of artwork I've seen that is mainly text uses "it's" where it actually means "its." Of course, now that I've said that, I'm going to make a tonne of spelling/grammar/punctuation mistakes in this blog entry. Maybe I shouldn't have brought this up.

Moving on abruptly, I was going to say something about using other interests in artwork. Obviously I realise that more often than not, art has to be "about" something, so it almost always relates to things which are not strictly art-related. However, I've noticed that I put my interests into separate little compartments way too often, and am slow to realise when certain things that interest me could become part of my work. What I mean is that often I have certain interests which I could really enjoy incorporating into the work I make, but I don't realise it. Often what makes me realise it is seeing art which does incorporate these things, and then I feel simultaneously dissatisfied with the way I work, and inspired. Last year I was struggling a lot with the idea that not doing any science subjects anymore meant that I wasn't using my left brain, and it felt so wrong. However, I eventually got around to seeing art which involved science and maths, and wondered why it never occurred to me before that that was a possibility. I ended up making a lot of art with charts and graphs and diagrams, which made me really happy. Now I'm starting to feel about writing the way I felt about science and maths.

A couple of blog entries ago, I was talking about finally making art that didn't involve a lot of word-y concepts and was very much separate from language and things that could be or needed to be explained in words (because I still maintain that some things are beyond words, no matter how many writer friends tell me otherwise). At the same time, I'm becoming interested in the idea of writing in the context of "fine art." I like the idea that an essay could be up on a gallery wall, as a "piece of art." The idea that in a gallery setting normal rules regarding writing don't really apply could be really freeing. You could have all the insightfulness of a normal essay but not be bound by the usual rules, and it could be very interesting.

The talk by Nathan Witt today made me think a bit more about writing's relationship to visual art. Maybe it wasn't exactly the talk itself, but seeing the artwork. I found it interesting that he also wrote, and wondered what he did with his work that was purely text. I like to think that it could sit comfortably in a gallery with his visual work. I'm not sure if that actually is the way it's presented. His visual work with captions (above) also interested me because the quirky, cynical humour reminded me of webcomics and the way they mix intelligence and playfulness. I think I want to bring some webcomic influence into my work somewhere.

(by John Campbell, picturesforsadchildren.com)

Other Stuff I Saw Or Experienced Or Thought

I think I should probably mention some of the other stuff I've seen since the start of this academic year - stuff I haven't mentioned yet. I think I'll just talk about these things briefly so that it doesn't feel like I'm just doing this for the sake of it, especially since some of it isn't really that recent anymore. Maybe I'll just bullet point some thoughts.

- Frank Stella! I don't like Frank Stella. But I think that's because his work makes me think too much about the purpose of art. I'm used to work being conceptual and "meaning" things. So to me his work all "means" the same thing. I get that his work is supposed to be the opposite of that... all this stuff about just being an object... but I just feel like that's an idea that can be expressed with one piece and doesn't need a whole career's worth of work.

- I saw some of Thomas Schutte's work at the Serpentine Gallery. As I was getting more into the idea of work that didn't have a complicated, long-winded concept, portraits seemed interesting to me. Portraits often say a lot that is beyond words. John Berger apparently linked them with self-discovery. I think that's an interesting idea.

- I saw Kiki Smith's "Behold." Her work sort of creates its own world and has a presence, possibly because of the scale of it and the mythological themes.

- Fischli and Weiss... I saw their work and wrote "chewy-looking." I like it when the medium itself is interesting because of its physical properties.

- I was at the David Zwirner gallery and saw Luc Tyman's work. I thought it was interesting that he took real objects and sort of reduced them to abstraction. Maybe "reduced" is the completely wrong word. Maybe I should mean the opposite of "reduced." That's possible.

- I was at the Walker Art Gallery and was interested by Peter Liversidge's "Proposal for the Jury of the John Moores Painting Prize 2012." I found it interesting that it wasn't actually painted by the artist. Also that it was a painting of typed letters.

- I found it interesting how the John Moores Painting Prize made it so obvious how different the approach to art is in China and in the UK. The UK work seemed more conceptual, and the work from China seemed to put a lot more emphasis on technical skill, in a very big way. Today I was talking to someone from China who said that over there to get into art school people have to really develop their skills. Over here it feels like it's a lot more ideas-based, and work has to be inquisitive and interesting. I was saying that art over here can be a lot more about social commentary than about skills and aesthetics, and she was telling me that there's probably no way they'd want that in China. I thought that was an interesting comment. I hadn't made that connection to censorship and such; I just accepted that traditions were different and technical skill was more important elsewhere.

- I saw Jarik Jongman's "Waiting Room." I feel like I'm almost obsessed with contrast and atmosphere.

- I found it interesting that Franz West's "Viennoiserie" used work from his friends, because I was thinking a lot about how interesting I found my friends as people and how that linked to me appreciating their art whether they were "artists" or not.

- I usually don't like Gilbert & George because I'm often repulsed by garishness, but I like their piece called "Cunt Scum," which I saw in Liverpool. It feels blunt and sincere.

- Kohei Yoshiyuki's "Love Hotel" at the Open Eye Gallery made me question our ideas of what is "explicit" and "inappropriate," and why. Why are vague, pixellated images of people having sex considered vulgar? Firstly, are they doing anything wrong? Did religion start this weird, almost purposefully anti-hedonist culture? Secondly, can you even properly see what they're doing?

Mariko Mori And Other Stuff

A while ago I was at the V22 gallery and I made the following note in my sketchbook:

"I have walked past half of everything not knowing if it's art or not."

I feel like a lot of contemporary art really goes hand in hand with its background information. As in, you can't really hope to figure out what it means by yourself. Any kind of interpretation you do comes almost entirely from your own head.

I was talking to my friend, and he told me that he sometimes thinks that the background information might render the artwork itself irrelevant. I told him that it shouldn't, because the art should also express some things which are beyond words. He told me, "Ain't shit beyond words." I think he thinks that because he's a writer. Goddamn writers. I think that everything is beyond words.

Although having said that, I think everything I've made in the past up until recently was extremely heavily reliant on the ideas and concepts behind it, which tended to be quite complicated and "word-y." Whatever required less extra explanation had the explanation right in the work (that is, there was text in the work). I feel like I'm just beginning to get into the habit of communicating purely using the work. I don't think that's a good thing or a bad thing; I have never been against needing background information to understand art. However, I think it's a refreshing change. I sometimes don't like words, and I'm enjoying the fact that everything I want to communicate is right there in the images or sculptures, and not in words.

Today I saw Mariko Mori's "Re-birth" at the RA. Fully knowing that I am going to sound like a GCSE student, and possibly even intending for that to be the case, I am going to say that the work was aesthetically pleasing. More importantly, I like that that appears to be the point of it. It's refreshing to see "nice-looking" art with people who aren't going out with the intention of over-analysing everything. I'm not one of those people who's started to complain that too much art these days aims to be ugly, because I completely agree that art these days should not just be about aesthetics and showcasing skill, and that there's a world of other purposes for it (there has to be, otherwise we're all just using paint to do things such as record - things which we can now do more easily using other methods). I'm just saying that it's interesting to consider that maybe we're too quick to dismiss the idea of aesthetics as an aim. Maybe that pushes us in the direction of our art having all these over-complicated meanings, and maybe it also means that we're letting ourselves think that our art says more than it actually does.

(Maybe it's just pretty and atmospheric, and maybe that's fine.)

I've just bought some polypropylene sheets (what's with art people and their unwillingness to use the word "plastic"? the Mori exhibition listed "lucite" as a medium an awful lot...) and I'm going to make some stuff. I want to make more stuff that doesn't speak in words. I think there's a lot you can say without words, and without your concept being some sort of essay.

Directions To Go In Or Not To Go In

I think my work has started to split into different directions. I think I'll move away from the idea of reactions to patronising mood-related advice because I think I have a lot less to say about that. I think I may still be interested in trying out the idea of following instructions from a "non-artist," because I think it could be an interesting experiment. However, after my AL tutorial today, I've realised that I'm most interested in the scenery I was creating, and contrast between the twee and the genuine, and the childlike and the mature. I like the humour in mixing the threatening or disturbing with the playful.