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)