Category: Commentary

Commentary, Exhibitions1 Comment

Idiot’s Checklist For Exhibiting Your Work When You’ve Never Done It Before – by A.N Idiot

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

It’s not quite true that I’ve never done it before but, compared with a table in a village hall and a tent in a garden, actual wall space in an actual gallery room was not only a step up but also came as something of a culture shock. There’s a big difference between unstable carboard easels at child grab height or chasing after art work knocked off its stand by a heaving tent flap, and fresh white walls with barely visible hanging devices you’ve no idea how to make use of. Who knew fishing line played such a part? Or … Continue reading Idiot’s Checklist For Exhibiting Your Work When You’ve Never Done It Before – by A.N Idiot

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That Art/Money/Patronage thing

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

This is from The Conversation 19/07/2021, republished with permission, and it’s here to come back to each time I need to get my head around the NFT (non-fungible token) business. Artists have to eat. They have to pay bills. Giving work away for ‘exposure’ as so many of us have done or are doing is a devaluing of the creative product and makes it harder for those whose livelihood depends on sales. At some level though, this seems to breach a barrier of seemliness. Patronage smacks of obedience; conformity to the wishes of a paying patron; being kept as a … Continue reading That Art/Money/Patronage thing

Assignment 5, Assignments, Commentary, Coursework, Part 52 Comments

Curation

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

A factor we’re asked to consider for Assignment 5 is curation – how to display or present our work and what might inform our choices. We’re pointed to a number of artists for examples of how they have curated their own work as a guide. The difficulty I found when following this up was that none, if they had one person exhibitions at all, had curated the content, and most had only one piece of work on show in any given gallery. Nevertheless, the principles still apply – what order (temporal, thematic, drama, palette, size, message impact), what background (I … Continue reading Curation

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Goodbye Painting1, it’s been PoPtastic

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

This is the end of the line for this blog; the paint has been splashed and dripped, dribbled and scratched at, trowelled on in great wadges, and spread so dilute it’s barely visible. It’s been applied under, over, and around bits of packing paper; I’ve stuck string and dead grass to sheets of cartridge, and let the local wildlife make a Pollock. The blog will stay here so new starters can see what 61% looks like, but don’t skip to the end to see how it turned out, look at the struggles I had at the beginning, trying to make … Continue reading Goodbye Painting1, it’s been PoPtastic

Assignment 4, Commentary, Coursework, Part 4, Research & Reflection1 Comment

Formative feedback, Part 3

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

For logistical reasons, it made more sense earlier to deal with written elements of the course after completing the practical work. Some of those conditions still pertain but seem likely to persist due to current lockdown conditions delaying delivery of materials, and so I’ll need to make some logistical and physical accommodations to progress. One thing to emerge from this upside down and back to front way of doing things is a sudden realisation that following up the work of other artists is beginning to make sense in terms of my own practice, and another is that this has most … Continue reading Formative feedback, Part 3

Commentary, Research & Reflection2 Comments

“Would I say this was good if I didn’t know it was a Pollock?”

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

So what’s this about? To some extent, it’s a follow-on from Brian Eno’s discussions on the matter of art and how to classify and value it. His thesis is that, so long as there is no taxonomic model for positioning different kinds of creative art (the things we do that we don’t need to do – like hair styles), value will always be dictated by a few people at the top who have established a reputation and a kind of provenance by being in the right place with the right people at the right times. This can only lead to … Continue reading “Would I say this was good if I didn’t know it was a Pollock?”

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Brian Eno on art, value, and culture

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

This is from my other blog and comprises a critique of Eno’s lecture to the AA School of Architecture while acknowledging the initial questions Eno asks and his stated premise. Brian Eno’s lecture to the AA School of Architecture takes on the problem of how to talk about, to write about, to classify and describe art. Or that was the plan. The lecture starts well with the idea that the arts – all of them – are everything you don’t have to do as illustrated by screwdrivers. The business end is a fixed design, functional and with no room for … Continue reading Brian Eno on art, value, and culture