Yet this goes against all of the articles I've read about how to avoid this sort of art jargon. Even after almost 4 years of art education I still can't bring myself to fully buy into this language which, for people who aren't art academics, turns contemporary art into a big joke ('International Art English') This sort of language is easy to scorn and ridicule... but it's also easy to find yourself using it, however much you try to avoid it. 'Like Orwell’s Newspeak... as an in-joke, a private language, a posture, or maybe out of fear – to maintain some questionable status among equally questionable peers' (eye magazine)
Is it possible to strike a balance here? To write about your art in a way that absolutely anyone can read and understand (without needing an art education to be able to decode it), while also using language that is intellectual enough to impress art academics?
This article has been hanging up in the printmaking room all year, and I think it sums up the issues and solutions clearly: 'Writing an artist statement? First ask yourself these four questions" (the guardian)
For our abstracts, we've been asked to answer a very different set of four questions:
-What sort of things do you make?
-What sits in the field you identify with?
-Is your field an established one or did you have to invent it?
-How does what you do represent a different way of working within your field?
