What is an Artists Statement? Typically, an artists’ statement fulfils the basic function of explaining an artist’s work to an audience unfamiliar with their practice. It may present the thought processes the artist has gone through in order to reach the point they are at in their current practice; listing influences such as texts, writers, philosophies, other artists and contemporary cultural references they have found useful along the way. It is, at root, a map of the intellectual journey they are taking, and is generally instrumentalised in the creation of shorter texts suitable for a variety of applications to funders or galleries, to show other artists, or simply for a press release for a new project. It may also capture specific moments of creative juncture deemed critical, or merely interesting, to the artist or from comments from peers or friends.
Every artist I have ever met has had an uncomfortable relationship with their artist statement. In many ways a lag from art school education, where students are sometimes required to write a statement as part of the examination of their degree, the artists’ statement still retains the tang of being tested to make sure you’ve thought everything through, you understand your own practice, you’re not just making it up as you go along. In an age of contemporary artistic practice which permits objects made from found objects), fireworks and cans of shit, a well-formed and carefully researched artists’ statement can be a useful foil against claims of decadence, flippancy or simple humorous intentions.
So far, so good. My issues about many of the artists’ statements I read, however, is the number of them either claiming a single explanation of artworks or concealing themselves behind obfuscating layers of verbiage, quoting the intellectual giants of the arenas of art, history, philosophy and cultural critique [not being very clear]. As a graduate of art schools and reader of art books I can appreciate the desire to display this learning, but wonder sometimes if it fulfils an explanatory function for a wider readership. I also wonder if some artists (and I am surely as guilty of this as anyone else) confuse their understanding of their work with a general introduction to their work – as if their reading of a piece were the only one, or in some way more ‘correct’, presenting an authorised view of their practice and closing down dialogue instead of revelling in the multiple interpretations that publication or exhibition bring.
