I guess interpreting a work of art is still one of the few spaces in contemporary life where we are forced to confront the void of comprehension that exists between ourselves and the Other.
As much as Social Media is encouraging ‘creatives’ to be production lines for our own identity, which is built upon an history of art valuation based on the power of certain voices, nobody can really fully deconstruct all art and artists into mere equivalents in a market-based, or any other system.
It might be the case that I am never remembered or revered for the work I have produced. It may remain what Gregory Sholette calls ‘dark matter’, part of the mass of creative produce that lay hidden in plain sight.
But none of this can lessen my, or any other artist’s life-long devotion to what they do, whether it translates as a professional practice in our business-dominated lexicon, or remains perceived as an intense hobby.
This is why it is kind of sad to drag this most hefty of works out of my parents’ shed to take some final photographs before demolishing it. Because, in the framing of artistic productivity, it’s just one random work of middling standards in the body of work I’ve made.
But, like myself with the works of others, you can only see the tip of the iceberg.
I cannot demand peoples’ attention enough, nor should I, to articulate a year long back-story; how the work was my most articulate display of mental illness to date, how it was the focal work for an entire exhibition project that took up an entire, and how it was the last sculptural-painting work I made before I had to realise I neither had the space of resources to produce such works. Alas, this was also a work that crossed the New Labour to Conservative Austerity years, and crossed a sea change from the unbridled productivity of my early 20s to the heavier creativity of my late 20s and 30s.
The work was made from literally all sorts, and something has caused it to decay , maybe from a mixture of mould and oxidisation, or something. Equally, every time the work gets moved, another bit of the sculptural aspect gets smashed. It wasn’t, and still isn’t the kind of work I could ever afford to look after properly.
But it’s nice to take some photos to say one last goodbye to it.
John B Ledger 