Initially NO

They curated the dead for a while, then when that got changed around, it was paintings and sculptures and things. It was still the same though, had to respect the objects in the display, had to treat them well, couldn’t mess with them too much. But if they were displayed in a certain way they could give magical powers so that the curator would be able to get the desire and need for more of such things. Mercenary? Yes, cross the palm with golden goals please.
People are into chewing on words at the moment, particularly when they play pool or are made to wait. But that wasn’t what this display was about. This display messed with the head. Death in any form should be disturbing it said to me at one point, where a noose was tied around the skull’s neck. Then I took a step backwards. And thought about how slick this display was, how plastic. But each of those paintings had a story. Each of them lived. And in a book of skull tales, that would have interested me. Here, I just wanted to know why there were big canvases on the floor. Like they were the undergrowth eating away at the carefully curated skulls of ancient methods of paint pacified.
This was a contrast to the room that people first walked into, where the canvas and frame were replaced by found objects, weather worn. The paintings on these were outlines. I wondered if this was where people were heading. Finding out what can and cannot be hung on a wall. Finding a way to make those things that are out there, into something. And perhaps that was more magical than clarity that could so easily be read into lame, should someone wish to mock the person who decorated their home with such a display. For if the choice of art is important. It should protect the person who buys it, in some way. It should say something more than “I enjoy your display”. Perhaps art should be more ambiguous. Perhaps it should be more detailed. Perhaps it should say something about contributing to the environment. If it doesn’t, it might just be regarded as tacky. Which is why the slick is starting to lose its 1990s kitchy grip.
Now we are talking taste here. And if I go into a café and I’m told about the special of Shepard’s pie. Am I going to think about all the queer things people could read into that? Like, oh… that it is the food for herding the heard, I see. I tend to like to think of art as separate from cookery. But I did get a surprise when I bought the bean salad. It had clover in it. Was someone trying to get me to eat like a sheep?
So, when people talk about taste in art, I find it odd. Because I never lick the canvas. Although in my younger years I did suck on the brushes sometimes, after they were washed. I think I got the habit from my Nana. She said it kept them in shape. Now I was mostly using the nylon back then and whatever else I found: forks, tooth brushes, sticks, palette knives. There is no limit to what an artist can use and create. But there is a point when an artist asks: what for?
So, that’s when I go back and have a look at that gallery again. For I want to see more of the rough. I think that the artist who is doing that, is trying to say something that is not written in a book. I think they are fighting. And that’s what I like most in the visual, is when I see an artist absolutely in need of telling the visuals in their mind. The rest is curation of the artist into something like a storyline.
Sticklers for verbs and nouns and adjectives don’t always matter much in visual art, but if we are talking narratives, then why would a curator cure other than in a situation of restoration? And I am talking about a gallery along a street which puts its focus on the antique.
It is not supposed to be unique, says the curator, it is supposed to look like something that once was and has been covered in gloss.
I’m reading into a display here. If the curator speaks, the curator does it, is through the work. It’s not about being nice and sweet, it’s not even about being neat. Let’s just say it is about a sales pitch for the pitchers who get their work hung.
Buy a packet of human remains, or a cut bunch of flowers – both can be buried or left to mummify – so that people can then ask if they can have their relatives polished bones, so they can create a tomb in their cellar for channels to the past. And what is done for bones, can also be done for other parts of the earth. When we start to recognise what we do when we give our remains to animals to live inside. That’s what one painting said to me. To another person, it’ll read entirely differently. Perhaps they’ll be redirected to where the rough paint on worn wood lives out its hung up to dry.
So, what was in the Shepard’s pie? A deed? Or am I just telling sheepy tales again? I think not. Little animals hide within the remains, which the undergrowth consumes. That’s why the paintings that live are on the floor. The skulls neat and polished and arranged in a way so one can play the knife with their ghosts.
I think the more I love the galleries, the more they grate me and what I do, but that doesn’t stop the exchange. For, who buys who, is up to the voodoo and if that’s a junk dealer making a profit, I’m going to have to think about how much I want to look at what doesn’t immediately tell me anything more than, “this is complicated and complex, but I create it with my non-dominant hand.” And if I’m looking at fan art, I’d never dream of buying it, except in print. Because a fan is a window to a program, rather than to an organic world.