AN ARTIST A WRITER A MEETING AN EXPERIMENT

The ambivalent pursuit of an art writing practice.

By Lesley Guy

I look back to the last review I wrote for Corridor8, Fiona Larkin and Ian Giles: Soft Structures at MIMA. I visited the exhibition exhausted and in pain. It was the first review I’d written in a long time. I bore the weight of a heavy moon boot encased around my fractured foot and of the chronic illness in deeper parts of my system that was making noise on top of the injury. Endometriosis. I was sweating. I usually go alone to see shows I’m reviewing; this was a preview and I was in the company of friends, including one of the artists in the show. A mistake, I know, a sick woman forcing herself to attend a public event. I couldn't keep up. I couldn’t drink. I drove home and slept. Later, I sat with that particular energy which was physical and emotional. My notes were paltry, I’d been distracted by my vulnerability and the need to perform normal. I extract these words: physical, porous, smiling, gatherings, invocation, mirroring, quiet, bodies, table, onions, earth, birthday. I get still for a while. I put away my notebook and write directly into the google doc:

High ceilinged walls painted pink to pick up a heavy child with my arms and kiss me on the cheek light hairs skin a mimic tear form made words rounded hangs lumpen without a plinth emanates an odour convincing us to move closer hover over breathing in not putting our finger on the tip of our tongues just there don't touch pink light sounds, soft Ethel a blob of dissolved paint spread into the shape of a woman stood at an easel not making tea who cares who made the tea who made the painting making art for her children gathering lines repeated from her body into mine.

And it seems as if my body wrote it.

I am not much of a poet. I don’t call myself a critic. I’m an artist and I write. I go and find my book about Jill Johnston (1929-2010), radical lesbian and The Village Voice dance columnist from 1960-1974, the critic who disintegrated. I flick through the selection of her reviews. They start out fairly conventional, reviews of dance in New York, but later, by 1967, the writing has transformed into a form of autobiography that feels more focused on documenting her adventures in the scene, at Happenings and parties, than on objectively critiquing artworks. The style becomes more gossipy, chatty, sentences and ideas flow into each other, sometimes doing away with capital letters and punctuation completely. Not only did she ‘relinquish the role of judge’ but was bold enough, in her own words, to ‘stake out a claim to be an artist–a writer–if that's what I’m doing when I get to the typewriter and decide that I like something well enough to say what I think it’s all about’. Which, I’m beginning to understand, is how I want it to be done.