Any helpful suggestions?

Hi, just to do something really shameful and personal... this is a bit of text I wrote up for someone when they asked for some explaniation to the images on the gambia castle website of my recent show there. Now, I can't stand writing when it becomes for an actual point, when the writing ACTUALLY has to be able to provide some necessary information. I feel it is boring and incoherent when all I want is to sound like Francis Stark ( witty, personal, funny, clever, meaningful) so I thought I would jump on in there and share my boring text with you and ask for suggestions. Does anyone have any good tips about how to write in an engaging way about their work and others work? Are some just born with the gift and will others never have it? How oh how.......

On Benefits Of Building

27.04.07

It was with this exhibition that I really wanted to tackle having and ‘existence’ in the gallery. So often my work depends upon and works closely with outside/exterior/readymade spaces. The thought of a whole art gallery to set up work in is not the most exciting for me. The thought of making an outdoor sculpture park is. The thought of making a book with buddies is.

So it was with this show that I thought I would attempt to co-opt different elements of what I found exciting while trying to tackle having a ‘show’ at the same time. I wanted this challenge because more and more I think our practices start defining themselves with a few key things that characterize our work and I guess I wanted to open this space up somehow.

The flags, the wall-extensions, the window panes, the blocking out of windows, the door with a peep hole in it to view an image of a man building a wall… These were all attempts at claiming and overtaking a space in a severe yet fragile way. I like the idea of trying to include myself into spaces inappropriately and I guess even in a dorky kind of way. I noticed with this show I was doing things that I was almost embarrassed by and wanting this to be a very real part of the show. Climbing the stairs you see the flag that’s says ‘AT LAST’. At last what? At last you get to see my show. I have arrived at last. Here I am and ‘My Poetry is Open’

Walking down the hallway are interruptions to the natural flow of the hallways. A pile of while bricks offers itself as a pillar. Further down from this are two right angles of mini brick walls concreted into the ground almost welcoming you and framing the entrance to the first room but really just getting in your path in a pathetic sort of way.

“We Must Build in the Open” are the words chalked on the floor in one of the rooms. All the work was very much directed to the windows. Either directing you to look out of them or completely blocked out. This is where the tension in my work is I guess. I am much more comfortable with my work in the outdoors.

Throughout the show are photos of myself and a friend doing performative actions with bricks. One of these locations was an abandoned property just down the street and around the corner from the gallery. It was here that my friend and I made walls, threw around bricks, balanced ourselves on our constructions and had running races with each other to see who could build a wall the fastest.

It was also in this spot that I returned to in the evening with some other Gambia Castle members in tow carrying my heavy brick walls and sculptures and attempted to make my ‘Sculpture Park’. I concreted and nailed walls, plaques and signs around the abandoned house that already had piles of bricks and rubble around it. I think it was unclear as to what was already there and what I had contributed to the location. This is often exactly the space I like my work to operate within. A very vague statement that is to be encountered by you and does not declare itself as dazzling and important. This is why I will continue to do public works and sculpture… the viewer has a chance to notice it or completely miss it but they have to be there determining whether or not to take seriously as there are not signs or placards saying what it is and what it doing there.

This was my first attempt at a mid-sized sculpture park. I drove past today (14.05.07) roughly 3 weeks later. Some of the works remain intact and some of the works have been pushed over and piled up with the bricks that were already there.