A gallery asked me to write "five words about my process." I sent a photo of the back of the frame instead.
Scrolling past a few things here that felt like the same shape twice, so this is the honest version.
A small gallery in Cork emailed last week asking for "five words on your process" they could put on a wall label. I stared at the blank box for a while. The actual process that week was: taped a 2019 electricity bill of my brother's to a board, painted over half of it, hated it, scraped it back with a palette knife, left the paint in the sink overnight.
You can't put that in five words.
So I sent them a photo of the back of the frame instead. There's a torn label from a shop that closed in 2006, and a strip of masking tape where I'd written "dont fix this" in biro a few years ago and then ignored myself.
They used the photo. Label reads "see reverse."
I don't think this is a tactic. I think I just got tired of translating the work into something that fits in a box on a form. But it's the first time a label has made me want to look at the wall it's on.
Anyone else stopped writing the statement and just shown the mess?
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the back of the frame is the real artist statement and everyone knows it. labels, tape ghosts, the little pencil marks where you changed your mind twice. galleries want the tidy version so the wall can stay quiet, but the process is never five words, it's a week of hating it and scraping it back and leaving the sink a crime scene.
ngl the electricity bill thing got me. half the paintings i actually like started as some scrap i grabbed because the canvas was too expensive that month.