Artist Statement Writing with Ellen Angus
Last month, artist Ellen Angus helped us to unpick the many different iterations of the artist statement, including the versions we write for ourselves, our friends, our comrades, the statements written for us by others (computer generated statement, anyone?) and the iterations that we simply never wanted to write at all.
This event was part of the New Midland Group Development Programme, delivered in partnership with our 1525 Collective's current project, Future of Futures. In the session we looked at the ways in which the process of writing an artist statement can be transformative, perplexing and exciting.
Some of the activites included writing dark statements for eachother, which was a way for us to be creative when writing about our own work and the work of others, giving ourselves license to write however we sought fit; critically discusing a text by Gilda Williams entitled 'How to write an artist statement' ; and trying out AI generated artist statements.
By the end of the session, the focus shifted from constructing artist statements to creating dark statements and exploring a more experimental approach, while getting to know each other in smaller groups.
Check out a reflective resource developed by Ellen Angus as a result of the session and try out the different methods of creating artist statements for yourself!
Images taken by Adam Grainger