My Experience Writing Content for Galleries and Artists
With the last decade of my life spent in the art industry, I have written extensively, be it for art galleries, artists, or art publications. My experience with writing covers the entire range of art sector communication. Each medium comes with its own sets of challenges and advantages.
I was in the unique position of having to write the fine-grained details of the Instagram post, encapsulating the nature of very complex artworks within parameters designed with an ‘attention span’ that’s almost infinitesimal, while still having to write show-stopping gallery statements, which had to appeal to all audiences. The dialectical nature of these requirements has been, however, one of the most valuable learnings I have achieved, which stretches beyond the boundaries of writing itself, into the realm of overall communicative strategy. At all points, it was imperative to have the ‘gallery voice’.
However, there were several challenges that came with commercial art writing. Applying to attend major art shows such as Frieze London was to learn how to do art writing as an art of persuasive writing. This is because art applications not only talked about the quality of art but also talked about it within a wider dialogue of art. This art of art writing was to make it to the top art booths.
However, the process of working with individual artists has led to new and different areas of creativity being opened up. Writing proposals for art fairs and grants for jeweler Alice Langbrown involved immersing oneself in the role of contemporary jewellery being positioned both in relation to traditional craft and in relation to fine art. In turn, the task of writing the text that accompanies photographer Tui Caro-Lister’s first book was yet another different task altogether – that of complementing and not competing with the photographs, but also at the same time allowing the images to speak for themselves.
Perhaps the most cognitively demanding work came through my commissions for critical writing. The quarterly journal 'New Zealand Review of Books Pukapuka Aotearoa' invited me to review two very different works: first, Brannavan Gnanalingam's Sodden Downstream, and later, Life on Volcanoes: Contemporary Essays, a compilation by multiple female authors. The latter review, entitled Hurting in Different Ways, delved into the way distinct voices created a cohesive narrative about female experience in the contemporary setting. When The Pantograph Punch, an online arts and culture journal, republished the piece, it marked one of those satisfying cross-platform moments that expanded the review's reach beyond its original academic audience.
The switches between promotional writing and critical analysis involved some fundamentally deep changes in perspective. Instead of arguing for work, I was now called upon to appraise it-to consider it in its wider contexts, to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, to operate both as a reader and as a critic. This duality has proven very useful. Knowing how to sell art informs your critique of it, while critical skills hone promotional writing because they make you have to identify what it is that truly makes work resonate.
In the world of art, to write means to be conversant in several voices at once: the voice of the artist statement, the voice of marketing, the voice of art theory, and the voice of outreach.
Whether it's writing an Instagram caption with no more than thirty words or penning an academic essay consisting of no less than three thousand words, the task at all times remains constant: how does one use language as a powerful tool to render the invisible visible, say the unsayable, and connect minds across the unbridgeable span that art represents?
