I visited an exhibition by two artists this week of small sculptures and paintings and then went to the artist talk a few days later. Whereas on first sighting I had been impressed by the tactile and whimsical use of materials for the sculptures and the use of paint and composition in the paintings, the words added little. I simply didn’t want to know about the reiterated ‘failings’ of the artists, information about how long each work had taken to complete and descriptions of the content. That may have humanised the works for the rest of the audience but that wasn’t what I needed. If the intention in talking about art is to further illuminate a visual work through language, that may bring new associations and unexpected insights, it begs the question as to whether something is then being added to the experience of looking or is just providing soundbites. Having been to a number of such artist talks I have to ask myself if I am expecting too much. Can I rightly expect an artist to articulate what they were thinking or is that down to me to work out? After all, a painting or a sculpture is a visual experience and each viewer is going to experience it in different ways.

For instance, one thing that struck me about work of both artists was the question of time. Found objects and found images are both the past viewed from the present and the present viewed from the future. They are at the border of the conjunction between the known and the unknown. That is of interest in that it isn’t a description or a soundbite but an insight into the thinking of the artist. Unfortunately, the time connection wasn’t mentioned and the only time factor was the length of time taken up by the talk.

Being able to distil the idea behind a work or even an entire practice into pragmatic, concrete language is for some artists difficult. When intuition plays such a vital role in the creative expression to pinpoint a ‘why’ for every decision made is pointless. Not knowing exactly why that colour or that line was used is not a drawback. On the other hand labels serve to diminish the work and when the artist’s intent is given greater importance than the work itself the visual representation suffers. Too often today, what passes for an idea turns out to be propaganda, the need to promote something such as climate change or indigenous politics. Being able to spin a narrative around a work does not make it good let alone improve how it looks.

So, what if anything should be the content of an artist talk? We can take Picasso at face value when he said that if he could explain it in words he wouldn’t have any need to paint it.

When I was still producing contemporary dance productions, I did little to help the audience in the belief that providing descriptions, interpretations or explanations diminished the audience’s capacity to contribute meaningfully to the work. After all, the audience and what they bring to the performance is at least half of any work of art. Contemporary dance tends to scare off people who come seeking a classical ballet narrative and find only movement. More than once I saw the rows of expensive seats empty out in front of me at the interval when dance companies visited new productions. It was all too easy watching yet another version of West Side Story or Swan Lake but dance as just movement – in spite of millennia of dance being just that – proved to be one step too far. Asking what a work of art ‘means’ is no different.

A painting is about paint, about edges, about conjunctions, about how the brush moved the paint but in the end it may not about any of those elements. A painting has an inner life if it is any good. And a sculpture is the same. What I wanted to hear from the sculptor was the experience of handling the materials, the tactile and aesthetic sensation of joining disparate wood and stone, the use of rhythm, composition and contrast. A description of a scavenging walk on the beach was not so much about collecting as an affinity to shape and texture aligned to the history of the stone or driftwood. While the exact reason for selecting a particular piece of material may not be evident, the connection to it which may be rooted in the past, is of importance.

An artist I spoke to a while ago told me that she had a collection of twigs to which she added continually and lovingly preserved. She had used them as a faut alphabet but that wasn’t the reason for collecting them. The link to past and present was palpable; the link between nature and human sensibility at the heart of the looking. I didn’t attend the artist talk but a very brief in-gallery chat elicited what I wanted to know in that the words weren’t pre thought or scripted but then again, I’ve experienced the embarrassed incoherence of artists trying to explain themselves. At a recent conference in Adelaide on applying for a grant, the speaker asked that each member of the audience use only ten words to explain their practice. After five minutes most were still trying to find the first word let alone the following nine.

As sculptor David Smith said though,

…you are the artist, the creator, and it is your own ego that is being satisfied. It is rewarding if others understand your aim but it is never your duty to explain it….