Charles Avery's installation with accompanying text could easily be considered an illustration amongst his many other drawn forms of the 'Island' that he has been creating and developing since 2004. Avery likens his work and characters in The Island to that of the Coen brothers' "In the way [the Coens] favour the same actors from film to film."
As a standalone piece 'Untitled' or 'Miss Miss finally gives in by the tree Where Aeaen sought to bamboozle the One-Armed Snake by attaching himself to the tree to make himself a bigger thing' is meaningful in it's own right, combining philosophical and symbolic thought with wit and narrative he has presented a piece that is both partial and complete.
Is there something of a Marxist ideology here, after all?
There certainly seems to be something in the artificial cryptic-ness of museum 'speak' - The plaques and booklets that are so full of nothing. A kind of Art Big - You Small feel to it all, maintaining the status quo and mystique of a gallery, perhaps.
A kind of powerplay?
Saatchi is the case in point. 'Newspeak' indeed.
I read an article on the exhibition some time ago - "It's Big, But is it Clever?" Can't remember where though, or who wrote it. Title sums it up pretty efficiently anyway.
"The poem is spoken be a girl with an Electra complex. Her father died while she thought he was God" -Sylvia Plath
- Critiques
- Rationales
- Annotation
- Titles
- Writing as art
- Essays
- Articles
- Records
- Journals
Artists giving their work titles is a primarily 20th C thing. Prior to that the 'titles' were mostly just descriptive - e.g. The Madonna on the Rocks.
There is something of a discussion to be had about whether a title affects a piece for the better or worse, though like most things it would probably be best to approach on a case-by-case basis.
It's not something I've given much thought to before now - not enough, anyway - just how the way work is displayed can affect it's perception. The differences between ours and other people's methods were quite striking in some ways.
