June 2019
107 Projects, Redfern
this is a
conversation piece
A solo exhibition of works by artist Jennifer Brady
“… dealing with language as an entity with its own transformative powers, rather than as a surface (even if active, and negotiated) upon which to draw. Some artists using words don’t love them as a core material, but use the unsettling effect of words to invigorate an uncertain picture with ambiguity…a space for the mind’s eye to absorb a written voice.” [1]
Conversation is an act of exchange. The ebb and flow of consciousness, language and matter; a dialogue suggestive of something more sustained, more substantial than the banality of chatter; more intimate than debate; more compassionate than gossip. Yet, it remains elusive. Occupying the liminal space between people (and things), a conversation is a collaboration; a work of art with more than one creator, a co-written narrative, or poetic prose. This semiotic activity uses the voice as a sonic and pictorial device, articulating and communicating through words and sounds; otherwise defined as language.
Language may be performed, spoken, written, recorded, repeated, crescendoed and silenced, as a collective means of navigating and locating one’s self. However, language may not be transparent. Language is unforgiving, no matter how hard we try to form clarity, we cannot materially replicate the translucency of unexpressed thought - language has permanence and demand, but not necessarily an answer or resolution.
this is a conversation piece presents a new installation of text-based works by emerging artist Jennifer Brady. This exhibition acts as a provocation for an open conversation; an exchange between artist and audience, private and public, observer and participant. A confessional and cyclic monologue is established as Brady’s deeply personal thoughts and over-thoughts become engaged in a larger dialogue with the space, becoming physically manifested; visceral, embodied, and present. Thoughts exists as internal and subjective, the ‘things’ of consciousness. When these thoughts exit the logical realm of the mind they materialise as language, pertaining a physicality and permanence. This transitional space, the in-between space, is where Brady’s practice is situated – language as a medium, image, subject, object. Consolidating verbal-visual hybridity, Brady as author, has written with a discursive or conversationalist format, the words point to both the sentence that it might end up in, and also to the thought that precedes it. Each piece speaks for itself, playing between visual dynamics and their physical embodiments of the written tongue, a form of visual poetry American poet and critic Richard Kostelanetz calls ‘imaged words and worded images.’ By exploring the spatial and interactive aspects of text-based artworks, the installation wishes to posit the real sense of bodily, and not just intellectual or superficial interaction with language that reading entails.
As a communicative platform, Brady’s installation and performance investigates the potential of language in vocalising the un-expressible. Self-reflexive and raw, the works look to personal failure and inadequacy, aligning with new-punk methodologies, that celebrate the maladjusted self, and low-fidelity aesthetics – praising the cheap and unrefined. Both encompassing the unvalued and imperfect; the damaged and disregarded; the self.
Evolving from personal experiences with mental health, Brady employs language as a device to translate thoughts and experiences that are difficult to articulate; poignant, ambiguous, and confronting. An uncomfortable and confusing representation of overthinking, emotions, ideas, memories and feelings that are difficult to express, externally irrational but in our minds make clear, coherent sense. In doing so, Brady demonstrates the adaptation of pre-existing structures of language to develop new understandings of mental discomfort and anxiety.
These articulations are not meant to be coherent or ‘transparent’ in enunciation, but rather cathartic upon permeation, because in doing so requires acknowledgement and acceptance; an acceptance of a disquieted state of consciousness. Through vulnerability and intimacy, Brady invites us to engage with her mental distress, presenting mental quirks that are common and casual, reaching for a (inter)connection, empathy, and understanding, oscillating between moments of visibility and invisibility.
The tonal premise of the work is repetitive and reiterative, as Brady’s thoughts collectively present a complex praxeology of coping, processing, reaffirming, and responding. Language talking about language; language talking about the speaker; the meta of the mind. The banners within the installation presents a clear tone of discomfort with the self and with articulation failing to holistically embody her thoughts – a process that will inevitable fail due to the translucency of our internalised thinking and overthinking. However, it is not necessarily the process of explaining those thoughts that she is frustrated with, but the frustration with thoughts that she has to explain. The idiosyncratic (new) voice that underlines this is a conversation piece is an accumulation of a variety of registers, with each piece pertaining its own ‘voice’ or character within a collective conversation; each object conversing with itself, themselves, us, and the artist. The text used in the installation consists, for the most part, of short apertures of confessional text, highly personal in its doubtful, accusatory, conflicted, and self-deprecating tone. The banner works bluntly reflect this language, whilst her printed works are more intimate and quieter, floating between more-less and less-ness, reconciliation and tension, quietness and loudness. The work negates itself – the language used to nuance notions of precarity, precariness and vulnerability with the anxious and unsettled self. Interestingly, whilst the human voice is distinctive to its speaker, there is evident flexibility. Brady’s voice, although her own, remains universal and relatable through the vagueness of her dialogue. She does not specify people, places, or temporality, allowing her to engage in a sense of humanness – reaching those with and without experiences of mental health and anxiety.
The immersive and interactive nature of this installation encourages the audience to engage with the work directly; walk through, between, within, and on the works. Resemblant of a headspace - this is not a comfortable space, but a lived and active stage, in which Brady utilises throughout the duration of her performances. The sonic performance is a point of authorship and ownership, as Brady personifies the installation through verbally explaining and over explaining to visualise thinking and overthinking – a live process of dealing with and making sense of confusing thoughts. Lexical ambiguity exemplifies mental ambiguity as Brady’s looped voice bridges on uncertainty, chaos and distress, engaging with the contradictory experience of finding our voice, to be heard, and yet not always listened to. Mental health advocacy is conventionally articulate and measured, whilst in this instance a chaotic sensibility is the point, giving space and expression to something more real and unruly as an act of empowerment, moving beyond the clinical to proactivity. this is a conversation piece is not about fixing, but doing what art has always done – challenging and provoking, taking us into difficult places. It looks at what artists can offer in terms of a critical experience, and a very different kind of critical care.
Some of us may find it effective, perhaps therapeutic, to verbalise our thoughts. Through language, both spoken and visualised, Brady incites a sense of intimacy – a feeling of familiarity, of relatedness. An openness with experiences of the everyday, of living. Voiced and untold, spoken words in this instance are more than an accounting or recounting of (over)thoughts, but initiates a space or platform to facilitate a conversation around shared/lived experiences of mental health, improving discussion and understanding towards a topic that remains fairly taboo— heard and unheard, seen and unseen, known and unknown. this is a conversation piece, acts as a conversation navigating difficult emotional and sensory terrain leading towards (inter)personal connection, validation and understanding.
This exhibition is only a piece to a much larger conversation.
Wriiten by Sarah Rose
Curator
[1] Richard Tipping, ‘The Word As Art’, Editorial, ArtIink Magazine, March 2007, Issue 27:1