Cushla Donaldson raises some curious questions

about the word "project".....

Dear John,

I am very much enjoying reading your blog. It allows me to keep up with what is be produced at home and some of the debate and critisim around it, which has spilled over in to converations I have with my friends. So it seems it is performing to its mission statement.

I have found that I would like to make a comment. Not on any particualar topic or exhibition but concerning the use of a particular terminology that has been used more than once in the writing on the blog. That is concerning use of and around the term "project".

It was some time ago a fashion to term the general practice, and even the "themes" or research of a single artists practice by this phrase. It was often used for the function of reduction by the interviewer, critic or artist themselves. Two fictitious examples would be:

"So would you say your project is linked to the other artists in that it is research based?"

"My project is grounded in the formal qualities of the objects that surround us daily."

I sense, from my general discussions and reading that it has now, fortunately gone out of fashion. Perhaps from overuse by those, who on more in depth questioning couldn't expand successfully on a reduced "project". Or perhaps, I would like to think, it's temporal, closed, lightweight and vaguely dismissive connotations could not stand next the practical, visual qualities of the term "practice". Or perhaps even "life's work". As an aside I don't think I have, nor will, see a sentence beginning with "Munchs project was..." Nor would it be possible or correct to say "Kippenbergers project…" unless you were about to say "Kippenberger had a multiplicity of projects unlike other artists with their single projects". I'm sure as an arts writer you can see that this not only lazy, but also incorrect and where I'm going with this.

I have avoided using the specific examples I have found, as it is an issue of wider concern and not one of personal techniques or vocabulary.

Best wishes,

Cushla Donaldson