In the fog of doubt and existential ‘what am I doing with my life?’ thoughts that fill my mid-40s mind at the moment, I’ve managed to connect some positive dots this week, with the help of a few things: words of wisdom from a stranger; the art of Barbara Kruger; and something very lovely that one of you said to me.
First up, the stranger. Although she doesn’t feel so much like a stranger because I’ve been reading her weekly emails for years now. She’s called Helen Perry, and she gives advice on small business marketing — building mailing lists, social media strategies, content creation, that sort of thing. I also know about her puppy, I know about her piles of washing, her weekend plans, her skiing holidays, and what she watches and listens to for business and pleasure. When her email lands I always open it. I’ll usually find something valuable in what she shares but mainly I just love how she says it.
In this week’s email Helen told me about how she hasn’t really posted on Instagram at all this year. She used to put out a lot of small biz content, and it was really useful stuff. She has been wondering whether anyone had noticed that she had stopped posting. To be honest I hadn’t.
Why the silence though? ‘It’s not that deep’, she said,
it wasn't planned and it's not an I've-had-it-with-Insta thing. It's about knowing what to post about. When I opened the account 6+ years ago I stuck a yellow post-it note to my computer that said "is it valuable to others?" and it's a yard stick I've used to measure my work against ever since. I'm not sure exactly where the business is going this year or what I'm selling. So if it's not valuable (or doesn't feel authentic) don't post it.
Aside from the wisdom of avoiding pointless Instagram posting just to be visible, her question made me think about what value my work brings to others. And it also made me think about the exhibition of recent work by the American artist Barbara Kruger, which I had seen the day before at the Serpentine Galleries in London.
Kruger has been making art since the 1970s, and is known for her bold text-based images, which address mechanisms of power, gender, class and capital. All the juicy stuff I love. Through her provocative slogans and images appropriated from mass media, Kruger challenges viewers to critically examine societal norms and values, and asks us to consider what it means to have something ‘useful’ to say in a world saturated with visual and textual information.
There are several really thought-provoking artworks in this show, which brings together room-sized installations, videos, sound and large collage posters. Everything demands your full attention, partly because the information and images come at you thick and fast so it’s hard to keep up unless you stay laser-focused. Blink and you might miss something.
But also because the meaning in every combination of text+image seems profound and really important to absorb. She directly addresses the viewer in single-word statements or short phrases, similar to the visual language of headlines, which creates a sense of urgency. It’s almost like she’s the Oracle.
Take this artwork, for example, in which Kruger has superimposed the words ‘You don’t need to concentrate all the time’ on to an image of a light switch:
It’s true that we can’t actually concentrate constantly, that we have to switch off sometimes. And it’s particularly hard in the face of the firehose of digital information coming at us every day now. But in the context of Kruger’s disconcerting juxtaposition of image and text it feels like she is warning us not to switch off at all, but to do the exact opposite — to keep vigilant about what’s going on around us, what we take for granted, and what we’re not seeing when the lights are off.
Kruger often emphasises that her work is not issue-specific. ‘It’s more of an ongoing commentary’, she says. For me though this piece is about democracy, and how it dies in darkness. With democracies around the world under increasing strain, those fighting for their freedoms and the rule of law urgently need to keep concentrating and shining the spotlight on the erosion of rights happening in plain sight.
I find Kruger’s artworks valuable because they make us critically reflect on the extent to which we question the words and images we see everyday. Frankly, we don’t question them enough. Critical thinking is not only useful, it’s essential. It’s my number one aim in my undergraduate teaching, and it’s what I try to communicate through my writing here too.
So I was really touched by something that one of my readers told me this week about the value my work brings to her. Although I’m paraphrasing a bit here, she basically said she loves what I say about art and how I say it. She told me about an exhibition that she had recently been to see, and how she had spent more time looking at the artworks than she ever would have done in the past. Since she had started reading and listening to The Gallery Companion she had learnt to think about art in different ways. I had given her the knowledge and confidence to look more closely and to trust her own responses.
You know who you are: thank you for sharing that with me. Hearing lovely feedback like this definitely helps in my bleakest middle-aged moments when I’m cursing myself for my lack of financial stability, questioning everything I’m doing, and wondering why on earth I haven’t started saving for a pension yet. In a world saturated with so much vapid information I know at least that there is value in my voice.
As always Gallery Companions, I’d love to know what you think about the art and ideas I’ve talked about here. Are there any writers or podcasters whose content you always read or listen to? What is it about what they say that you love? Please share your favourites in the comments!
On Being Valuable