I’m pretty confident that most artists’ aesthetic decisions are just that. They make

things that look good. Maybe try to create a mood or something. And all of the lofty

conceptual frameworks get erected around them posthumously, by the artists

themselves, whilst they nervously hover over a keyboard, drinking a bottle of Jacob’s

Creek, eyeing off their stupid-ass site-specific balloon-installation or whatever, as it

hovers contemptuously in the corner of their studio, silently judging them for their

myriad intellectual failings and threatening to make them look ridiculous for

spending 4 years at art school without learning any objectively measurable skills,

when they could have got a trade in cabinet making like Gary, all the while gingerly

fapping out some randomly-assembled amalgam of every other artist statement

ever, and trying to remember not to use the word ‘liminal’ too many times in one

paragraph and actually, under these unflattering lighting conditions the whole thing

literally just looks like a pile of balloons for fuck’s sake, like, is that something people

are going to be interested in? What if they pop on the way to the gallery? Should I

add something about ‘impermanence’ to my exhibition proposal? And more

pressingly, how am I going to explain to my Mum what I’ve done with my life?

It’s for this reason I would never insult an audience by writing a meaningless artist

statement that failed to convey any useful information about my artwork.

Ross Vaughan, 2018