Linden New Art

In one of my many past lives, I worked as an art gallery assistant at Town Hall Gallery (THG) in Hawthorn, Victoria. I was the ‘Girl Friday’ of THG, supporting the curator and senior curator in exhibition programming, installations, liaising with artists, managing the gallery blog, running the gallery shop and taking care of the team of volunteers. It was the embodiment of a dream I’d had since I was 16 years old, which was to be an art critic!

Fast forward a few years and the delightful Melinda Martin from Linden New Art commissioned me to write two pieces for two exhibitions: A Modern Day Quest for Feeling and Creating Certainty. Responding to creative work in another creative medium is called Ekphrasis (how cool is that word?!). I had the opportunity to wander the galleries and let my imagination run wild, able to take off my copywriter hat for a moment and don my creative writing fedora.

Writing about art is still one of my favourite things to do because it’s about extrapolating meaning and extending the experience of the work. The goal isn’t to overshadow or roast the artist, but rather to give the audience of the work another entry point into an experience of the work itself. Writing in this way reminds me that there’s so much more to any creation than meets the eye – especially when it comes to business, too.