Art Critique 

Have you ever looked at an art essay and had your eyes glaze over so hard you accidentally bought shares in Krispy Kreme? Art Critic Vanessa Crofskey is sick of exclusive jargon.

Let’s start with a very real Master’s critique I was a part of:

In an orange my mother was eating is rich with discursive relationships within and between artworks, such that a type of familial resemblance exists despite the disparate eras, styles, and practices of the three artists Menzies works alongside, and despite the different forms Menzies’ works take: digital video, prints set in handmade paper, framed Risograph print, textile, printed matter. The discursivity of Menzies’ interactions as they materialise into traditionally marginalised media such as textile and handmade paper (to name two prominent examples) perform distinctly feminist actions of retrieval, reinterpretation, recontextualisation and recirculation. Or to nuance that claim somewhat, it is the aspects of the three women’s practices that Menzies works with that individually and cumulatively offer an occasion to remember and re-evaluate what it is to be a female artist in a normatively heteropatriarchal (art) world.

Rough translation:The artworks in In an orange my mother was eating bear a distinctive likeness to each other, despite different practices, artists, timelines and forms. These works use feminist materials. Traditionally ‘feminine’ media such as textiles and handmade paper speak to labour practices that have historically been sidelined.

Vanessa Crofskey