Art Review Writing Workshop

The Art Writing Workshop has to have been my most inspiring time during Unit X, I felt it was relevant to my course and I found the lecture both interesting and inspiring.
We began the workshop by listening to a short lecture about where you can find art reviews and who they are aimed at. We discussed how you find reviews in different places that are aimed for different audiences, for example reviews found in newspapers are most often written in a manner that would appeal to a larger audience, the language normally being quite simple therefore no art knowledge is necessary to understand the  review. Online art magazines, and art magazines specifically designed for people with a keen interest in arts hold more complex reviews, using language that sometimes requires art knowledge to understand the review fully.

We looked at a 'a-n' an online art magazine; 'Interface' a section on the website is a place where people can post opinions and reviews of exhibitions where they are open for discussion. There is also opportunities available where you can receive a bursary to cover costs of getting to a exhibition to then write a review. This is an opportunity I am highly interested in, therefore I am going to keep my eye out to see if anything arises that really grabs my interest.

After reading a selection of reviews and getting to know the different tones in which reviews can be written we were asked how we felt about writing a review ourselves. This seemed a daunting task at first, I felt that I didn't have enough art knowledge to be able to write a review, also lacking the confidence to be able to assert my own opinion on an exhibition. Several other students said they felt the same way; therefore we discussed how we could reign in our own opinion and thoughts, as well as discussing methods on where to begin when review writing.

The Holden Gallery is currently holding the exhibition 'Creation/Destruction'; we therefore used this exhibition as a way of thinking about reviews and about how we would begin a review. I found this really useful being able to see an exhibition straight after talking of methods to reviewing, as I feel when you have a mind set to review and exhibition, you concentrate much more and take much more time simply looking.

Overall I found this a really useful workshop, I found it interesting and fitting to my interests, and I feel like I can take elements from the workshop and use them in either my own work or as a personal interest.