ESSAY 1 : Chua Shu Ruei

SELF-INTRODUCTION

My name is Shu Ruei and I’m an artist. I graduated recently from ASWARA (National Academy of Art, Culture and Heritage) with a Diploma in Fine Art, and I currently work now as an artist and a part-time gallery assistant.

I would like to take this workshop to improve and mature how I write about my artwork; I don’t want to be an artist who writes so badly that curators struggle to understand my artist statements and then curse my name under their breath as they’re reading. Maybe if I can better understand the methods, structures and processes of art writing, it would help better present my ideas to curators, critics, or art writers in a way more convenient for them to understand, because it would be written and structured on their own terms. Also, as an artist who is a part of an art community, I feel it is important to try to understand other perspectives on art within the art field; the art writer’s/critic’s art experience and paradigm.

Primarily, I am an installation artist, and for the moment, I find myself drifting in the direction of community art as well. My work deals with themes of identity in terms of perception, change and multiple perspectives towards one same object/person. My work seems to lean more to conceptual tendencies and I’m told that it’s very important to read a lot of art writings in order to make good, solid conceptual artwork. However, this is sometimes easier said than done.

Sometimes I read art articles and it’s quite difficult to know what the writer means. Art writing seems like a very complicated thing, but I still would like to learn more about it, because even though art writings sometimes are confusingly convoluted, yet they still seem interesting too, and that much verbal density must hold a lot of knowledge. I would like to see why art writers sometimes write in this complex way, and maybe there is a very good reason why, instead of just phrasing things in a simpler way. So, I would also like to get an insight to better understand art writings that I come across. Maybe if I understood how it’s written, then I might better know how to read it, or maybe see more in what I read than what I can already understand now.

I don’t know what to expect to learn by attending this workshop, because my educational training so far has mostly been practical based and involving paints, wood, canvas, etc. I don’t have much learning in theory and writing, but maybe now is a good way to start. I also apologize that I write about myself, instead of something more educated regarding the local art field, as was first requested. However, maybe one good thing about my ignorance is that I am not fussy about what learning I will take away from this workshop, since supposedly all learning is good.