I’m sitting in WAYOUT, minding the space, as we like to say. Just minding the space. I like this expression. It seems to contain a metaphor that no one will ever usefully unpack for us as a part of their phd. It is a metaphor that we refrain from examining, analysing or teasing out its implications. Really it just means we are sitting, probably bored, in an art space as a human presence inserted against theft, the fondling of objects, or whatever ill results from the malevolence or mindlessness of the few members of the public that bother to look at the art we have put on display.

In this state of minding, it occurs to me that I might relieve my boredom by writing about the current exhibition, which has in its quiet way, captured my attention. I love this about art, that you can experience it without knowing what it is, that you don’t have to formulate its effect or articulate its ideas for it to work its magic on you. You can walk away impressed by it without knowing why or even having anything more than a vague impression of the experience it has given you. I also am consistently impressed by the cogency that emerges when you do actually go to the trouble to think the thing through: the clarity of a logic, the substantial structure of affect or the wandering trails of interconnected consideration that emerge from work when you write about it.

So this is what I will do.