Show and Tell

The small exhibition showing upstairs in Chipping Barnet Library during September is the

result of a collaboration between a lettering artist and a poet. There are 16 pieces that

people can read as a story and look at as a piece of artwork. I thought that BGA members

might be interested in the thought processes behind it, and also how it reflects on the

amount of time people spend actually looking at artwork.

The pieces are all ‘microfiction’, which is basically a story told with an extremely restricted

word count. It is a genre that many modern writers explore, creating fiction characterised by

brevity. I got interested in reading microfiction a few years ago when Twitter was less toxic,

and authors posted stories told in less than 280 characters (“Twitterature”). As a

professional calligrapher, I wondered if I could try presenting little stories as pieces of

lettering art.

I also thought about whether calligraphy would force a reader to slow down and both look at

the piece and read the text content. Calligraphy is a different beast to printed typography.

We can look at a beautiful piece of lettering in a language we don’t understand and

appreciate the artistry of the thing. The individuality and uniqueness of expressive

handwritten letters adds another dimension to words.

But how much time do we spend looking anyway?

A national exhibition of calligraphic art ‘Letters Hand Made’ is currently touring the country.

While I was stewarding a visitor commented that they loved the work, and said about a

particular piece “That was the only one that I read”. I was surprised (surely everyone reads

the words?) but quickly realised that despite the hours spent by the artists sourcing or

creating their words, many will be visually skated over. People are enjoying looking at but

not necessarily reading exhibition pieces. Being used to scanning, skimming and scrolling

maybe we take little time to read.

However the same applies to other works or art too. The Tate Gallery calculates the

average time gallery visitors spend looking at each artwork as 8 seconds. They are

promoting the idea of “slow looking” to get people to fully immerse themselves in selected

pieces of work as a meditational and thoughtful exercise. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/guide-

slow-looking

If you get a chance to have a look at ‘Show and Tell’, I would be interested to know your

thoughts about whether you feel you are primarily looking or reading the work? Whichever

way your brain works, I do think to get the most out of a piece of art, you should allow time to

do both. When visiting the BGA Annual Exhibition in October, I will make sure that I spend

enough time to really look (and perhaps read) each piece of artwork

Further reading about slow looking: What is Slow Looking and How Can I Get Started?

(thinkingmuseum.com)

by

Gwyneth Hibbett