CONCEPTUAL ART

I was reading around as I am still trying to place my practice and current piece of work even at this late stage in the day. Yes it has strong narrative and character sensibilities and the structure does fit within the Trans-Media genre. It has a strong ideology and messages and values and a social conscience and is a campaigning documentary sensibility but that still does not properly define it.

For years I have not liked my work to have nice aesthetics and look good but this is not what I am all about. The idea behind the work is more important always to me and certainly the concept are paramount. I want to communicate an idea through the concept. The penny then dropped am i really interested in and creating conceptual art?

Heading to the excellent Tate website for a definition here is what they said.

"Conceptual art is art for which the idea (or concept) behind the work is more important than the finished art object. It emerged as an art movement in the 1960s and the term usually refers to art made from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. As a definable movement conceptual art is associated with these decades but its origins reach beyond these two decades. Marcel Duchamp is often seen as an important forefather of conceptual art, and his readymade Fountain of 1917 cited as the first conceptual artwork."

I really relate to LeWitts statement in his essay Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, "In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair."

Conceptual art can be apparently almost anything. This is because, unlike a painter or sculptor who will think about how best they can express their idea using materials and techniques, a conceptual artist uses whatever materials and whatever form is most appropriate to putting their idea across – this could be anything from a performance to a written description. Although there is no one style or form used by conceptual artists, from the late 1960s certain trends emerged.

Researching further I discovered that many artists whose work I admire are considered conceptual artists or have created conceptual works. Richard Longs land art, Bruce McCleams body art, Gilbert and George, Sol LeWitts diagrams on how to make  drawing as well as lots of "found footage" artworks.

Is my piece conceptual art? I think it is the idea(s) behind the work are more important to me that the finished object although I want it to be good as it can be. The decisions and planning are carried out beforehand in my pre-production and the execution can be perfunctionary I would quite happily develop the idea and then let someone else execute it form if given the chance. Even though I primarily use video I am now straying into create props and artefacts too. This is an area i will definintly look into more moving forward.