Place in Context

I hope -- expect -- that art work itself succeeds in reaching the audience without the need for words to explain or place it.

Submission for opportunities, however, often is by jpeg and not all artwork is jpeg friendly. Some is more jpeg friendly than the artwork itself, although I have never seen "accepted" work rejected when delivered. The submission process also usually asks for explanatory words - an artist statement and/or an exhibition proposal beyond "I make and propose to show the work shown in the attached images").

Perhaps I should try "I propose to show the type of work reflected in the attached images" as a proposal.

Many likely use some combination of intention and hindsight reflection when presenting art work. Intention and hindsight can but do not often merge seamlessly: discovery lies in between.

One way to deal with the question of where one's art sits in the larger Art, cultural, etc., context, is to ignore it. How persuasive will that be in a proposal, in which one usually is expected to concisely place the proposed work?

Some are great at talking in circles. One can go ahead and illustrate (accepted?) jargon, however convoluted, nonsensical, contradictory, circular, dressed-up it may be. The work ends up pretentious even when successful (accepted?), unless the work manages in the discovery phase to move beyond illustration (in which case, intention and hindsight are not merged).

Hindsight reflection is unhelpful when writing proposals for work that has yet to be made: the verbiage has to come before the work. A continuous body of work in the middle of development can be examined with hindsight intermittently and proposals written with plenty of hindsight.

I resort to containment. Discourse and how past and current work and ideas fit or do not fit within it is something to consider and think about before and after, and to forget when making the work... forget, as in excise from the front of the mind and the tips of the fingers (or production tool). Or the work only illustrates discourse and does not move beyond it or all that well within it, as least not in any way that differs from a verbal discussion. Visual interplay should not be simply a platform for verbal discussion or a diagram of it.