La Galerie Louise
An artist statement, a novella, a confession
2015-2020
Written by Batsheva Ross
Read by Ella du Burca
Editors:
Perri Mackenzie
Liz Allan
Sound editor:
Marco Lampis
La Galerie Louise - an audiobook based on a novella I began writing back in 2015. The full novella includes seven chapters and an epilogue.
It was a period in which I was agonising over writing artist applications. As part of these standardised applications you are asked to write an ‘Artist statement’ - a short segment of who you are, what you do, and what’s your approach as an artist. Yet I was in one of those artistic crisis moments, a state of limbo in my practice, I didn't know how to describe my artistic work and where I was going with it. I was really unsure of myself. I felt I was facing an artistic crisis in my practice. I distracted myself by writing a memoir about my side job as an aggressive sales clerk for cosmetics. This side job wasn't something I was particularly proud of. Although it demanded my intellectual talents and skills, it also required applying some devious personality traits that, at times, felt morally questionable to me. Moreover, it gave me the feeling of getting off track from my own art practice by being too invested in something so detached from the art world. I felt the necessity of defending myself, and the memoir served simultaneously as a written confession.
However, while taking up this task, while feeling the necessity of defending myself, I was led to a position of seeing the complicated reality of my daily life as a compassionate marriage between two worlds. Or to put it more mildly: it led me to a more creative and broader understanding of both arenas — the art world and the merchandise world, one that left me appeased with both. As I progressed with this text and dived in the reflections on my state, I began seeing this side job as a crucial part of my artist trajectory, if not even my actual artistic practice.
This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published by Radio Level Five. More info on Level Five please visit the website.