Jane Graham and Helen Waterer
Artists Helen Waterer's and Jane Graham's conspiracy to involve each other in an on-going project for six months led to an exhibition which filled Umbrella Studio with intriguing, exciting, but cryptic objects. The artists had agreed some six months prior to the exhibition to send each other visual statements with the intent of reciprocating with visual answers; hence the title of the show which in fact mimics the process of conversation, but using visual language. As part of the installation, arrows were used to indicate the direction of the flow of two separate conversation cycles, one started by each artist.
Not many exhibitions allow the viewer an insight into the inner mechanisms of its origins, opting for mystification rather than clarification. Conversation is a refreshing change; it supplies an outline of the project's parameters as well as on-going journal comments; also the artists themselves were in attendance, open-minded and ready to discuss, to explain or to share experiences with the viewer.
Such an undertaking and the subsequent display give a rare insight in the processes of visual communication, and creative thinking. The viewer, face to face with objects that embody one artist's intended meaning and the respondent's perceived meaning at the same time, is readily lured into participation, and indeed starts guessing at the content. It is an excitement akin to doing quizzes when you know the answer is on the next page: the checking to see if you are right becomes as much part of the excitement as being involved with thought processes well beyond the context. The artists, when installing Conversation, allowed for this widening of framework by encouraging viewers to manufacture responses which were added, in due