My writing has become more of a priority for me in 2016.

I am an award winning published writer and am available for commissions – reviews, catalogue texts, editorial summaries. I received a distinction for my MA thesis and in 2001 was awarded a Critical Writing Award by Arts Council South West. In the past I’ve written for Make, a-n (Artists newsletter), British Auckland Biennial Catalogue, Mission Gallery and others.

It’s always fascinating to reflect upon how things evolve over time, I have written a piece about that journey for the VASW website, which also mentions the Arvon Residency (more below).

Last year I enjoyed being writer in residence for Double Elephant Printmakers, this year I’ve written commissioned pieces for a-n and for the Summer 2016  Four Seasons hotel in-house magazine.

I’ve also increased my private writing, which is ongoing, in the form of poems and the modification of particular novel.

I’d love to do more commissions – just drop me a line if you need one. Writing an ‘opinion piece’ for the Four Seasons Hotel magazine was a very enjoyable experience, because I had a free rein and some excellent editorial support to help me adjust to the house style and readership demographic.

I often write on Medium too: Carolyn Black

Thanks to a grant from VASW I recently attended an arts critical writing course at Arvon. It was brilliant – immersing oneself into writing for a whole week with like-minded people was delightful. My writing in recent years has always been for specific purposes – catalogue texts, press releases, artist reviews. Arvon was more creative and provided the freedom for me to enjoy writing for writings sake, instead of to a brief.

My writing can be quirky and playful, like the lobotomy piece (see below), or more formal, as in catalogue texts and reviews.

In 2001 I had a burglary in my studio and I wrote two essays – one explores the emotional impact of the missing data, the things. The second get’s more theoretical about it and manages to comfort me by revealing that I have lost nothing. All these years later it still seems important to think these things through, in those awful time when you forget to back everything up.

Last night I had a virtual lobotomy (emotional)

Digital art what is or was it? (theoretical)

This is the image I put on my website then – yes, I had websites from about 1998 and wrote/html coded them myself!

virtual lobotomy

VIDEOS: I have various films on both Youtube and Vimeo. I’m in the process of migrating them to Vimeo as it is less cluttered than Youtube. In the meantime, you will find some at each. Most of these are from my days as a video installation artist, but I do add to them occasionally.