So this is my first ever blog and I feel this immense pressure to say something profound and earth-shatteringly artistic that will change art discourse forever. Obviously that is not going to happen…well, not today anyway!

I want to start by discussing what I have been looking at recently which ties in with a piece I have just sold. ‘Token Support’ was based on the idea of generic speech. Words that people say all too frequently that lose any sort of meaning or emotion in the process. The idea is that the ‘tokens’, which have the generic text engraved onto them, can be given to people instead of the words being said. Its the same sort of thing as people giving greetings cards, particularly the ones that have messages like ‘Thinking of you’ or ‘Congratulations’, they lose all emotion through the very fact that they are mass produced by a smart arse computer whizz at Clintons who works on the same template day after day.

So is generic speech useful? Well, as a person who struggles to understand the emotions of others, or more importantly, the social etiquette that goes along with it, I often wish I could simply hand out my sentiments to save the self-conscious voice inside my head that questions, ‘Did I sound genuine enough?’ It’s true that if we didn’t have this social etiquette in place, which requires us to lie through our teeth to reassure others, I would not have to worry about my insufficient capacity to sound genuine. But, as we can’t go around being brutally honest and hurting people, I would much rather just dish out a token and walk away.

So, in a world where we are collecting friends in cyberspace like the Victorians collected insects, or silently ‘laughing out loud’ to people via text, why not go one further and exchange tokens instead?!

I do want to point out, before I receive a wave of negative feedback, that ‘Token Support’ and other ‘tokens’ to come, are about highlighting this issue of generic speech, making people aware of just how unfulfilling these words truly are. I do not wish to live in a mute world, (although certain people should be banned from ever opening their mouths again!) I simply want to live in a less generic one.