Su san Cohn
Bor­ing, very boring

Bor­ing, very bor­ing… You can make with pas­sion, you can break rules along the way, you can be inven­tive… but what if what you make is bor­ing, or even worse, very bor­ing? How can you know? What is bor­ing? Pre­dictable, spir­it­less, repet­i­tive, trendy, bland. There is no clear code, no guide­line. No mat­ter what your inten­tion may be, the view­er or the wear­er will decide for you. And what one per­son may find inspir­ing, anoth­er may think is boring.

After a very long time how do you make work that is fresh? Per­haps the only way to unrav­el ​‘bor­ing’ is to make a body of work from back to front. The start­ing point becomes ​‘this work is bor­ing’. In My bor­ing col­lec­tion, Su san Cohn has curat­ed a series of art­works pre­sent­ed in response to the ques­tion: ​‘what is your most bor­ing work?’ These artists include: Rosanne Bart­ley, Nicholas Bastin, Vito Bila, Liv Boyle, Bin Dixon-Ward, Mark Edgoose, Kiko Gianoc­ca, Jo Haw­ley, Sal­ly Mars­land, Vic­ki Mason, James McAl­lis­ter, Claire McAr­dle, Sam Mertens, Miyu­ki Naka­hara, Tiffany Parbs, Katie Scott, Blanche Tilden, Mered­ith Turn­bull, Manon Van Kouswijk and Anna Varendorff.Cohn enacts a sim­i­lar idea in again and again. In the spir­it of the old school habit of being made to write out 100 lines, con­trib­u­tors to the work were asked to copy one quote select­ed from a list into a note­book as many times as pos­si­ble (again and again) in one ses­sion, and in what­ev­er way they wished… until bored of doing so.

Exhi­bi­tion pho­tog­ra­phy: Zan Wimberley