ENJAMBMENTS by (both laughing)

enjambments

(both laughing)

www.dialect.org.uk

ISBN: 978-1-7393855-2-1

Copyright © Nick Grellier and Emily Lucas 2024

Cover design by Nick Grellier and Emily Lucas

Printed in Great Britain

Have you ever been told that good art isn’t something that can be made on the kitchen table? Well, it’s a lie and this book proves it. As artists we use whatever tools are readily available to us. Enjambments can be created at home, as (both laughing) has proved; the process is a fulfilling, often hilarious, thought-provoking way of thinking about what artists do and how everything overlaps between art and life every day.

Sarah Bodman, Associate Professor for Artist Books, Centre for Print Research, UWE

These enjambments draw you into a disconcerting, playful game in which words disintegrate - or reform into unfamiliar amalgamations. Nothing - not even a word - is what it seems. Look and look again as the letters dance, fall out of alignment and jump out in unexpected colour. Simple as a child playing with their first letters but complex, a rebellious challenge to the constraints of language.

Madeleine Bunting, award winning writer and journalist

Artists Emily Lucas and Nick Grellier formed (both laughing) collaborative in 2021 with the aim of generating new ways to talk, write and think about drawing and other art practices. They create strategies for elevating autobiographical drawing as feminist and anti-patriarchal using low value, low-fi techniques to make funny but serious artwork which gives value to the overlooked.

enjambments is (both laughing)’s selection of new words emerging from their word-mashing game which playfully addresses the inadequacies of existing language, whilst embracing grey area and nuance. The small but mighty hand-printed, colour, visual works can also be seen as one-word poems.

These tiny poems give importance to themes of domesticity, systems of power, embodiment, seriousness versus emotion, drawing and thinking, the importance of play, language difficulty and knowing and not knowing.

a glossary of enjambments

affectgutpower – intuition that is taken as a serious powerful proposition.

celebrationdepthdrawing - a drawing that is valued for reflecting the thoughts and feelings of the draw-er as they were making it.

commondifficultyproject - an all-inclusive venture in which everyone takes equal, joyful responsibility.

commonplacehumourdatadrawingdrawing - a drawing that represents small, discarded or unused items (quotidianfounddatum). The length of the title gives importance to all the things that mount up in drawers, cupboards, and on any available surface or countertop.

connectedroleinversion – agreed participation in turning things inside out and back to front including roles and responsibilities played out at home.

deadpanresearchtheory – research that takes itself seriously and obfuscates its meaning with difficult to understand wording, rendering it impenetrable.

delicateunapologetictext – thoughtful writing that acknowledges not knowing and difficulty.

domesticfragmentattention – artwork made about, and giving value to, the home and the domestic using materials such as rubbish and dirt.

eccentricclosepractice – an art practice allowing for nuance and embracing difference by looking closely at the unusual and paying it positive attention.

embodiedinteriorapproach – art practice that begins with an intuitive approach, accepting and allowing for emotion and messiness.

homehumourproject – a collaborative, feminist endeavour that deals with the difficult issues surrounding the patriarchy in a humorous way.

houseworkwork - is it really housework or work about house work – or just houseworkwork?

knowinghandworkperson – a person who knows with their hands. (An alternative proposition for the term craftsman or craftsperson).

languagefusionapproach – a method to counteract the difficulty when using only the available words to describe nuance. A way to describe the game of enjambments.

languageunravelresearch - hard thinking about the difficulty of only using words to describe important, emotional states of being. Detaching words from their hidden implications.

marvellousexperienceoutcome – the pleasure in working things out by doing.

marvelloustextfragment - the delight and satisfaction of discovering meaning in small things. Small big things.

mindcarelayer - a quiet, calm cloud of empathy and respect.

motherlabourterrain – rather than at the maternity hospital, the real motherlabourterrain is at home where the mental and physical maternal load is situated.

myselfartistproblem – the making of artwork that is personal and subjective in order to think through and around problems and issues. Using the messiness of being human to generate artwork instead of looking outside to find subject matter. In opposition to monumental art.

problemsolutiondrawing – a drawing method which acts as an alternative to the binary Cartesian dualism implied by a ‘mind map’. A drawing that acts as a tool for joining up thinking with actions by providing a visual layering and linking of ideas. An alternative to essay writing.

questiondutydatum – the search for alternative ways to rearrange lives which have been pre-programmed on the basis of gender. A way to challenge conditioned priorities and responses to domestic/binary life.

questioninglanguageproject – a mission to find alternative ways to give words such as ‘autobiography’ and ‘domesticity’ more gravitas.

quotidianfounddatum - shit you find around the house that may be useful one day.

repeatedcarelabour – endless mundane repetitions done every day with love and resentment.

subtlenonbinarytheory – the gentle awakening of understanding that not everything is black and white after all.

togethermotherrole/mothertogetherrole - the collective experience of bringing up children.

unapologeticcommunicationplay – playing with words, the way they are laid out on a page, the colours used to make them and the finding of words within words. The importance of play when creating art works using traditionally low-value art materials and methods. A celebration of finding out through playing, doing, moving things around, putting them together and taking things apart. Making anti-monumental works using childlike discovery.

unfetteredlanguageknowledge – an expansion of language comprehension after the wordmashing game of enjambments.

unpickritualthought – the breaking of habitual thinking to look at things in a different way.

unremarkableperformancecycle – the interjection of domestic machinery in the sound space shared with family life and art practices.

visualhomepolitics – making feminist artwork about the home using autoethnographic devices.

worldobservancemedium – drawing and thinking.

EMILY LUCAS

A Stroud based artist currently undertaking a PhD, researching the function of drawing as an autobiographical, feminist gesture. Emily is interested in the inadequacy of language to communicate interior experience, utilising gaps, fragments, repetitions and strange pairings to create alternative narratives and ambivalent meanings.

NICK GRELLIER

Nick works with found objects and text across a range of disciplines, aiming to convey a sense of the absurd, funny, and sad human condition. She lives in Stroud and completed an MA in Fine Art at UWE Bristol in 2020.