Jo Verrent

So what do I mean when I say high quality? For me it’s not just about the materials that are used, or the training people may or may not have had. It’s about ideas, context, and heart.

The ideas for me make the work. What is the piece doing and why? Is it about telling a story? Is it about showing skills? What’s at the centre of the work? What drives you to make it? What is it about?

Some forms of art are about talent – this might be based on a natural ability to do something or as the result of training or skills development where someone has learnt to do something to a very high standard. Some forms are about a new idea – something that has never been tried or thought of before. Some are about spreading a message. Some are about telling a story. I need to be able to tell what the ideas are in the piece as this helps me judge if the piece works – if it does its job well. If its of high quality.

When I see any art, I’m really interested in the context. This means how the work was created and how it is to be shared with an audience.

I want to know if the people involved do art as a hobby or professionally, if they meet once a week to create work, or get to make art everyday. I want to know who makes the decisions about the work they make – how the voices of the artists find their way into the art work itself. I want to know about the audience for the work – do people buy a ticket? Do they see it in a theatre, or come across it in a community centre or school?

All these things help me decide what I think about the work I see. We all do this all the time when we see work. It makes a big difference what we know about a company or artist, or what we can tell from where the work is show. It’s not as simple as do we like it / do we hate it. I look differently at a professional show in a theatre where I have bought an expensive ticket to a show I see made by young people in a school that is performed to an audience of their friends and family. Both can be of high quality, but what I expect to see will be different. Sometimes – very rarely – you get a piece of art, which is of such high quality it works in many different contexts. This is magical!

Heart for me is about emotion – what does the art make me feel? Does it touch me? Move me? Make me think differently? I don’t always need a story. I just want the work to connect with me in some way. Not everyone looks for this in art but for me it’s really important. I don’t mean work that deliberately tries too hard to get me to feel one particular way – I mean work that genuinely touches me.