Editor of The Double Negative, Mike Pinnington examines the practice of Barry Anthony Finan of Venture Arts, Manchester.

Modernist artist and Bauhausler, Paul Klee famously said “A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.” The sentiment can just as easily be applied to those working with text. Words – as recent world history attests – are powerful tools; they carry weight and can be wielded to constructive or destructive ends. Artists in all kinds of milieux, and with different motivations, have long understood and harnessed their power. Indeed, since the early twentieth century, the written word – be it painted, stencilled, inscribed, collaged, appropriated or otherwise – has been a significant feature of many artists’ output. Verbal and visual expression are good bedfellows, each complementing the other, with language and figure (symbol, object, publication, work of art, etc.) combining in profound ways.

*Barry Anthony Finan, WRRIGHHTINNGGSS ONN WALL, British Ceramics Biennial 2019, Spode. Photo by Jenny Harper*

Some artists smuggle words into their work: the letters, statements, song lyrics, aphorisms, and sentences like threads to unpick, riddles to solve. Fragments lie in wait, ripe for discovery and decryption by keen eyes and inquisitive minds. They can be stream of consciousness utterances (as in the case of the Surrealists’ automatic writing), or chosen carefully, with purpose. For many, text is the genesis or even basis of their work, without which it would no longer operate as intended; art and language intersect to communicate… what, exactly? Artists including (but by no means limited to) Glenn Ligon, Jenny Holzer, Joseph Kosuth, Barbara Kruger, Ed Ruscha, Tim Etchells, Hiba Abdallah, Frances Stark – I could go on – regularly (sometimes exclusively) use language as the medium for their message.

That message might be satirical, subversive social commentary – well aimed and hoped for knock out blows to their intended targets writ large. But they can also convey hopes and dreams, serve as bridges between people, the artist and the audience, expressing innermost thoughts that might not otherwise be shared. One such artist who employs words so open-handedly is Barry Anthony Finan. Born and based in Manchester, and operating out of Venture Arts’ supported studio, Finan works across ceramics, paper, canvas, metal and wood, with text always the common factor. It runs like a rich seam throughout; his written line, to paraphrase Klee, going for a walk and rarely stopping unless he runs out of surfaces to make what he calls WRRIGHHTINNGSERRSS. Using capital letters, often without spaces, he will always, always, double the letter R and N: “II LIKE DOINNG WRRIGHHTINNG ANND DRRAWINNG.”

This quirk gives his work an extra gravitational pull, drawing you in and keeping you there. The first time I saw it was at Manchester’s the Whitworth, on display in their Exchanges Gallery. Standing in front of YES I WANNT TO DO TRRICKSSERRS (2016), a visual cacophony of colour and words made with wax crayon on canvas, I lingered before it, trying to unpick and disentangle the text. Eventually Finan’s particular grammar reveals itself, becomes more legible, and, beginning with the work’s title, the words run into each other like an excited, enthusiastic statement of intent. It has an energy, a specific dynamism that is infectious. Holly Grange (former Curator of the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection at the Whitworth) put it well, I think, when she described YES I WANNT TO DO TRRICKSSERRS as existing “at the intersection between writing, performance, and image”.

For all the bombast of YES I WANNT TO DO TRRICKSSERRS, though, Finan is described as a quiet person when I speak with Venture Arts’ Director, Amanda Sutton, who tells me that “he does his talking through the words and works”. When I ask what she thinks his writing might be indicating, Sutton explains that for him, “maybe text is [an attempt to] control the things within his power, and [to express] himself”. In a film made to mark the occasion of his work being acquired by the Whitworth, Finan explains that it is about no more or less than “the things I want to do for the rest of my life”. These “things” exemplify what I have subsequently come to know about the content and subjects embedded in his wider artistic practise – a stream of benign, heartfelt desires, personal messages and clues which serve to beckon us into his world.

These desires range from appearing on TV to simply wanting money to buy sweets and chocolate. Indeed, he has stated that he wishes to have “A ACTTING PAID JOB ONN TELEVISSION TO DO LOTSS OFF TRRICKSSERRSS JUMMPONN TELLEVISSION PICTTURRESSERRSS TO LOTSS OFF GOOD MONNEY TO SPENND ANND BUY.” In 2018, this phrase JUMMPONN TELLEVISSION lent itself to a new work: JUMMPINNG ONN TELEVISSIONN. The old-fashioned black box-style TV (like your nan and grandad might have had) houses a screen covered in text featuring his by now familiar themes. Combining two key communication delivery methods – words and TV – JUMMPINNG ONN TELEVISSIONN harmoniously brings together the artist’s love of both.

Writing spontaneously with no pre-planned scripts, Finan is prolific; alongside his prodigious output, his work is frequently shown in galleries across the UK. Besides 2020’s Exchanges at the Whitworth, he has in recent years been included in Spilling Out, a joint presentation with Castlefield Gallery, The Manchester Contemporary, Manchester Central (October 2018); the British Ceramics Biennial, Stoke-on-Trent (September 2019); and in Transcript, a group show exploring ‘text based work and the occurrence of text itself in our general cultural environment’ at Charlie Smith London (2018). This show featured his collaborative installation with Rosanne Robertson, YES LAD YES LASS, named in-part for something his dad said to him when he was growing up (‘yes lad, you can do it!’).

Although restrictions brought about by lockdown have curtailed such opportunities for now, this hasn’t prevented Finan from continuing to make new work. With limited occasions to get to his studio as often as he would like, over the course of the last year he has compensated for this by compulsively covering the landing and corridor of his accommodation in text. And, chiming with an upsurge by many in returning to analogue correspondence during these strange times, Finan has made a series of porcelain postcards – all covered in his trademark writing, of course. As we begin to contemplate emerging from lockdown, then, we can do so, safe in the knowledge that further communiques from the world of Barry Anthony Finan await.

Mike Pinnington is a writer, editor & consultant based in Liverpool. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Double Negative, an online platform for Arts Criticism & Cultural Commentary, which this year celebrates its first decade. Away from The Double Negative, Mike’s writing has appeared in international publications, exhibition catalogues and artist books. @doublenegativeM

Barry Anthony Finan is an artist supported by the Manchester-based studio Venture Arts.

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Banner image: Barry Anthony Finan, YES I WANNT TO DO TRRICKSSERRS (detail), 2016, posca pen on canvas. Photo by Martin Livesey

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