I’ve been thinking about what I can do for my submission to the Summer Exhibition.

One thing is for certain, the resource of time over the next two weeks is extremely limited, what with the deadlines for my study statement, curation of my blog and something for the interim show in March, all of which take precedence. In previous years I’ve given a lot of thought and time to my entry and got precisely nowhere, so this year I’m going to do something different. It will be interesting to see whether rejection feels different depending on how much time has been invested. I’m going to follow the philosophy of Gino D’Acampo – minimum effort, maximum satisfaction – have a bit of an experiment and not get too hung up about it.

I’ve put my initial thoughts into a mind map although, to be honest, when I’ve been round the exhibition in previous years, I’ve struggled to see the relevance of some works to the theme.

There are quite a few ideas to consider:

• I quite like the idea that ‘dialogue’ literally means ‘through words’ – words in the work itself/ posing a question?
• What about the ability of images to convey phrases and words? One of my favourite TV programmes when I was a teenager was Catchphrase, in which contestants had to guess the phrases being represented by a short animation. Those were the days when it was hosted by Roy Walker – much better than the revival hosted by Stephen Mulhern. A while ago I was looking for a birthday card, and I came across this one. It took me ages to get out of the shop – I tried to solve the clues, the women behind the counter had been trying to solve them all morning, it seemed everyone in the shop wanted to have a go.

• Exchange – does a dialogue have to be continuous or can there be pauses eg written dialogue in letters, email etc? Can it be in different forms eg verbal met with non-verbal response?
• Dialogue between the viewer and the work?

Anyway, I’m going to have a quick look to see how other artists have dealt with the subject of dialogue, whilst giving it all some further thought.