Artybollocks Generator

If you've ever been to an art exhibition or a modern dance performance, you'll know exactly what we're talking about when we say "artybollocks": those bombastic, pretentious and often largely incomprehensible descriptions and artist's statements that usually accompany artistic displays or performances.

Suffused as they are with jargon, "artspeak" and obscure abstract concepts, I've been reading these things for years in performance programs and gallery fliers. But I find my patience with them significantly diminished in recent years, particularly as I struggle with the artfully dim lighting we are usually provided with. They do seem to be something of an artform of their own, and they often appear to follow a kind of template or proforma, into which various stock phrases, and wilfully obscure, difficult or bewildering words can be inserted.

Well, now you can generate your very own, thanks to the Artybollocks Generator. Here's a random example:

"My work explores the relationship between the tyranny of ageing and life as performance. With influences as diverse as Derrida and Roy Lichtenstein, new combinations are manufactured from both constructed and discovered structures.

"Ever since I was a postgraduate I have been fascinated by the essential unreality of the mind. What starts out as triumph soon becomes finessed into a hegemony of temptation, leaving only a sense of unreality and the chance of a new order.

"As subtle derivatives become clarified through diligent and personal practice, the viewer is left with an epitaph for the darkness of our condition."

Yes, that sounds famliar. I think maybe I saw that show.

There's also a handy Twitter-friendly abbreviated version:

"What starts out as vision soon becomes debased into a cacophony of lust, leaving only a sense of dread and the unlikelihood of a new reality."

Quite.