Creativity Quote by Graham Coxon

The line lands with the disarming candor of someone famous enough to be expected to project certainty, yet self-aware enough to admit he doesn’t. Coxon frames his relationship to his own visual work as unfinished business: he’s “still trying” to find a “position,” not just an opinion. That word choice matters. A position implies stance, identity, even ideology - the stuff artists are supposed to have prepackaged when their work hits a gallery wall. By confessing he doesn’t, he punctures the mythology of the confident auteur and replaces it with something rarer: the artist as ongoing draft.

There’s a sly reversal in “hopefully at this exhibition someone will come and tell me.” The exhibition, normally a site of presentation and authority, becomes an informal feedback booth. Subtext: the art world’s demand for statements, narratives, and clean self-branding can feel performative, even to the person who made the work. Coxon is outsourcing the critical language he’s expected to supply, inviting the audience to co-author meaning - or at least to supply the missing mirror.

Coming from a musician, the remark also hints at a medium shift. In music, feedback is immediate and ambient: crowds, reviews, the gut-level yes/no of a hook. Visual art can be quieter, more coded, with legitimacy often mediated by critics and curators. His openness to criticism reads less like self-flagellation than a refusal of defensive posture. It’s a bid for honest contact over polished mystique - and a subtle protest against the idea that the artist must always be the final authority on what the work is “about.”