The only framed piece in Tom Kemp’s latest one-man show at the recently refurbished OVADA Gallery in Oxford contains an extended meditation on the subject that continues to intrigue and trouble him. Written out in pencil in three dense columns during a single eight-hour session it is entitled Drawing Itself: ‘Its premise is that drawing is always of something and never just drawing. It asks if it is possible to have simply drawing itself.’ By using his left hand, Tom dissociates himself from the formal constraints of disciplined letterform, so that the medium itself serves to question our preconceptions further.

In the notes that accompany the exhibition, Tom goes on to extend the analogy with writing, where he poses the question whether there is such a thing as just writing itself, given the fact that we always seem to be writing about something. It is the connection between words and meaning that constitutes for Tom one of the key challenges of lettering. ‘Look at a piece of writing and you’ll read it if at all possible or you’ll see a set of insignificant (but pretty) marks. I’m always wondering what writing has to hide. What, in fact, is it?’

This theme is explored explicitly in the first piece that one encounters on entering the gallery – an immaculately executed series of brush-written Roman capitals painted in blue directly on to the gallery walls. The piece is in some senses a review of itself – the artist would have us believe that ‘this work is just a clever likeness, exploiting our need to divide what we read from what we see ... [it is] painting of writing.’

Tom’s response to the dilemma he sets out for himself is to use the techniques of writing but to dispense with words in favour of abstract pattern-making. The resulting pieces are described by Tom as ‘drawings’ and comprise four large panels executed in the gallery on prepared MDF boards just before the start of the exhibition. The first panel consists of an interlocking series of rapidly formed marks using an edged foam brush; the second consists of a neatly arranged set of double overlaid strokes using the entire width of a wallpaper brush; snaking monolines created by a narrow paint roller form the third piece, while the fourth comprises vertical ribbons of finger-drawn shapes whose overall effect is reminiscent of oriental script.

The tool that has been used to create each piece hangs next to it where one would expect to see a title or description of the work – the absence of words is thus given a further, ironic twist. Each day Tom also creates a new piece on the floor of the exhibition using a different tool or medium and which may well remain wet during the course of the day.

While a lot of attention is given to the declared theme of the exhibition in the publicity material and in some of the pieces described above, it seems to me that there are two – equally interesting – things going on here. The first is an exploration of the process of making itself, and the effect that specific constraints of place and time have on that process. It is a bold initiative indeed to create each piece in situ just before the start of the exhibition – this takes writing close to performance art and courts a high degree of risk. As Tom declares in Drawing Itself: ‘The time taken to make a written mark is captured in the mark itself ... Writing is honest.’ Thus mistakes are allowed to remain and are incorporated into the piece as a record of that moment.

The second question raised for me relates to the nature of the commercial art business. Art criticism receives a sideswipe in Tom’s notes: ‘things have almost reached the stage where art is merely the justification for the existence of writing about art’. But, most significantly, the objects themselves in this exhibition are not treated as commodities: none is for sale, and at the end of the show, apart from Drawing Itself, all will either be painted over or burnt, thus calling into question the conventional purposes of an exhibition.

The Definition of Art therefore represents a brave attempt (in the words of the catalogue) to ‘get to grips’ with its subject. However, I suspect that any ultimate answers to this topic will remain elusive. Just as one could argue that the attempt to escape the habit of meaning-making is self-defeating, so too could one suggest that being able to raise questions about the nature of art depends to some extent on participation in the very conditions one seeks to criticize. And that is perhaps not such a bad thing after all when it results in works of such thought-provoking accomplishment.