2009 - Being Uneducated

"A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. " James Allen

Me and My Mate

2009 was a significant year in my art career. I enrolled in an Advanced Diploma of Art and Visual Design, a course that promised to let students go straight into second year at the Canberra School of Art if successfully completed. My motivation to enrol was largely driven by my experience in Asia where I developed a moral viewpoint that education mattered. Since I had no qualifications in visual art, I felt I should get some. I should emphasise that studying art was very much a moral decision, not a logical decision. I already had a BA in Liberal Arts that grounded me in much of the critical discourse of contemporary art as well as an MA in Cmmunication, which grounded in in the visual and linguistic methods to communicate that discourse. Additionally, I had already had exhibitions in both Australia and China and my was work held in private and public collections. Nevertheless, after living in Asia, I had developed a moral viewpoint that everyone should have the humility to believe that education could help them.

Ironically, my very motivation to study art resulted in me feeling way outside its contemporary square with little inclination to step inside. Peter Timms, author of What's Wrong with Contemporary Art, gave an example of the type of art that my school liked to create, and which defined its square:

"I remember seeing an exhibition at the Canberra School of Art which comprised a series of constructions using forms of abuse against gay men: the words ‘poofta’ and ‘faggot’ for example, were spelt out in Lego or woven into little tapestries. Naturally, one assumed that their perpetrator was gay and therefore using the terms ironically, although no specific clue was provided. Had he been a skinhead fascist, he probably would not have got to honours level. It was all very fetching, of course, but I wondered what did this student actually have to say and how was he demonstrating, through these rather desultory tableaux, that he had actually learnt anything during his years at art school. All the same, he got his Phd. The important thing was that his work looked the part, that it expressed the right attitudes, and that it lent itself to written or verbal explanation." 

As Timms explained and I discovered first hand, there had been a movement away from teaching skills and knowledge in favour of "facilitation" of creativity. For example, we were encouraged to do things such as paint in dog food to subvert the semantic meaning of drawing. Assessment was based upon what the artists said of their work rather than the knowledge of art history or skills of creation shown in the work's production. In other words, the art was expected to be verbal, not visual. It was expected to be crafty but not informed or refined. It was expected to subvert culture, not be an agent of it.

It was a process that was completely alien to the way I work. Specifically, I feed my artistic energy new experiences, knowledge, theory, and skills and in turn it wells a response that is my art. To be honest, I think it is the same for everyone. The more someone learns, the more ideas they get. As for those who try to be creative via destruction, I'd guess they eventually get creative block and give up art all together. They may continue to work in the arts, but they cease being artists. I put a lot of art teachers in that category. I suspect many of them focus on "facilitation" of creativity in their students because that is what they personally struggle with the most in their own art.

My artistic response to what I was being asked to do was one of polaraisation. Firstly, I paid more attention to skills in art creation. Just as tango dancers look free because they have spent years learning steps, visual artists are free when they have acquired techniques. In my opinion, the unskilled visual artist that thinks they are free because they never learnt from others inevitably becomes the visual equivalent of the stiff kneed Jack-in-the-Box bouncing from side-to-side on the dance floor. They are a common sight because their lack of skills only allows them to do what everyone can do.

Secondly, I created art that showed an awareness of art history, other artists and art from outside Europe and America. While I concurred that being influenced by the western world was a strength, Australia is in the Eastern hemisphere and there are strengths in our region that I felt would benefit any artist that opened his or her mind to them. Ironically, one of those strengths was a greater emphasis on skills and knowledge in art creation, which produced art that was renaissance like in its ability to inspire ideas and evoke emotions. Furthermore, creativity is enhanced by expanding one's knowledge of the world, not by turning inwards. The more I learn, the stronger my creativity energy becomes.

Thirdly, I made art that was more about a problematic question than a slogan that affirmed a sacred cow. One of my concerns with sloganeering is that I feel it is often used to disguise nepotism in the arts much like nationalism is used to protect corrupt governments, and there is a lot of nepotism in the arts. A second concern is that it assumes that the audience will just passively assimilate the message, which is not only a demeaning assumption of the audience but also boring for me as an artist. I want my audience to actively engage with my work to question it, appreciate it, be confronted by it, hate it, like it, anything but be passive about it. I want to see reactions, not have someone come up to me and say, "that is a worthy cause you are trying to raise awareness of. " A third concern is that I don’t actually believe sloganeering is effective anyway. For example, I think a landscape painter who is able to communicate just how beautiful the environment is will be more effective at heightening environmental appreciation than the activist artist that knits something out of plastic bags and then creates an artist statement denouncing capitalism's environmentally destructive ways. Likewise, I think the artist that is able to provoke a deep consideration of a subject will be playing a role in the production of ideas that will lead their audiences developing considered solutions to a problem. If that means smashing windows and looting stores to destroy capitalism, then so be it, but most problems need more nuanced solutions; therefore, need more nuanced consideration of the problem.

Behind the Red Door

Moonlight Walk in Canberra

Towards a Harbour View

Installation with paintings Afghans Lose Their Camels, Outback Dancer, Dreamtime, Smoko, Blue Skies over Friend's Church

Waiting for Adam

Out of Eden

For the Children

In Her Wake

The New Baby