How did you come up with that? (blog #2)

The 'Pretentious Line' from my Body Of Work (BOW) Art for the Blind .

The main problem most students have with creating a major work is figuring out what to do.
This is beyond daunting.
I (like most people) was completely screwed. I had zero direction and concept until the end of October.
It was 2am. I had an epiphany that got the ball rolling. I began thinking about the exclusion of the visually impaired from the art world.
I was worrying about my lack of concept and thinking about some odd ideas for drawings because i couldn't sleep. I had been obsessively listening to a CD with braille cover art for a month or so (Blue on Blue EP by New Zealand band Cut Off Your Hands - pictured to the left. Click image to go to Special Problems website). I suddenly considered incorporating braille into my BOW, then I thought, 'Blind people don't go to galleries WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!'
Exactly!
Visual arts!
The beginnings of my concept were materialising...

So my original idea for my BOW after that ephiphany featured pronounced tactile qualities. It was supposed to be the vison impaired equivalent of 'visual' art through touch. I wanted to turn the tables by totally excluding sighted people (yes, I know I'm sighted too...) the way that vison impaired individuals are almost totally excluded from most art experiences (galleries, exhibitons and so forth). I was going to use braille extensivley to the point that the sighted audience would experience a bit of the exclusion that vision impaired people encounter when 'viewing' art.
As I thought up text that poked fun at art as a sighted art form I'd keep automatically coming up with simple, but ironic images that embodied my opinions. At first these were just ideas I laughed at privatley. Before long I had built up a collection of a few images that i couldn't ignore anymore, and these consumed my thoughts more than my 'official' BOW. My original idea hadn't progressed very far, so I abandoned that and started refining images that delved into contmporary notions of art. These became my finished BOW.


The opening of ARTEXPRESS 2009

My favourites were:
II (Two) by Jessica Jade Honeywill
Technical Questions (An inquiry of authenticity) by Christine Kim
Ang moderno at Ang Iua (The mod and the matriarch) by Robert Kennard
Can You Read Me by Maria Lourdes Millaire
Memoirs: Reminiscing Rome, Impressions of a Modernist's boulevard, Venetian vestry by Aleksandra Rakic
Person/Prison by Laura Stortenbeker

The highlight was meeting Del Kathryn Barton. I got a photo with her and she signed a catalogue I had of her paintings. I asked her what working with Australian designers Romance Was Born was like said she it was 'Lots of fun,' but she was taking a break from the collaboration for a while.