Well, Hello there.
I suppose I'll begin somewhere at the beginning. My name is Toni, and art beguiles, frightens, inspires, amazes, calms, infuriates and confuses me. I have always loved the artExpress exhibitions - throughout highschool they were the highlight of each year - and I would wander through the artworks of these brilliant, distant students thinking, surely, surely this is the pinnacle of highschool art? The teachers would talk about them as one does of fully-fledged artists, and I was vaguely intimidated by them. My friends and I dreamt of being among them, of having our work on a gallery wall - but it seemed such a far-off and improbable thing to dream for.
I started the HSC year like I was running a marathon up a mountain without ever having the prior experience - I bolted, speeding crazily through ideas and work, trying in a rush to be organised. I had three Major Works pending, you see (luckily, I eventually dropped one of them - I am in awe of anyone who can manage three or more) and I thought my ideas had to be manifested NOW, that I had to have started NOW, that I must be focused NOW. I, and my friends around me in our 'artspace', still carried the dream of being in artExpress - but quickly, with the pressure mounting, my mind and body tiring from the climb, I let such a notion go. The threads to my work were frayed and disconnected, my ideas just weren't fitting, no matter how I pushed and shoved and layered them into shape, and I was realising just how difficult the HSC could be.
I'm not trying to scare you though! I was making it difficult for myself.
So, never did I think, from that point on, that I would actually be chosen for artExpress. It all came at quite a surprise. Two others from my school were selected, and I could very well see why - their works were brilliant! But, mine?
Half way through the year, my mind bound with the tangled threads of my two major works, I stopped pushing and let those ideas go. If I can give you just one bit of advice: BE FLEXIBLE. ART IS A FLUID PROCESS. Let your ideas grow naturally, like tendrils of jasmine, surrounding and supporting something you actually care about. Then they bloom.
I returned to something I felt strongly about. This was the Holocaust, but more specifically, the children lost during the Holocaust. After visiting the Jewish Museum in Darlinghurst for a school excursion in year 11, I had felt curiously nauseated and cold. I just COULD NOT BELIEVE it.
My HSC work I used as a method of dealing with this aspect of our history - and it is OUR history, we share it as global citizens, as the human race, even if we aren't Jewish.
I aimed for subtlety; hints, suggestions and allusions to a greater tragedy and loss. I did not intend to provoke anger or disgust - rather, I wanted to encourage from deep within my audience a realisation, a sadness, a great sense of loss. Lost childhood, lost innocence. Lost peace. I also wanted to reconcile on some small level with the spirits of the deceseased, and give them, in my eyes, just a little peace.
I often try to play the story teller, so my work inevitably became a narrative experience as well as an artistic, symbolic one. From found pieces of frayed materials, as well as buttons, buckles, zippers, wires, and other random, history-heavy things, I stitched together around ten 'toys' that acted as symbols of childhood. I love symbols - deciphering them like puzzles, creating them like a riddler - so there were many small and private symbols amongst the larger, more comprehensive ones. The manner of the toys' creation, from hitherto seperate pieces of things lost and larger, and the way they were stitched together, represented my attempts as an artist of reuniting the lost pieces of the identities of the children. As I made, I could imagine the back story of each toy, and I hope this came through in the end.
I like to experiment with different materials, and I very much enjoy using watercolour. Watercolours have a sensitivity and subtlety to them that, to me at least, attracts and intrigues people. I thought this would tie in quite well with my toys, and the style of the portraits ( as glimpses of children; an arm, a foot, a hand, but never the key identifying feature - the face ) links back to the 'pieces' combined to make up the toys.
It was important to me to only suggest identity, whilst never fully identifying the child. This was because, in my understanding, those lost to the Holocaust seemed to lose their indviduality, instead becoming a mere scratch in a tally of '6 billion fatalities' due to the sheer scale of the slaughter.
I also stitched together a tora. The Tora is the Jewish holy text, a large scroll. The Tora was an allusion to the Jewish belief, and a symbol of their sad story. I layered a thin, ghostly layer of semi-transperant, almost sepia-coloured fabric over the Tora to give the notion of it all a haunting quality. This was inspired by Doris Salcedo's
Atrabiliarios.
I framed toys using old suitcases because of the nostalgic element and the connotations of long travel and history.
In the end I achieved my work by being experimental and just giving things ago. I almost struck disaster by being inflexible with my ideas. When I got to the top of the mountain, my work was nothing how I imagined it would be, but I was happy with it all the same. Again, I certainly didn't think it would be selected for artExpress. But I suppose letting go a little of the control to the artwork itself, being open to change, and using something I felt strongly about as the theme paid off in the end.
Just remember, art is alive and you must treat it as a living thing.
I can't wait to see everyone else's works.
{PS: I am very sorry about the length of this post. If you actually read it and have reached the end without sinking into some sort of boredom-induced coma, I'd take off my hat to you if I was wearing one. Many thanks for reading :) )
