Category: Me

Well, despite a surprisingly effortless and ostensibly quite successful interview, I didn’t get into VCA. Stranger Of The Month aren’t returning my calls. Rob Hely asked me to help him with a project of his, but I think he’s decided he doesn’t like me any more. (He called me a manipulative psychopath, which was so funny it was almost worth alienating him for.) Beloved Freakley has moved to Perth and dedicated herself to talking in quotes absolutely all of the time. I admire her commitment, but our conversations just aren’t the same somehow.

It’s hard not to go “Well, The Legitimate Art World, I did my best to be your friend but at the end of the day you just couldn’t love me for me.” Or maybe it’s the other way around. Who knows.

So what now? Maybe I’ll do this course. Maybe I’ll do a part-time course at PSC. Although I’m primarily interested in more conceptual forms of art, I think I need a better grounding in a conventional visual art form as a means of entry into the field. Or something.

Hmmm.

Update (March ’09): What I need to do – what I should have applied for in 2007, instead of a BFA which was stupid-overambitious – is a Diploma of Visual Art. Duh.

I’ll be done just in time for the apocalypse; it’ll be great.

This is going up the front of my VCA app:

My central creative preoccupation is the constructed nature of experience, and the consequent power of belief.

We conventionally regard ‘reality’ as a solid, non-negotiable, bricklike entity. And it seems to be true that a physical world exists ‘out there’, independent of our senses. But all meaning is made in the mind. Our perceptions and ideas about the world are mental constructions – and they’re all we have to go on.

As such, we are all recognisable as ‘reality artists’. We constantly create ourselves and our lives through our thoughts, choices, actions and interactions, according to rules and patterns known and unconscious, arbitrary and systematic, learned and invented, self-imposed and dictated, playful and pragmatic; collectively, collaboratively and alone.

I’m fascinated by the myriad ways in which we pursue this ultimate creative endeavour – and by the mysterious power of belief that animates our existential fantasies.

I like to make and do things which explore this fascination.

I like mixing media and playing with ideas of form, structure, identity, purpose, power, desire, communication, control and transgression.

I like narratives, rules, lists, fragments, documents, artifacts, codes, puzzles, labels and diagrams. I also like imaginary worlds, magical thinking, obsessions, mysteries, secrets, illusions and dreams.

I like artificial distinctions – because all distinctions are ultimately artificial, and this intrigues me. I like things that intrigue.

I like exploring the boundaries of awareness and understanding; questioning what’s possible, what’s meaningful, and what’s real.

I think everything is recognisable as a game, and I like to play.

I’m okay with it.

It’s an improvement on last year’s.