Exhibitionist!

Yesterday was the first day of a group exhibit I am in at the Project Gallery at Queensland College of Art(1) in Southbank. It has been a hectic week, but these past couple of days saw me tired and frustrated and exuberant and then back to frustrated and proud and joyful…is there a word for feeling the whole gamut of emotions all at once? If so, I have certainly been THAT word. I have missed exhibiting more than I thought I would. I miss the bump ins and the drop offs, I miss going to the shows and the opening nights. I miss talking to other artists about their art and what brought them to exhibit and what their art means to them.

I have only done student exhibits this past year while I tried to find my footing with the new direction my art has taken and to wrap my head around what I am ACTUALLY trying to do with my art. It has been an incredible year. I have grown so much as an artist. I have had to learn no less than 14 programs from the basic viewers of the online world I now produce my work in to programs like Maya for 3D modelling and mesh work to programs for video editing…soooo many video editing programs…but that is a whole other story… I had never considered digital art or video installation as a medium that I would take up until…I actually took it up and ran with that. I really needed this past year to step back and explore and I am really glad I did. But this year…oh my…this year I want to exhibit and exhibit some more.

So this exhibit that started today is called, “Perceptions of Reality”, and it is a group exhibit that I submitted with my peers to be shown in one of the three art galleries on campus. The basic idea of the exhibit was based around this:

“The realities we have are diverse. Defining and describing it will depend on who you talk to at any given time. This group of postgraduate adventurers are delving deep into themselves to bring you visions of realities that are as distinctive and individual as a fingerprint. We want our visitors to leave questioning their own perception, engage in dialogue about multiplicity of perspectives and challenge themselves to reflect upon their own individual perceptions and experiences as frames of reference that filter their unique view of reality.”

My own part in the exhibit is based around my experiences with the online world of Second Life (2) where I have been researching online realities, experimenting with various ways to express classical philosophies of reality as related to online worlds, absorbing the different culture of art within online worlds and learning what exactly it takes to make art in an online world and how this differs from art in the physical world.

At first, our exhibition proposal was rejected. And THAT moment felt pretty crappy. But a week or two later, in the ANOTHER moment, it appeared someone had dropped out or something didn’t work out…or whatever…we didn’t question it, we were just thrilled and excited when we got the email that said that we had a place.

Which leads us to THESE moments…the moment where I was frustrated and swearing because I couldn’t get the technology to work and it was making me feel stupid. The moment where I got to see my prints go up on the wall and be shown to the public for the very first time. The moment where I was so damn grateful for the lovely tech people in AV Dispatch who did everything they could to help me and get my video up and running on a continuous loop as it was supposed to be. ALL the moments I walked into Liveimage (3) to get my photos printed and each time it was AWESOME and I had amazing conversations with people and laughed and was overjoyed to see each of my prints turn out MORE beautiful in a real life printout than they had been on the computer screen.

And soon it will be the NEXT moment, where on Thursday, I sit in a gallery all day and then nervously attend the open night where people will want to ASK me about my art. The moment where I let someone else sit at my computer in the gallery and transport them into the world of Second Life. The moment when I will get to hear what people see when they look at my pieces and what it makes them think.

The moment when I will get to stand with my peers and say, “We did this and everything we did to get here…to this moment..was worth it.”

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Refs:

(1)  QCA Galleries https://www2.griffith.edu.au/arts-education-law/queensland-college-art/qca-galleries
(2)  Second Life http://www.secondlife.com
(3) LiveImage https://www.griffith.edu.au/visual-creative-arts/queensland-college-art/qca-live/liveimage

Exhibit Refs: (these will be updated as I upload the blog posts with didactic for each one)

All the exhibit photos can be found together in this Flickr Album:  https://flic.kr/s/aHskv6P6su

or individually at the links below:

(1) Exhibit Photo 1: Self Portrait
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/23GiDWQ
(2) Exhibit Photo 2: Well Helloo 2018! How YOU doin’?
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/23sWeW5
(3) Exhibit Photo 3: It Takes Patience to Be a Tree
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/ZsBzh3
(4) Exhibit Photo 4:  Sweet Dreams Are Made of These
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/DSxmsH
(5) Exhibit Photo 5: You Be Thelma, I’ll Be Louise
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/YT6gWb
(6) Exhibit Photo 6: Furious Angels Will Bring You Back To Me
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/X3MbV8
(7) Exhibit Photo 7: All I wanted Was a Cup of Coffee
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/Z8h4vj
(8) Exhibit Photo 8: Sometimes Our Sanctuaries Will Also Be Our Battlefields
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/FBebbS
(9) Exhibit Photo 9: Burn
Flickr Ref: https://flic.kr/p/ZqZFWy
(10) Video: Hello Avatar https://youtu.be/gBbAo-8314M