Gardening, Art, Life.

Having attending Tending (what an awkward turn of phrase) with Lucas and Diego, I left feeling inspired. Not to make art though, but rather to work more on my garden. While I felt like my engagement with the project was, at the time based firmly in an art context, the effect it had on me was ultimately quite a practical one, applicable to ‘real life’. My desert theme garden at home definitely does not exist in an art context, no matter how many art students and artists have worked on it over the years, and no matter how many decorative skulls I may produce in the SCA plaster room to add a much needed flourish or two. It even took the form of a ‘Georges Bataille ‘til I Die’ eye themed tribute garden at one point, and while pretty pretentious (and not my idea) it remained in the realm of the domestic.

The experience brought to mind a conversation I had with Michael Goldberg last year, when, while having a bit of an episode, I ended up yelping, on the verge of tears, ‘I hate art, I have no ideas, all I want to do is bloody garden, and I can hardly hand in my garden for assessment can I?’ If nothing else, this course will ensure that I never make that statement again.

Another key issue for me was the idea of social engagement in art, of art that seeks to make a difference, and to impact on people and communities. This is a funny area for me, and something I think about a lot, because with a background in neuroscience and to a lesser extent healthcare, there’s always this feeling that if I really cared, instead of engaging with people through art, I’d be, for example, administering vaccination programs to remote Indigenous communities. For me personally, the idea of making these types of works seems, paradoxically, almost unethical. When people say, ‘well, we’re not curing cancer’, I feel a panic fear like maybe I should be. People might recall Sydney artists spat+loogie (Lara Thoms and Kat Barron), who featured in Primavera 2009 with a piece called PIE. The premise was that a member of the public was invited to have a one-on-one conversation with an artist or curator, or other art world type who had agreed to participate in th eproject, over a slice of pie. At the conversation’s end the person could then choose to share the pie or shove it in the face of the artist. Well, Kat is now studying medicine and will soon be a doctor, and her partner runs an organic vegetable co-op. It's a different kind of engagement.

Lastly here is a picture of some of my plants (please excuse the rabbit).