I’ve just written up a three page statement of intent as an artist, to give to people who view my furniture at Aesthete Gallery in Parnell, because there has been a little argument going on about whether the furniture can be seen as art. It’s always been art for me simply because, though it may be a chair or a table, thats merely the frame that it sits in, that which allows it to hung in a life, and the way that its put together and the way that I acheive that is of far more interest to me than the final intended use. To me it’s an alchemical process where I take the raw lead of utility and seive it through my own reflections on existence, it’s possibilities and myriad of interconnections, to make finished articles containing further orbits of electrons to make gold.
Also it’s a process of hard work and I’m not going to make it easy for people to accept what I do as art. I worked hard so I’m going to make the people who might seek to acquire my work work hard as well. I’m going to make them question what I’ve acheived and make them have to dig in territory they may not be inclined to dig in to find the treasure I feel sure I have made. I raise the question that if it is obviously art then is it really art or merely the dying off of art as it again finds growth in new areas?
One chair back from its sojourn at the Nathan homestead and two more unfinished.
My plan for a grant from the Pollock Krausner trust, referee’d so far by John Radford and Phil Dadson (I need one more), is going to be about building artworks that, as people meet them, are first sculptural, then sound and light making, then furniture, then musical instruments… Thats really going to have people wondering what I’m up to.