So what is art and what is it for?
I used to think it was one of two things. Firstly to make a statement that has a reference within a certain time, used as a recording for history, belonging to a group of people within a society. Secondly, it could be used as a method of stimulation, as a means of generating an emotional reaction which can be obtained by colour and substance enhanced by texture or by the subject matter's theme.
I still believe that this is the infrastructure upon which art is based on but I'm able to see that it is more diverse, constantly changing and developing itself, used as a vehicle to find necessary answers to fundamental questions surrounding existence. The questions of birth, death, age, ruin, hope, joy, sadness and pain concern all race of people living across the globe.
How these questions are asked and then interpreted mirror their existence creating a duplication of their societies' culture.
Art is often discussed in relation to what is good and what is bad, is the artist talented or can anybody achieve the same results - can a five year old do it? Perhaps this is irrelevant, based on personal taste and what art institutions project onto the work.
Should art be aesthetic or should it be shocking? I don't really think it matters, as the point of it lies beneath, it is the process of the making by which the questions engage within a dialogue surrounding society's culture. That is to say, art can be anything or everything. The questions asked may be an individual's quest, in search of their true identity, or it could become the voice that speaks for a society as a whole.The difference today is due to the vast spread of communication, where questions in the past wouldn't have been heard beyond the boundaries of a community sharing a common language, now it can become common knowledge.
Art becomes increasingly accessible, as what in the past was considered remote becomes easily availably awareness and recognition between people globally, enabling all walks of life to recognise something within themselves. There are no restrictions as 'art' speaks to everyone in all languages simultaneously.
My Art Seeker Journal : 20002
Art Culture Vulture: Travels of an Art Seeker
While my work as cabin crew took me to many countries I began writing about different situations that I found myself in. I took hundreds of photographs that I thought that one day I might use within my own art. I continued by collecting images of other people's artwork that I found, that I came across along the way. I realised the searching became like an addiction, a need to feed visual stimulation which in turn triggers continuous inspiration which allows my own work to grow, forever changing and developing. My writing doesn't follow a traditional, logical journey in a usual sense as most of my visits are only a few hours to a day long. Often it was by luck or chance of circumstance and the possibility of what I was able to find within a very limited timeframe. I therefore used time as my format, creating a 24 hour day. By jumping time zones of the world I could document the segment of time I had within a country or place with in it. I started in London at Greenwich Mean time, whereby I added an hour, until I reached the international date line , and then began to subtract an hour, returning back to where I started. By using this format I have been able to place one day next to another that could be over a year apart, depending on when I last visited.
01/01/2020
Art Seeker Stories
20 years on and my views are still the same. What I couldn't have imagined back then is the extreme advancement in technology and communication, the main factors being the smart phone, the rise of the internet - google and social media.
I hope to take this year to revisit my experiences and art findings and share them with you in Art Seeker Stories. I continue to seek art, no longer real time but on my laptop. I hope for the art stories to grow, to see how the artists or places I saw may have changed in the last 20 years but also to share new artist stories so that I am continuing my artist journey of 20 years ago, sharing art I love, connecting artists worldwide.
My Art Bible: 3 Books by Matthew Collings
Blimey!
It Hurts
Art Crazy Nation
I have a lot of books and have collected them for years but three books are probably my most influential because they marked an era in art history which in response started me on my artist journey. Mathew Collings is an artist and writer, an art critic and presenter for; 'This is Modern Art' and, 'Hello Culture'. In his book 'Blimey! 1997 he tackles the London art scene from within the inside but questioning from all perspectives. It rides the wave at the height of the Saatchi decade, the Young British Artists phenomena and cool Britannia. His direct, matter of fact, nothing spared approach sparked my quest for searching art.
In 1998 he published 'It Hurts', a New York version of London's 'Blimey!' When I read it I never imagined that I would be seeing and experiencing New York once or sometimes three times a month myself. It's strange as it's not so much the art or artists in this book but more the the bite sized snippets of art exploration that Matthew gives us.
While I was on my own journey of exploration of searching for art worldwide a year later in 2001 Matthew wrote, 'Art Crazy Nation'. This book is about what happened within the British art scene 5 years following his first book Blimey! My diary as it was became 'Art, Culture Vulture: Travels of an Art Seeker,' without knowing it at the time of writing, 'Art Crazy Nation,' felt like a conformation of what I was trying to do, and in the end it became my response or my answer, following on -the story, but from a different perspective - that of a 20 something female, cabin crew outside of the art-scene.
Thank you Matthew for being such a huge inspiration. Ironically many years later I showed my own artwork with New British Artists at The London Art Fair, after I was taken on as their 'Wild Card'. The ground floor was reserved for 4 of the highest brow galleries, the first and most prominent was Jay Jopling's, White Cube. Everyone else were on a galleried level, higher up The view looking up to the next tier had a wall which showed a memorising abstract painting, delicate and inviting made out of triangles and diamonds, for quite a few years I saw similar versions of this same art work, on that very same wall. Only 15 years later did I come to find out that it was created by husband and wife. duo, Matthew Collings and Emma Biggs.
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