OPEN | Beautiful One Day, Fruit Salad the Next

04/11/2017 at 3:05 pm · Filed under art, curating, project

As curator of the Flying Arts exhibition, Beautiful One Day, Fruit Salad the Next!, John gave a speech at the opening, which was very well attended. The exhibition continues at the Judith Wright Centre in Fortitude Valley until 15 December. Great to see such positive support for Queensland based artists. John’s speech is below.

John with exhibiting artist Lyn Ahmat during the hang.

Good evening all and welcome.

I acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land and pay my respects to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders, and also the elders from other cultures, who share their wisdoms with us in such a generous way.

And I acknowledge and thank our artists who are generously sharing their creative works with us and allowing us, as viewers, to experience the world a little differently.

Each of these artists attended a Flying Arts workshop earlier this year. I facilitated this workshop on Exhibition Development and it quickly became apparent that this group of artists were not only a very nice bunch of quite different people but shared some similarities of approach to their creative activities. During the workshop this phenomenon of similar yet different was described as ‘like a fruit salad’ and it was suggested that it’d be a great idea to have a group show in the future. We thought, yep, good idea – might be possible in a couple of years or so! But, the opportunity for a show arose faster than any of us expected and this exhibition has been exactly six weeks in development – pretty good work by all of us I reckon!

I curated this show in a way I hadn’t done before – it was a bit of a risk but – it worked! As part of the workshop each artist developed a 250 word artist statement so I asked them each to send those to me and I crunched those together as three wordclouds and it became very apparent that there were some distinct thematics emerging – words like: relationships, materials, nature, people, conversation, life, human and world loomed large. I then sent these wordclouds to the artists and asked them to send me 3 images of works that they thought reflected some of the keywords. From these I selected the works for the show – it was a jointly created curatorial premise like no other!

To give some context to the show and to the creativity of these artists I’d like you to consider a room – not this room but a room without any lights. Now this room contains an elephant. Five people spend some time in this room – in the dark. The five people are; a plumber, a sailor, a plasterer, a stonemason and a philosopher.

None of these five people have ever encountered an elephant before and each one of them gropes about in the dark until they touch an elephant bit.

When they have left the dark room they are asked of their experience – what did they think was within this particular room?

The Plumber was amazed at the extreme flexibility of the piping he had found. He’d felt the elephant’s trunk.

The Sailor was quite impressed with the incredibly strong sailcloth she’d discovered. She’d felt the elephant’s ear.

The Plasterer was pleased that someone had made such lovely textured wall surfaces. He’d felt the elephant’s side.

However the Stonemason was not very enthusiastic about the lumpy and irregular column he had investigated. He had felt one of the elephant’s legs.

And the Philosopher, well the Philosopher complained that no matter how hard she had pulled the cord the lights just would not go on. She had been tugging the elephant’s tail.

Each of these people had brought their own cultural experience and expectation to the elephant – and therefore each had encountered something quite different and unique to themselves.

I suggest that we all construct our own world view from the material of our own histories and sometimes this world view may have little to do with reality yet a lot to do with imagination.

The artworks created by these artists show us some different imagined realities and I thank all of them for allowing us to enjoy the way they remake the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Picasso said, “everything you can imagine is real” and another great artist Groucho Marx said, “Well, art is art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” Somewhere in there is an important concept I’m sure!

Seeing and hearing a story is one of the ways that creativity adds to the understanding of our own culture and the culture of others – when we listen and see good things and bad things, funny things and sad things, we start to think and feel outside of our own experiences – we become better able to make some sense of the confusion that sometimes seems to surround the environment we all live in. The sharing of an artist’s work is an act of generosity and should be the starting point for a conversation – art is a catalyst for interaction and the pondering of imponderables.

So, thank you to all the artists – Anthony, Beverley, Bronwyn, Cathy, Chrys, Deborah, Fiona and Donna Maree and Tracey and Mulum, Hazel, Janet, Jennifer, Karen, Kate, Lyn, Mandy, Nicola, Sally, Simone, and Todd – your stories are unique, and this show is an important milestone in your creative careers, and it has been a joy to work with you all.

John with the Fruit Salad and Flying Arts team

These artists now invite you to have a conversation, firstly with their remarkable creative works and then, with them as artists with so much to say and so much to offer to enrich our cultural life here in Queensland. Please take time to talk with the artists – they are all deeply immersed in their creative practice and each of them is, in various ways, demonstrating what the surrealist artist Rene Magritte articulated when he said, “Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.”

Enjoy the work, most of it is for sale so why not buy some and not only support these artists but also enliven and enhance your own environment. And please be aware that just inside the gallery is Sally Jones’ sculpture of Saint Hubert and, quite remarkably, today is the feast day of Saint Hubert, the patron saint of hunters, mathematicians, opticians, and metalworkers, and now, of fruit saladers as well!!

Thank you.

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