So yesterday I dropped my work off to be hung in an exhibition. Wow! It has been 7 years since I last exhibited, which is a huge chunk of time. Of course I have been making work on and off during this time but the opportunity to exhibit has been something that I have avoided for various reasons. The exhibition has been organised by the TAP (Teacher Artmaker Project Team) at the University of Melbourne and happens annually, here is the link to the online info http://education.unimelb.edu.au/news_and_activities/projects/teacher_artmaker_project.

The theme for this year’s exhibition is ‘Connections: Art, Teaching & Life’.

After much deliberation and trials with media I created a series of 25 postcard sized text pieces. The number 25 relating to the number of students I teach per class. Each artwork in what I have titled the ‘I love art’ series exclaims the doubts and frustrations both students and ‘professional’ art makers deal with within the process of making. The doubts and frustrations are also profoundly linked to being a teacher, where our professional lives almost always merge with our emotions, patience and vulnerability. These emotions exclaimed in my current series serve to motivate and push me in my life and art practice as well as push my students to work beyond the ‘comfort’ threshold in their artmaking.

Recently I read some articles on Robert Hughes online and found a very relevant quote that fits with the theme I explored in my series. “The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.”

[Modernism’s Patriarch (Time Magazine, June 10, 1996)]”
― Robert Hughes

Thanks Robert Hughes for making me feel validated.

Exhibition details:

November 18-27 at the George Paton Gallery,

Level 2 Union House, University of Melbourne, Parkville.

Phone: (03) 8344 5418

Website: http://umsu.unimelb.edu.au/what-is-on/gallery/