Out Of The Box & Off The Wall - Art Installation

Published in Ceylon Today

1. ART AS INSIGHT

Today we live in a world where everything we are told is of value is for sale, and seems to be measured in monetary terms. We are credit rich and time poor, our homes are full of commodities and conveniences. Minimalism has caught on, but most of us are aware that the size of our homes, their location, their re-sale value, and the objects with which we fill and furnish them, are an index of our wealth, our purchasing power, our preferences and our taste. We are branded by our designer brands, and owned (and often judged by our peers) by what we own.

A slow tide of materialism is inexorably rising, and we are being flooded by generic and often factory-made, low investment and cut price goods of low value. Planned obsolescence, low expectations of the quality or endurance of what we buy, superficiality and gloss reflected off every surface we move through. 'Greed is good' had an era named after it. 'Nothing exceeds like excess', was its motto.

The last century has seen the rise of mass manufacturing, huge industrial and economic cycles of productivity, and the stockpiling but inequitable distribution of great wealth; but the last three decades has brought us the exponential rise of globalisation, and the consequences are that we live in a cacophony of commercialism, disconnected from the natural world, and increasingly alienated from ourselves and each other. Faced with the impermanence of all things, we are constantly urged by advertisers and manufacturers to cling to manufactured goods instead of connecting in a meaningful way with the wisdom and beauty and sources of solace and renewal that nature and our place in it can offer us. We can only do this if if we cease to see it as a resource and a commodity to be exploited, and cultivate a dynamic relationship with the world we live in.

In the midst of all this noise, which leaches out the joy in our lives like the nutrients from soil, art and artistic endeavour continue to operate, but non-competitively: without the same gloss and strobe lighting and sheer loudness. To appreciate art, and what it can offer, we must position ourselves to view it and appreciate it. To do this, we must be still, and the profit-driven world I have just described allows no time or place for stillness, except at meditation retreats or scenic yoga and health spa holidays, which are often themselves a profit-making concern.

Art of all kinds - visual art, sonic art, music, dancing, theatre, performance, opera, traditional drumming, literature, graphic art - requires an investment of the self, both on the part of the artist, who has undergone training and study in theory and skill in order to create their work, and of the audience, who appreciate it, view it, attend performances, go to book launches, and purchase the work.

  As all of us are increasingly aware, life is not just about survival but about fulfilment. In fact, survival without insight and progress and awakening of the mind and spirit becomes a mere mechanical process, and we feel as processed as an item on a conveyor belt with no identity of our own. The remedy for greed is discernment and selectivity, just as the remedy for rampant destruction of the natural world is the wise management of resources, and mindfulness of the impact of acting on our aspirations.

I am sure that we are all familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  Note that, at the apex of this famous pyramid structure, is the most powerful aspect of our lives: our Aesthetic appreciation, our love of beauty, and structure, and design, and our capacity to connect meaningfully with the spheres around us, social and geographic and physical and conceptual and natural. The arts are not just ornamental, although they bring dimensions of beauty into our lives and enhance them beyond measure. At their best, works of art have the power to awaken, activate and vivify us.

If we find ourselves feeling deadened by repetitively treading our mechanical pathways, we can find visionary portals in a painting or sculpture or other artistic work which can liberate us. And this need not be a temporary respite. We can return to a favourite holiday destination again and again. We can watch a favourite film many times, and see something new in it each time we view it. We can purchase art, from the artist who created it. Such an investment is an investment in ourselves as well as the work of the artist.

At the heart of every great work of art is an insight which helps us understand the whole of life, and our place in it, with clarity and accuracy. Reaching that point where this insight is revealed to us, even for a brief hour or half hour, feels like reaching 'a place where everything makes sense', as the character 'Red' says in the voiceover by the Morgan Freeman in the great film 'Shawshank Redemption". Insight. Escape. Elevation. Exaltation. Space. Enlightenment. Freedom. A sense of interconnectedness with all living things, entities and beings.

In our daily working lives we are urged to 'think outside the box', to be not just dutiful but devoted, committed and passionate in what we do, to give ourselves in a focused way to each task we undertake. An artist, ignited by their own inspiration, can illuminate and light our way.

By purchasing art we invest not only our money, but other aspects of ourselves which emerge higher up the strata of Maslow's Hierarchy: our imagination, our thought, our energy, our time, our view of the world. We interact with what is in front of us, not trying to control the dialogue with our prefabricated agenda. We buy the picture because it appeals to us, and over time, as it occupies its place in our home or office, or boardroom or gallery, we truly 'get' the picture. It is not just a piece of background noise or a splash of colour or even part of an ambience created by an interior designer. It connects us to a wider system of thought and feeling, it opens us up to our experience and accentuates our awareness. We resonate, we are inspired, we feel re-aligned, in a better state of harmony and attunement.

To be able to purchase art by a living artist is to accept an invitation to participate in a creative dynamic, a way of seeing the world, which is bigger and more life-changing than buying a mass-produced object can ever be. The art work is a product, but the creation does not end with the paint drying and the painting exchanging hands, from seller to buyer.

  Creation is a process: from idea and inspiration, through a process of testing the right models and instruments to bring the idea into completion, into something which works, which can be applied in the practical world, to make our lives more functional, and more free. When you purchase a work of art by a living artist, the process is one you can access: you can read or hear them interviewed, you can view their creative ideas as they take shape in their journals, and updates via Facebook or Instagram, you can meet them and hear them speak about their work at openings and launches, and see their works in images in articles in magazines and newspapers.

Buying great art is a significant investment. Like all good investments, it brings long term dividends. The returns in the case of a wonderful artwork increase rather than diminish, over time. It is a direct benefit, a hit of energy, every time you see it and experience it, and consider where it would best be positioned, or from which angle it would best be seen. You see something new every time you look at it, and you find something new in yourself as you respond to it, and the ideas that it expresses, and the structures and forms in which the artist has chosen to convey them.

2. ART AS ARTEFACT

The world outside our windows is fast eroding. Global warming and environmental degradation have led to the upsetting of the balances which had made life on our Earth sustainable. We are in a kinship relationship with what we are destroying, and so we too are becoming degraded and eroded, spiritually, psychologically and emotionally by this terrible momentum which is fuelled by commercialism. Equilibrium is being destabilised, and the interwoven structures which held us together and part of the environment are unravelling. In my generation, the sea temperatures are rising: 93% of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia has suffered bleaching. The beautiful Earth, with its structures and textures and sacred geometries, is dissolving around us. Our children may have to see old growth rainforest trees as holograms via computer technology. Everything they interact with will be a representation, or a re-creation, or a re-enactment. They will live in a virtual world. The air and the sea and the earth will be poisoned, and toxic. They will have to protect themselves from the very elements of earth, air, fire and water which have formed life on this planet we inhabit. And the only way this accelerated and destructive disturbance, disruption and impermanence can be stopped is collectively and collaboratively, through insight and awareness and individual decisions to change our own ignorant and impulsive, compulsive action. 'If there's one thing that I've learned/ It's the point of no return/ And if that's to be our fate/ Now's no time to hesitate' (as the Australian band, The Hoodoo Gurus, have rightly said.)

If we require aspirations to a nobler truth to be enacted and demonstrated and shown to us, we can find these shown in art. Living artworks are not objects but works in progress, activated by the consciousness of each responder. We can see the world through the visionary awareness of someone who sees it, and loves it, and restores our faith in it, and by doing so fortifies our sense of connection with it.

It may be all we can save. An artist's vision of the vanishing world is an artefact which acts to revision and restore our relationship with that world. Something we can own, and position in the space we occupy every day, which speaks to us: which re-ignites our belief, which renews our hope, which restores us, and improves our relationship with our surrounding environment, both social and geographical.

3. ART AS INVESTMENT

Not An Object/Commodity, But A Living & Dynamic Entity

Art Installations  - Anoma Wijewardene's Art Works

A painting may seem inanimate because it hangs on the wall of a building. But an art installation is a large free standing structure, and has access points from many angles: it is an interactive entity. It contains textured, composite aspects, and expresses in its panels and swathes and vertical positioning the beauty, fragility, impermanence and transience of the physical world. An artist's vision is not a camera lens, or a digitised representation. The artwork a creative artist produces is full of the artist's personal feeling, and ideas and private thoughts, to which we respond.

This is why many of the great galleries of the world have seats provided, on which an observer can situate themselves to contemplate the work they are viewing, and meditate on what they are seeing and experiencing, in unscheduled time, extracted from their daily routine and the demands on their effort and energy. In a world of time-sensitive actions and deadlines, such time and opportunity to contemplate the vision of another human being is a lifeline.

I first saw Anoma Wijewardene's work in the 'Earthlines' Exhibition which was held in Galle during the Fairway Galle Literary Festival in January this year. There were powerful visions of the world and humanity expressed in each canvas and construction. There was crisis and urgency, and a sense of the precarious position in which we as a race now find ourselves. I was particularly struck by two landscapes: a seascape and a waterfall cascading down a rockface under a red moon/sun. I could see the shapes of the landforms, like the implicit  formative bone structures under the skin and features of the human body. I could see textures of ground, and sand, and feel the colours and the temperatures they suggested, of the earth, of the water, and the connected and cumulative responses in myself.

The landscapes I saw in the 'Earthlines' exhibition in Galle show people suspended: caught in the flow of streaming energy, minerals and light and fractals of powerful bodies of rock and water. Without the perspective of a dissecting analytical electron microscope, we still feel we can see into the structures and essences of the earth around us, with which we are connected, from which we are formed. The titles of Anoma's works often express this elemental interconnectedness between human beings and the world we have externalised: 'Each Cerulean Sea Swells Through Our Veins', for example, shows striated water as layered as earth, its colours and weaves reflecting and refracting and diffracting around a floating figure, who is gently supported in a luminous, surrounding, suffusing cloud: an upsurge and wash of visualised energy. We cannot ascertain where this energy ends or begins: is the person activated by this radiant forceful light, or are they giving their energy back, exuding it, to the air above them? Is it a dynamic of give - or take? After seeing this painting, how can we not see that what is around us is also within us?

Anoma was invited to exhibit some of her installations in a glorious exhibition at Sotheby's Gallery in Hong Kong, as part of the 'One Belt, One Road' event, hosted by The Hong Kong Federation of Women, from 12-16 April.  This event is part of what has been called ' the biggest geopolitical, economic, and cultural project of the 21st century'. Some of the greatest living contemporary female artists from countries located along the ancient 'Silk Road' were invited to showcase their work and visions in this exhibition, to highlight the powerful physical and social interconnections, industrial, commercial and cultural, operating in Eurasia. Anoma's work was chosen to represent the whole region of South Asia, and has been praised for its evocation of ecological awareness and the profound impact that our relationships with our world have, on our identities and our cultures. Her exhibit is called 'Earth, Rise Within Us'.

An artist's instinct is creative; and the urgency to create in a world which is disintegrating and devolving is the opposite of Nihilism. The artist finds meaning in the act and process of creation itself. Lasting beauty is generated by deployment of skill, catalysed by the external imposition of a survivalistic imperative.