I am an artist therefore anything, I produce is art. Or, Anything I produce is accepted as art, therefore I am an artist. I pondered both outcomes, as I walked through the art gallery in the city. A combination of native works, landscapes that captured an Australia when it was a frontier, pioneers and ‘Aboriginals’ in an ancient land. Religious works of human whose eyes that looked beyond the viewer with empty gazes, golden orbs around their heads, immortalising them. To the paintings of important people or the aristocracy of the past and maritime moments, each done with passion, talent and an affection for subject or expression itself.

Then the cold minimalism of modernity, the cynical professionalism of studied art and sanctioned pieces. A pair of mannequins embedded with countless screws. An inferior piece to the non-gallery display found in the back lot of a country town, the creator Barry or Bazza. He lived out of a caravan with his own garden of scrubs. The Barry collection were in depth, detailed, creations from his deranged mind, crafted by hands that trembled between suicide and addiction. The imagined realisations of a brain floundering in the miasma of isolation and rage that came from dark shadows of a traumatic youth, followed by maturities regret. The nails, staples, bolts and screws that weighed down his mannequins were punctured with feeling, purpose, perhaps absent of design, rather impulses to form shape or expression. The heads wore such expressions, given life the sprays of canned paint and whatever tins that had enough coloured liquid in them to impress flesh on steel, features that had gained shape with every piece of sharp metal he punched into the mannequins.

The figures at the gallery looked as though they had been devised by committee, formed around an idea to copy Barry’s work, based on a vague description from a person who knew a person who once saw it. The “artist” appointed, given grant money to delegate tradesmen to implement ‘their imagination’. Void of anything other than the materials on display. Lifeless screws inserted into lifeless mannequins. It’s displayed, therefore it’s art. Barry’s work, likely sold as scrap metal once he died. Was not art, at least not sanctioned. Instead it’s the clutter and accumulated junk of a ‘nobody’, no art degree, no wine drinking admirers and no state government funding, only a measly dole check to help him buy weed and supplies.

Then the taxidermists monstrosity, the joined lower regions of two horses, hung as though in an abattoir. If found in the shed of a single man it would be seen as a red flag. Any who would pollute nature postmortem in such a manner must clearly be sick. Or so, we are told by media, by the experts to be wary of such behavioural signs. The morbid affection for dead things, the disdain of an animal, the Dr Moreau fascination of intermingling beast with beast, is degenerate in the extreme. But alas, when curated, and on display it becomes a fixture, to conjure conversation, to fascinate and be considered and explained in such a way that it is above all else, art. When I was in the meat industry, a slaugherman had created similar works by sewing pieces of animals together. His bloody and sticky hands, lacing the dead together for his creations. He sold the smaller pieces, I once saw two rabbits running from one another and a rams head on a kangaroo. Morbidly talented or as another slaught muttered, “a wrongin’.”

Then comes the coloured lines, layers of paint and abstract expressions, no distinct shapes or purpose. Art can be anything we want, a person expresses, we admire. That is the point. It’s just that some expressions are more important, or valued than others. Perhaps they have a university degree, have been taught and trained to do art. They study those from the past who themselves may never have studied formally, who experimented and invented, who are now the definitions of the art form. Those in the past who with a free hand, and open mind simply did, are the definable methods or styles. In the after Art,inc becoming dogmatism and doctrine. Art that non-artists may invest in or stand and admire or discuss, allowable culture, for the viewer to feel as though they have culture.

Then there are the words or more to the point sentences and partial quotes engraved into marble. I have seen such work in funeral parlours, a talent, a craft indeed. But these are quotations, words from literature. Other people’s words. As is the contemporary relationship with literature, the written word is now compressed, to be summed up. Reduced for the short attention span, and for those who want to seem smart, intelligent, notable quotes plucked from larger pieces. Here we have such memes, quotations, engraved on blocks of marble. On the wall, black backdrop, white paint, “Ah!, Ahh! Ahh

h!!”

and so on. It’s art.

A couple of years ago in the gallery, there was a fascinating diorama of ghoulish skeletons tearing at and killing Wehrmacht soldiers. About 1/72 scale. The soldiers on trains or marching into certain death, a pre-Hell. It was detailed, well created, and imaginative. I have seen dioramas in military museums, and hobby shops. I made many in my early years, they varied between realistic depictions of historical moments or imagined ones. Fantastic convergences between metaphysical fates, metaphors and dream-like outcomes for very real decisions. Judgement. Punishment. Fantasy or religious moralism implanted into a military display. Except when I did it, a hobby. Merely to exist so friends may mumble, “That’s cool,” or a parent to say, “that’s nice dear.” In the gallery, it’s understood to have meaning, it’s valued, respected. It’s art. It transcends hobby or the imagination of a creative model maker, such are menial and socially speaking, time wasters.

To the photos, images of children. Some are of the same child, variations of smile to laughter. Sweet moments of innocence, nice photos to have for the family. What could be an intimate accumulation of moments, now on public display. A physical version of a social media montage that we are all too familiar with. Purity lost the moment it’s made public, sincere intimacy ruined. These are photos of a stranger to me, but to the artist, perhaps their son, brother, nephew, lover? Who knows. On display, it’s art. I should be impressed, inspired, feel an emotion for a strangers child, I should think more than just, “cute kid.” When I am handed a glass of wine, I groan, “it’s not for me,” often the reply is that I need to develop a palate, to culture myself, to grow a taste. Again I say, “not for me”.

Alongside the children are photos of young adults They smile, pose. The quality is nice, a testament to modern camera technology. It’s framed well. Across the street on a street window, models pose in photos. They are framed and shot in a better way. But they are only there to sell high end fashion. That photographer understood colours, shades, shapes that attract the eye. A heterosexual male may think, ‘wow, she’s beautiful,’ a woman may imagine, “I wonder if I could look that way.” The hook to get us to shop, buy a product. In this sense those photos are not art, commercial acts. In the gallery however, it’s art. I am unsure what I am meant to gain from the photo of a stranger, it could be seen in a waiting room magazine, here it hangs on a wall, declaring, “I am art.”

I am not an artist. I have not studied the academic requirements to understand. Not trained in how to appraise or come to an objective evaluation, appreciate what is a subjective expression. Much of the modern works seems as though they were made, with the understanding that they would be displayed and therefore be art. Risk, sacrifice, expression, the intention not mattering as much as the fact of who the creator is. Therefore is it that, “I am artist, therefore what I produce is art?”

One could go into the deeper conspiracies and wider criticisms of art, especially modern art. I’m not interested in doing that here. I wish to contain to what I saw, what I experienced. Is art about how it makes us experience it feel? I can’t help what I feel. Clearly it says more about myself, indeed. Am I wrong? What are the protocols? The critic and those who decide, have the power, to know better. Not the artists, not the public. Should a thing become too popular, does it delve into ‘commercial’ territory and become sullied by the masses affection. The balance therefore must be found in a niche, who and how many of who? If much of the art is created, generated, for the sake of it being presented, an elaborate feature to be claimed as culture, as art. Does that mean, some day a machine will be allowed to be an artist? Or must it have a degree, trained properly to be mechanised in it’s own randomness.

I knew a girl, long ago. She stumbled with her pencil, chalk and paint creating images of those she knew and variations of who she thought she knew. She painted through sadness, in the cold morning hours when sleep hid from her, she created. Her works had tears blotted among the colours, bits of her in the paper. She sobbed, screamed, laughed and even spoke as she looked into what she saw come about from her hands. One day, I received a message that she had taken her life. I still have a piece she did for me, “this is how you see me, not how I am.” She was right, and it’s a beautiful piece. Her other works likely buried as garbage once the public trustee rifled through her things, the family she hid from not wanting them. No monetary value in her feelings. In those drawings and paintings she imprisoned emotions and vulnerability that sailed her beautiful mind through pain, the misery drowned her. Is that not art? Was she not an artist? She was authentic. Is authenticity valued? Or does it need professionals to decide that the inauthentic is in fact, authentically art?

While students and those looking for feelings and meanings walk through the gallery, in search of expression and impression, do they find what they seek? Would they discover it, if they allowed themselves to see the art around them, the expressions born from hands that are not elevated by expert fiat?

Alas, what would I know. I am a writer, actually, no I am not. A hobbyist? A blogger? A labourer who puts words to screen? What would I know, the gatekeepers, the qualified, the experts, the cultural masters, the critic, the invisible reader, that’s they who determines such titles. You must clearly believe it too. Many artists are in the world, they express what they know of the world, but remain hidden nada, incognito. You don’t see them, because you have not been told to know them as artists.