Do you feel it too?
The courage to write your name on the sequin wall – or to slip a note under some great potion master’s door, hoping to hear back with good news and a vial of remedy. Courage to lay on the seabed and unravel from tension snagging at you like a knot, falling asleep to the sound of rising bubbles and the tide in steady motion. Perhaps, most of all this courage inspires you to play despite your age or however tall you might limber across the exhibition. That spark of imagination so often pushed out of us as children, to return to its original state and to know the world through greater sense.
We may find it difficult in galleries and museums that have created great contradictions about art, to think that creativity is within our grasp. Between the white walls and tall ceilings, sometimes the gallery feels more like a maze, silent and empty – akin to showrooms for the monumental. We are hushed and directed behind invisible lines dictating correct viewing distances and told objective histories which are followed with little deviation. The gallery has become a straight tunnel, yet I know we are better than believing stories are without complexities.
Silence in these spaces is often our only way of expressing admiration, a trait learnt rather early and decisively, and other responses are sneered at if at all allowed. But when inspiration hits, should we not value the involuntary squeal that escapes us, when for a second unguarded, we are unfiltered in joy around others. We can express our greatest desires and anxieties when the world, and how we imagine it to be, is kinder to our senses. Or even more simply, I can pretend – play – the role of another and see life through another perspective. If not in the gallery, where else can exploration be truly lived? In rotations you and I can share our roles and lean into each other, you can pretend to be the brave adventurer, on the quest of making me a little less alien.
So many deny themselves the title of ‘artist’ when it is a label defined by nothing more than our own individual attempts for connection. Art itself has no constant definition other than its creation, and yet the idea of it causes so much anxiety in how we find ways to invalidate some of its incarnations. Many times these are works that focus on wonder and on exploration because we are afraid of their bluntness – how they call us into action and help us find moments like dreams in our every day. sensorial even, is transitional. It is not only a point of growth for the creators and their personal journeys, but it is also changing the resonances of the gallery. The beginning is always timid, but with a little encouragement, we only need intuition to kick in to find ourselves in the gallery too. It is after all a space of dual nature, there cannot be art without connection – nor can there be connection without creation.
It is a challenge to find courage. Perhaps it’s in the palm of your hand when you fidget. Do you feel it too? Reach open; dig deeper. Feel something crackle and think – “is this really allowed?” The resistance as you fold into it. Unfurl through the strength of gravity. To know beyond sight, and to be among found family: like an old couch that cradles you.
Ianni Huang (they/them) LIAM BENSON Hello, Good to Meet You (detail) 2019. Commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia for the Jackson Bella Room, 2019. Photos by Jaimi Joy, Courtesy the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia A Blue Mountains City Art Gallery exhibition curated by Rilka Oakley Copyright © Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, the author and the artist 2023. This exhibition is supported by the Dobell Exhibition Grant, funded by the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation and managed by Museums & Galleries of NSW.