Foreword 前言 Welcome to Beyond the Journey the 2016/17 Master of Fine Art Exhibition. After two years of intense study eleven students are now graduating into the professional world of art. As the title of the exhibition suggests – the journey of the MFA is now over and it is time to look to the next phase of each artist’s career. And what a time it is to be graduating from art school. The art scene across the world, especially in Asia, is expanding rapidly and growing at a phenomenal pace. Today artists, curators, institutions and collectors are now more numerous than ever before. But why? I believe it is because art has very tangible and constructive experiences to offer our contemporary global society. Art as a field of intellectual inquiry, the way it is practiced today, emerged in mid 15th century when the European Renaissance re-invigorated the investigation of how the world operates and functions. This investigation used ‘natural philosophy’ as a way of understanding and interpreting the world in conjunction with, but also sometimes antagonistic to religion. Art as we know it today, like many other contemporary practices of thought, such as science, grew out of this philosophical inquiry. For the last five hundred years art has continued to try to understand ‘the way we are’ and has postulated critical perspectives, aesthetic relations and social practice as a means to that end. As the world in which we live, and our social relations, grow ever more complex, art has a key role in continuing to make sense of the way things are; and even more so in suggesting adjustments, corrections and alternatives. It does this in a number of ways. For instance, art as a practice of critical reflection, empowers our communities through its engagement and participation. It plays a substantial part in assessing and processing the values of our cultures by examining how these values are developed, determined and articulated. It is able to reflect-back that which can otherwise seem natural and ordinary, and by doing so bringing attention to preconceptions, ordinariness and assumptions that need to be questioned and bettered.
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