Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences
South Australian School of Art
South Australian School of Art
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'The body's humours by the body's strength dispelled,
Though drunk and rude great words bring wine'
(from Ian Fairweather's
The Drunken Buddha)
Working within the disciplines of a visual art practice is the end in itself. It should be a constant cycle of growth and renewal, small deaths and great beauty. It should be hard work and the artist should feel like they are always at the beginning and the end at the same time. A contemporary visual art practice is usually multiplicious; it involves study, theory, conceptual notions, practical techniques and knowledge, direct action with society, balance, imbalance, boredom and trauma.
An intimate engagement with life.
The vehicle for this is study. For me a continuous investigation at tertiary level is the conduit for image-making. By engaging in the international dialogue of art, extending professional affiliations and networks, researching and residencies, exhibiting, seeking out income through lecturing and grants together form the whole of a life of visual practice.
Life is a rich and complex thing. Historically a career in the visual arts has assumed a non-linear trajectory for its practitioners, only in the latter-Twentieth Century becoming aligned with tertiary education systems that primarily act as a foundation for contemporary professional practice.
A professional practice is an organically complex network that branches off in many and varied directions, interconnected by association, forming a whole by definition.
Like a tree.
And then there's luck. Luck may come simply through the act of engagement, it may not. What is certain is that without the act of engagement, without an active exploration of the discipline of practice, it cannot eventuate. Come in spinner.
My work is about beauty and the inherent grotesqueness found within it. My work is about documenting the fictional as fact with an Australian light, an Australian countenance. My work is about what it means to be a human being in the early Twenty-First Century. I do this with a camera.
I seek to be a drunken Buddha.
CJ Taylor
Artist's CV (RTF file, 50kb)
