The project aimed to investigate preparatory methodologies employed in the contemporary art making process by a number of visual artists. The study focussed upon that mostly unseen and typically unexperienced aspect of contemporary art practice, the incubation of the germ of an idea, with its heuristic exploration of the collision between content and form.
The proposition is that an artist’s subjective expression operates in advance of their actual realisation, once they become absorbed in the physical interplay of the various elements of image making. Such interactive sequences actually make for streams of thought, even as they reach into sensory spheres that mostly remain tentative. To achieve the aims of this project it was vital to be able to examine these formative catalysts as well as their visual art outcomes.
The vehicle chosen for investigation and publication was the art exhibition. Five artists presently working in different media were selected. The art exhibition, entitled 'Foreplay', incorporated both resolved artworks and speculative material, was held in the Plimsoll Gallery, Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania, from 28 July to 19 August this year.
A published catalogue with an introductory essay, artist’s statements detailing their art practice, biographies and reproductions of explanatory background material, as well as exhibition artworks, accompanied the exhibition.
'Foreplay' brought to the forefront heuristic material considerations that are the very stuff of an experimental art practice. To this end, it was important that the curators selected artists whose art practice sought expression in the immensely fertile field of the unknown, which in itself established an exhibition platform for risk, chance and proposition.
Curator researchers Associate Lecturer Lucy Bleach and Professor Emeritus Geoff Parr, Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania.
Plimsoll Gallery manager Pat Brassington.
