The Flare of Hedonism

The Flare of Hedonism

As I viewed the artworks being exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales under the theme of the Embassy of Spirits in the 20th Biennale of Sydney, I asked myself "Is my art spiritual?" 

My art is based on the pursuit of happiness, well-being and nature. It has been created only for pleasure in the eye of the beholder. In that sense it is hedonistic rather than spiritual. 

In another conversation on the opening night of my last exhibition an artist friend asked "Is it art?"  

Visually it uses illusion to delightfully disrupt perception, challenging the imagination to interact with the work purely on its aesthetic. It contains no references to the political or the social   The aesthetic in the work is gifted to me by nature in all her beauty and the resulting abstraction is a reflection of reality and a paradox. What does my art mean?    

In the art world as curated in the 20th Biennale of Sydney the polemic is art works always have a political and/or social context requiring a beautifully designed programme with pages of highly stylised text to make sure if you don't get the meaning of the work and all its strands of influences, you will have an instruction manual to ensure you know how to think about it and its meaning from a higher authority.   

My work is just an expression of pleasure in discovery - surely the basis of all creation.