Jess Taylor, Eleanor Amor & Nat Penney, Jonathan Kim, Tom Borgas, Rebecca McEwan, Amber Cronin, Christina Peek, Sasha Grbich & Kelly Reynolds, Yusuf Ali Hayat, Jasmine Crisp, Patrick Cassar | Curated by eDuard Helmbold & Gabi Lane | Praxis Artspace

On Being an Artist brings together thirteen South Australian artists who, individually or as collaborations, create work in respond to eleven ‘actions’ inspired by Michael Craig Martin’s collection of memoiresque essays of the same name. After gleaming insights, advice and interesting quotes from Martin’s text, these quotes were misread and applied as instructions on being an artist in the style of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s ‘do it’ exhibitions conceived in the 1990s.

My work ‘Nothing! Everything! The Heart of All Things!’ responded to following brief: Action 1: Cradle of Decadence. Evoke the ghost of Goya’s ‘The Disasters of War: Nada. Ello dira’. Insert several half–pages. Use variations of the same geometric forms in black, grey and white until it finds rest in a cradle of decadence.

There is a kind of self-obsession that comes with my type of making, a measure of decadence inherent in looking deep within to extract the kinds of experiences and feelings that act as the catalysts for my work. There is also a discomfort; when we hold a mirror to ourselves, we must confront the ugliest parts if we wish to bring our entirety from a space of reflection to one of action. Each time, I compete with mirrors that are far from perfect, more akin to those in sideshows, and I must take care to cut the ouroboros that would otherwise allow this reflection to alter my conception of self without end or limit.

In this work, I pivot from Goya’s Disasters of War: Nada into my own shadowy place, filled with dark figures that could be benevolent or malevolent, reaching, grappling, inviting me to look at myself. The figures reach and cajole – will their touch be gentle or grasping, will I be held or overwhelmed?

I am at the centre of all of it, and I am all of it. The central figure in Nada was alone, for all the shadows surrounding him and the cruel indifference of justice; here too, so am I, a blessing, a curse, its own kind of decadence.

Photos by Sam Roberts