I find it intimidating telling this cohort to mind their manners. So much so that I had to seek individual counselling when things started to get out of hand. But such are artists – beaming, loving, nudging, tearing and then suddenly, laughter. Yes, that roaring chuckle to celebrate a day’s work or simply of a moment’s folly.

Rationale for fables is the students’ choice for the title of this year’s graduate exhibition, summing up the joy, frustration and dilemmas that accompanied their journey surrounding academia and art-making. Why do we even try to do this? Well, as much as we are artists, we are humans and this makes us think. 

A recent encounter with a second-generation local artist (whom I shall call artist X) brought about the debate of how art-making and thinking were aligned. He was offended by the suggestion that thinking and art-making could exist as one. To him, thinking is lightweight, as making has nothing to do with thinking. Making for him is charged with the experiential, where chance, uncertainty and a sense of quest is paramount. Thinking is reserved for art criticism, reflection and afterthought. As an educator, I felt misunderstood, but then again, X had a point that if one were to see art-making as living a life of faith, then one should not analyse living in the moment. You live life and labour because you believe in it.  

For me, perhaps to think about art is an attempt to analyse and describe after this fact.

…

“The poet does not describe, he exalts things.” ¹

Gaston Bachelard writes about the relationship between thinking and imagination. He divides them as analogies between science and poetry and even proposes the duality between concept and image, one that is respective to masculine and feminine signs. Bachelard makes it possible for us to begin to work towards using language to get close to the imaginary. Being in academia is about working towards this sense of proximity to our artistic processes.

I want to appreciate these thirteen artists who have made their individual attempts at getting closer to their art practice. Learning about art-making at LASALLE is not simply about gaining knowledge – in fact it is the opposite. It is about having the courage to ask yourself why you live, and why do you do what you do? Rationale for fables is a form of writing as image, not simply to make sense, but to write about that which gives pleasure and traction in the thick of art-making. 

I will end with a quote by my fellow arts educator, artist and curator Adeline Kueh, who while probing a problem in the midst of curating will often ask the question, “What is the logic?” I have learnt that this logic is the search for the source inherent in the scale and equation hidden in every work’s structure. Once discovered, these elements can be used as a guide in developing distance and juxtaposition between art works, generating and advocating materiality and proportion, giving praise to shadows, and again, perhaps providing us with a semblance towards a rationale for fables.

Notes

1.Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Reverie, Beacon Press Boston  1971, p. 163.

Dr. Ian Woo
Programme Leader, MA Fine Arts
McNally School of Fine Arts
LASALLE College of the Arts