![]() Even static works often ask the viewer to actively participate in more subtle ways. 82 x 30 x 12 in.īNG: Your artwork often incorporates an element of performance. I want to believe the one truth that every story is trying to tell us “You are here.” I am driven by the same thing that drives us all, to be present. The Nothing, the “no-thing-I-can-name”, is the visceral, deep, real, eternal soup we all come from. So to be present I have to find ‘The Truth’ outside of ‘My Truth’. Our understanding, our description of reality, separates us from it. So this is the problem consciousness wants to feel real, it wants to believe it exists, but the only reality it has access to, is the reality it imagines, and because we can only comprehend in terms of contrast, any attempt to understand reality just proves it is different from us. You are you because you are not the universe. Black is only black because it is not white. So you try to find what you have in common with the world, unfortunately you only understand in terms of contrast. It is the one thing our consciousness really craves. It is the one true goal of all our endeavors. Presence, being present, is the one true human need. You try to prove to yourself that the world exists and that you exist in it. So you reach out to connect with the world. You are an isolated, disembodied, omniscient observer. Even your body feels distant, different, like a thing outside the “you that is aware”. The universe is everything except your consciousness. The universe is everything else that isn’t you. Nothing exists outside your awareness of it, but you are not the universe. You are the center of your entire universe. The human condition is one of terrifying isolation. Your reality is just an idea you believe. Your body lives in the world, but your mind imagines a reality misinterpreted from the electrochemical signals your body sends. Your brain has never seen, smelled, heard, touched or tasted anything. MW: Reality exists outside your perception of it. Could you please explain what you mean by this? In what ways does it drive your work? This mixed media artwork, in which 1,000 cardboard houses on stilts imitate the contour of land around a river, was exhibited at BNG in 2014 in Contemporary Conversation: Michael Walsh.īNG: You have said that “the no-thing (the not described) has become the necessary focus of my work”. Not knowing is the source of all learning, exploration, innovation, growth, and adventure! Knowing “I don’t know” gives me the courage and capacity to think outside my own box.įounded In Nothing by Michael Walsh, 2014. “I don’t know” are the smartest three and a half words in the English language. We are limited by what we believe is true, or something is only true if you believe it. There’s a Buddhist quote about how our ideas of the external are as valuable as the world views of a chick still inside its egg. MW: I credit this lesson as the foundation of my freedom. Then he asked “What do you feel?” After I answered all his questions, before I opened my eyes, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Remember there is more than one way to perceive the world.”īNG: How did this experience shape your curiosity and creativity, both as a child and as an artist? He asked, “What do you taste?” That one got me thinking, since we don’t often pay attention to taste when we’re not eating. Then he asked, “What do you smell?” I answered. He asked, “What do you hear?” I told him. He stopped me by a cherry tree that used to grow in front of our house and told me to close my eyes. MW: When I was very young, around 4 or 5, my father and I went for a walk. This has stuck with me as it was a very simple and very effective analogy for looking at the world through the eyes of an artist. We sat down with Michael to discuss the different ways in which we perceive the world, why not knowing the answer is the root of innovation and how he uses art as an attempt to be truly present.īNG: You gave a lecture at the Bermuda National Gallery late last year in which you told a story about how your father had taken you to a cherry tree when you were a child and asked you to look at it in different ways. The artist, who lectures at the Bermuda College, has exhibited in the Bermuda Biennial a total of eight times – six alone and twice as a member of the Centipede Art Movement, a grassroots collaborative dedicated to creating contemporary artwork in Bermuda, which he describes as “a counteraction to self-imposed Bermudian censorship”. Michael Walsh is a contemporary artist whose engaging mixed media artworks, which often incorporate an element of performance, ask the visitor to respond and participate.
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