What is the Churn of the Unmade? Metamodernist art by JJFBbennett It isn’t just paint; it’s the heavy, exhausting gravity of pure affectation. I applied these deep purples and stark whites with a thick palette knife, wanting you to feel the weight of the medium itself—the messy, chaotic over-saturation of our digital lives, the constant noise. It’s dense, tactile, and completely overwhelming. But The chaos is interrupted by a line of perfect, unyielding geometry. A clear glass ring slicing straight through the noise. This physical ring stands as the initial boundary of awareness. On one side, the suffocating density of raw human expression and digital noise; on the other, a clean, projected window into an idealised, quiet simplicity. Where does the noise end, and where does our awareness truly begin? The glass ring doesn't just divide the canvas; it bridges two entirely different eras of the soul. Look to the left. You see that heavy, anxious abstract expr...
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Artist Statement Somewhere Adrift
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Poem
Modernism and Promised Prosperity
We were glorious when we were young. Having a new and influential way of looking at the world.
Free of the arguments from illusion, visionary dreams, and the solitary evil genius.
We concentrated on the inner-urban.
That was until we arrived And dismissed our problems without evidence. Through powerful leaders doing God’s work.
Artist Statement video
Somewhere Adrift
Since I can remember, Australia's values have been under threat. I am talking about the fear of losing the innate grace, that is, the subjective sense of the Australian way. The threat list is long and most are foreign. The reported attacks by mass media are external to Australia's W.A.S.P. heritage. They are the values for what our soldiers died for. The land down under, adrift in Asia.
We Australians have been under the threat of potential invasion since the frontier wars. The fear is a deep-rooted "settler country" psychosis. And it gets whipped up by political leaders and media conglomerates at call. We are constantly reminded of our vulnerability. Our lucky country can be taken from us. We are surrounded by hostile agents who want what we have.
We have normalized the threat into a systematic level of cultural fear. Our decision-makers think of little else when considering our forward determinations. Calling on these deep-set but ill-defined societal values, we blunder the past into the future.
But, where is the art that describes the deep-set cultural anxieties and fears? Where are the aesthetic representations of the Australian perpetual settler mindset? I am not talking about here or there. I’m talking about systemic equivalence. Or there and about. The disjunction between art and cultural identification is cloaked by a tremendous silence
Australian art is bound to the manifestations of genre, style, and fashion spawned by allied interests. In short - we followed the European canon. Our cultural museums are the gatekeepers of this bind, determined to maintain acceptable heritage. What is not noted as acceptable is not considered worthy. It exists but cannot be noted.
National Galleries institutes cultural identity, power, and knowledge through artifact collection. They have the authority and resources to claim credibility. They maintain our allegiance to a trusted hierarchical heritage of shared values. The best art is created by individual geniuses, making individual aesthetic expressions. Their art is sanctimoniously given rightness through acquisition. The artist sees the merit of selling their art to a cultural institution. That is, an institution supported by cultural experts. There is a tacit understanding of what can be significant art, between the artist and the cultural expert.
Art museums need significant art to prove their adequacy on the big international stage. To rightfully stand as one of the echoes in the chamber.
Rightness acquisition/commissions are the sacred guardians of contemporary art that demonstrate Australian values as more than a dungeon of peculiarities from down under and somewhere adrift in Asia.
Poem
The Genius Artist
From Roberts to Nolan. And all those discarded as minimal importance. The goalposts of greatness remain narrow. Centred on personality and gendered genius. The cult of the Australian artist. Locked into the finite game of selectivity.
Poem
A Celebration of Shared National Values
From the Man of Titanium
How great is America?
Our rule of law.
Our free trade.
Our mateship.
But what of the long histories?
The misuse of power by governments against political opponents.
There is a Disparity in My Light: Navigating the Split Creative Consciousness Introduction - Does Metamodernism Oscillate? Clarity, I've learned, doesn't guarantee a smooth landing. While the core recalibration manages our internal mechanics, we eventually have to look back out the window and confront the final destination. For many creators navigating major life transitions or complex technical boundaries, this shift introduces an unsettling inner divide. The anatomy of disparity in creative practice is the psychological friction of a split being—standing physically present in a new space while your internal pace is still trying to catch up with the velocity of your transition. When we widen our creative intent, we often slice our universe in half: balancing cold, geometric clarity on one side against the messy, vibrant residue of personal regret on the other. Rather than forcing these halves to blend, we must learn to treat this exact contrast as our personalised map. Geom...
What is the Disparity Portal? A Metamodernist Commentary by artist JJFBbennett Portrait of a Metamodernist Artist If you stepped through the glass ring, which version of yourself would look back? A metamodernist discussion by artist JJFBbennett. A calm young man with wavy, dark cerulean-blue hair and a subtle smile stands perfectly centred inside a massive glass ring portal. He wears a simple light blue long-sleeved shirt. Behind his head, an intense golden sunburst radiates sharp, blinding rays. To his left are thick purple impasto swirls; to his right is a serene green valley painting. High-detail digital art, metamodern, surreal masterpiece. The Churn of the Unmade Look at the left side of the canvas. It isn’t just paint; it’s the heavy, exhausting gravity of pure affectation. I applied these deep purples and stark whites with a thick palette knife, wanting you to feel the weight of the medium itself—the messy, chaotic over-saturation of our digital lives, the constant noise. I...
Image to be added - watch this space My Psychological Landscape: A Speculative Ecology of the Stratosphere Introduction What is Terrestrial Control? What is Stratospheric Flow? Image to be added - watch this space The transition from the terrestrial to the atmospheric is rarely just a matter of mechanics; it is a profound undoing of the architectural ego. We board our vessels encased in the comforting math of engineering, believing we are merely shifting a physical mass from one geographical coordinate to another. But at a certain altitude, the boundary between the internal theatre of the mind and the external expanse of the world begins to fray. As the metal hull and the quiet murmurs of the cabin dissolve, I am no longer just travelling through the sky; I am becoming a part of it. Stepping directly into the stratosphere, the heavy, churning clouds of deep teals and bruised indigos cease to be merely a reflection of my psychological landscape—they reveal the fluid, boundle...
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