Wonderlust

Background: This research investigated cognizance within art practice, and how this might form during an uncertain ever-changing contemporaneity. Supporting literature around contemporaneity was sourced through the work of philosopher Boris Groys (2016), and the writing of cultural theorist Terry Smith (2006). Ideas of cognizance within art practice were examined in conjunction to the research of philosopher Henri Bergson (1946), theorist Elizabeth Grosz (2008), Professor of neuroscience Ezequiel Morsella, and cultural theorist Nikos Papastergiadis. Contribution: The research examined ideas that contemporary art practices form within an enclosed and anticipatory state of change, shaped by our contemporaneity. With perpetual change at the centre of our times, artists develop practices informed by motivity as a central condition of their practice, constantly re-forming the vantages within their art practice as they are absorbed by ideas of ‘repetitive immediacy’ (Groys, 2006). The unconscious initiates all perceptions, and when artists work within a practice of mutability and direct responsiveness, they employ a precognitive or prescient awareness. The research investigated ideas that an art practice is a sensorial pre-purposeful mode by which the mind constitutes its world as a reflector of emergent forms of change and as a generator of new modes of being and action in the world (Papastergiadis, 2012), indicating that the renewal of creative potential for the artist and viewer forms within a practice informed by the experience of permanent change. Significance: This curatorial project was peer selected by Bus Projects, where it was promoted on the website. The project was accompanied by a public presentation and talk, inclusive of the author and artists within the exhibition. Bus Projects is one of the longest-running artist-run initiatives (ARIs) in Melbourne, dedicated to supporting the critical, conceptual and interdisciplinary practices of Australian artists.