Art & the Individual

Im sure many of you will know the term 'Easter Egg'. It is the name given to hidden messages, motifs, or even features in media, most commonly found in video games. This usage of the term was coined by Steve Wright, an Atari director in the 80s. But this moment of phrasing isn't the interesting part of the story. The interesting part is why Atari directors suddenly felt the need to to address, name, and define the presence of these hidden inclusions. You see, company policy a

A motionless mouse and quiet keyboard filled my peripheries for hours. Sentences half formed, paragraphs written through in rough part before being deleted. Thoughts that jump from one place to the next, at times languishing in the paradoxical void of simply trying to think of "something to think of". Now some of this stop-start stalling is undoubtedly due in part to the quantity of writing put out over the last year. As familiar areas are exhausted the demands of research an

Those were the words of the acclaimed French publication 'L'Illustration' written in a review of the 1850 Salon showing of Gustave Courbet's painting 'The Stone Breakers'. The review would go on to describe the work as being of poor composition, failing to add importance to its subject, and with lighting that was not "appropriate". Other critics would lambast the thickly applied palette knife paint as "careless", they'd describe the subjects as "Brutish, worn, and dirty". Ove

Once again I’m rewatching the office. At this point it’s a background playlist in my life, something to put on across those nebulous holiday periods, or the second half of a long haul flight. It has cropped up with varied frequency across the last decade since I first saw it. This is not unique, to me or this show. Yet after all this time there are still jokes I missed, even on the third, fifth, or fifteenth rewatch. There are quotes I’ve misremembered, misattributed, and app

I must have heard that request thousands of times in my five years as a dispensary worker. There was an assumption that the highest THC indica is the “best” you could get. But much like assuming the “best” art is the highest priced or most liked, it is a deeply flawed assumption. For much like art, choosing the “best” strain to smoke is a highly individualised and subjective process. I spent the better part of my last 2 years in the industry working on educating and explaini

When I ask them for feedback they wont placate me, there'll be no false platitudes or white lies, there will just be the work. The work with all its faults and glories, the work with a underlying flaw that requires whole sections be rebuilt and reworked, the work with its need for minor polish, the work they dont like personally but understand as a facet of craft and concept. Sure we may disagree over the severity of some of those faults, one of us may believe the works core

When are you building on an idea, and when are you just repackaging it for sale, when is it inspiration that motivates creation, and when is it commodification that motivates imitation. It is a subject never far from striking a nerve, ask 3 artists what they think of it and you'll usually get 6 different opinions. Which honestly makes sense, there is no cut and dry answer, the subject is littered with nuance. The point of transition from imitated to inspired is as nebulous an

That surmises far too much of the art championed in online spaces, pictures that paint a thousand words and all of them say nothing. Repeated visual punchlines about social media as pills we’re addicted to, so exhaustedly redone they’re verging on becoming meta comment on themselves. Lightroom presets and black mist filters, the controllable and purchasable Kinkade pipeline for millennials and Gen Z. The epileptic gifs and endless memetic iconography dance somewhere between W

Outrage politics and rage baited clicks have dramatically skewed the discourse around creative media. One post on reddit blows up, centred around a perceived issue (that may or may not be real depending on how much the poster was on their phone whilst watching, or just a general lack of media literacy) and suddenly that entire TV show/Film/Game is the worst thing ever. Next thing you know people who haven't watched or played it are picking it apart. Minor issues are touted as

We've all seen it happen here right? At least those of us who've been here a few years have; A "collector" buys something new, and the artwork/artist is heralded as x or y, the greatest in terms of z, their work "speaks" of the "raw" and "emotional" (the emotion never specified of course). It may not even be an abstract work, it may be some very base imagery, a reinvention of a visual pun or metaphor a 15 year old posted on tumblr in 2012 (ohhhh a pill packet with social medi

When you buy or support a work of art, whether that be through movie tickets or a cardboard painting at the corner of the block, you are casting a cultural vote. A vote you can cast without limit other than your own, a vote you can cast any day, one you can even cast for conflicting ideals, and surely will, as testament to the nuanced complexity that makes up us all. Now whilst many understand that at face value, that going to see superhero movies results in more content in k

You don’t need me to tell you what art can say of an individual, you know those brushes strokes can tell you of a family, a fraught moment, a trauma healed or a new joy found. These works can speak manifestos in to being, tell you of an artists worldview and of how they thought the world viewed them. We know this, we accept this as fundamental to art, that these are expressions of a self rendered real. Yet when it comes to understanding others, exploring cultures and communit

I know it’s a somewhat cliched phrase that; Limitation breeds innovation, but it hold a lot of water. It’s a major reason special effects in movies from before the age of accessible cgi often hold up. When you can’t just lean on a fix it in post attitude, when shots need more detailed planning because the background set is something that actually has to exist on the day, when the main monsters design actually needs to be designed before production is in full swing because it’

Talent is such an interesting notion, the place where nurture and nature meet, our innate aptitude and ability, our proclivity for one feeling over another. The drive of long past positive reinforcement now subconsciously called up by our bodies formations in the battle for progress. It can give us a flywheel for growth, we find an activity easier, so we find it more enjoyable, we do it more, we get better, we find an activity easier, we find our progress enjoyable, we do it

You hear a scream, you turn, its nothing, you hear a scream, you turn, its nothing, you hear a scream... you dont turn. Shock for its own sake loses efficacy quickly, it draws in a crowd but barely holds their attention, and oft times the attention it does hold is focused in the wrong place. What's the point of a signal fire if you aren't actually signally anything. Don't get me wrong, there are times when the very shock itself is the signal, it is what is needed. The smoke f

It is the morning of the 14th of July 1789, A thousand civilians stand before the imposing cold stone walls of a medieval fortress known as the 'Bastille'. It is not just stone and mortar the people see though, it is the crushing weight of their monarchy, the abuse of authority, and the suffering of the individual, typified by those walls, the prisoners held within, and the cannon atop them. A delegate of the people enter, they demand the removal of these cannons and disarmam

It is the Autumn of 1830, acclaimed French painter Eugène Delacroix writes to his brother; "My bad mood is vanishing thanks to hard work. I've embarked on a modern subject—a barricade. And if I haven't fought for my country at least I'll paint for her" That painting would become 'Liberty leading the people' perhaps one of the most influential works of revolutionary art and iconography ever created. Its imagery and influence so powerful that it is said to have inspired everyth

Art does not need to be owned to be experienced. Its fullness can be drunk in without a share in a company, or purchase price paid. All it requires is you to be there with it. Now this can obviously throw up some challenges, and yes some of those challenges may introduce a cost, but this cost isn't indicative of experiencing art. If a work is shown in a museum with an entry fee, and later shown in one without, the quality of the art does not change. Please don't get me wrong

No post production VFX or AI models are needed to fool us, and despite all our self assured statements about how "we can always tell what's real" our egos cannot alter the path of light to our eyes. The moment our world is captured by a single lens it is translated in to 2 dimensions, and in that transformation our ability to tell what is real falters. This is because we rely on binocular vision to most accurately determine depth, the differing position between our two pupils

Wanna know how I know? Because you're on social media, and in 2025 it is nigh on impossible to partake in this particular online landscape without being surrounded by an abundance of these people. Now ill soften here and say not all of them are "cants" in fact this degradation of our online spaces has been ongoing for so long now that a number of them were simply born in to it. They're told and observe this is the path to success in this space, to approval. The morality, the