Beauty and What We Live With
I saw something the other day. I can’t remember where, or who said it (helpfully). Something about how being surrounded by beauty - by being in nature, having beauty in our homes, in the art we hang and the small things we place around us - all has a measurable positive effect on our health, our mental and physical wellbeing.
Of course we probably all know this already. but it’s always good to remember.
I actually think it goes a step further and that there’s something of the artist that comes through the work - their attention, sensibility, the way they have met the world. You could call it soul. Something larger than the object itself - and when the work enters your home, you’re also bringing that into your field.
That’s one of the reasons I made a curatorial decision last year at New Blood Art. As the gallery began restructuring - reducing the roster, separating the outreach and the Prize into a nonprofit arm (still in the process of being formalised) and decided that the core programme would focus on work that holds something of this elevation - the sublime, poetic, the beautiful.
This doesn’t mean avoiding depth.
But the work itself, for me now, has to add beauty to the world.
