adventure play ground

“He who would know the world should first manufacture it” Immanuel Kant

“We use our imagination not to escape the world but to join it” Iris Murdoch

The light-hearted title ‘adventure play ground’ sets up a simplified world view and salutes the idea that nothing after childhood can be that serious! I felt I had to go back to the child’s mind in order to understand the value of symbolic play and risk taking in the world. These new artworks aspire to an intuitive sense of wonder… many are optically bright and playful but with an edge of mystery.

An ongoing theme are the two essential forces at play within the narrative game. On one side is the realisation of our own story - our life experiences; the other our conceptual processing of all this. A classic two worlds opposition between the real and the imagined; mind and matter.

In much literature and film, the classic allegory of the call to adventure centres on the archetypal hero mythology seeking meaning in their quest. Author Joseph Campbell who deeply explores this theme in The Hero with a Thousand Faces writes: The adventure may begin as a mere blunder…

Ultimately, I believe artists create their own mythology…and as such we live inside the story.

My artwork is often a form of negotiation, to fit into this story.

Enduring themes and symbols such as floating stingrays and rocks, maps, oval portals and mirrors - reappear. When asked ‘what do they really mean?’… which I often am, I often give oblique or ambiguous answers. Ultimately I tend to think that the quest for meaning has become an unfolding visual game in which the stingray is often the central thread and these inside/outside metaphors have simply become an integral part of the adventure… Step inside!

Michael Eather, June 2022