Reflection 3
Project 3- Vasilis Papageorgiou

In Project 3, my group gets to interview Vasilis Papageorgiou, our interview took place at his little workshop located in Testing Ground. Before the interview, I was lucky to have a chat with him on the night when we were having a small gathering in Testing Ground. After the conversation, a particular aspect that I was especially interested was his idea of “process”. I discovered that Vas is an artist that works on variety of topic and material; he not only looks into social, religion, politics, but also science and spiritual topics.

 

Process is a journey; everything needs to go through a process.
Self- realization is important.

 

One aspect that Vas mentioned is that there is self- realization in experience of any process; it includes sensory and mental experience. An example Vas gave during the interview was describing the process where he tries and creates this wooden sculpture. At first his purpose wasn’t carving sculpture, he was thinking on utilizing the wood pieces in his painting, however when he see the wood pieces themselves, he realizes that they are much more powerful by themselves. Process is very important as it changes everything; it is also something that makes you more aware with yourself in terms of thinking and experience. As José van den Akkera said “ self- realization is not something that can be set in concrete… sense of recognition, a sense of being whole and complete if only for a brief moment of time.” (Akkera, 2013) Vas takes the journey of creating something very important, because he believes the process is part of the work, without it there won’t be a result. As mentioned, self- realization is also a key element in Vas’s work. From a psychological perspective, self- realization is very important to any human being, it is something that we cant lack of as it is a way to understand ourselves and know what we are doing in daily basis.

 

“Science frequently requires art”
“The more art, the more science”
(Mark, 2014)

 

His combination of spiritual and science elements inside his artworks is what makes his work so stand out. There is a certain conflict between these two theory, however it requires each other to be able to “survive”. There is a connection where they need to maintain in order to flow, almost like a cycle.

The process of discovering the truth with scientific method and creating the beliefs that we have in the spiritual world requires knowledge and creativity to be able to accomplish. And what makes both equally important is both also require process to be able to achieve. Once again linking back to the idea of process, there is no escaping in this dimension because process is very important, it is the only path that everything will go through while building information. However what makes science and spirituality oppose to each other is the interpretation and perspective that both has.

 

Through my interpretation, most artwork that was done by Vas has consistence characteristic that is movement. There is always a one-direction movement flow in all of his work no matter in paintings or sculptures. His artwork always has this flow which represent the ide of journey. One of his paintings that were exhibit in a Melbourne gallery, which is also one of his favorite painting that he did has deliver many messages that cover most of his concepts about art. It was a painting inspired by oriental and aboriginal arts. It was created with many circles and lines, they were all very packed together as if they are waves, but at the same time they are being presented like molecules cramped together. Personally, I do think this was one of the artwork that shows almost every aspect of Vas’s concepts. It not only awaken the spirituality and dream of Aboriginal’s cultural but at the same time breaking it apart with the formation of shapes. It highlights his idea of reality and dream comes in form of process, with the dimensional curvy lines, it stresses out that these are connected to each other, they require each other to flow, their relation is unbreakable.

 

In conclusion, through this interview, I’ve acknowledged the importance of process. Just as if the process of getting to know who Vasilis Papageorgiou is, the journey throughout is what builds knowledge and creativity to one. I also understand that nothing works by itself, it always require each other, just as if science and art, they need each other to develop. Nothing works on its own because without other theory and beliefs, questions wont be created and topics wont brought up. No matter what perspective you look at, the process of interpretation is part of an artwork as well, the whole idea of process can be experience anywhere without realizing it, and what Vas really wants to show is that the process is there and that we are always in it.

 

 

Reference:
– José van den Akkera, 2013 “Art-based learning: painting the journey of self-realisation” pages 751-765
– Freeman Mark, 2014 “Qualitative Inquiry and the Self-Realization of Psychological Science”, Vol.20(2), pp.119-126