‘Students outperformed professionals right there’. That was my parting thought as I exited Brisbane’s grandiose Contemporary Art Museum this morning after an (attempted) cultural experience ahead of the EduTech conference being held just down the road. A gallery of exceptional and inspirational work compiled from 30 students around Queensland was haunting, inspiring, and mesmerising simultaneously.
One could be ‘more impressed’ by the fact they were students, but why? Sure technical experience is a significant factor in producing art work but it is not the driving factor. Surely it is the connection to the mind, the heart, and the soul that separates true and profound art from it’s more banal theory-based vocational counterparts. And what made the work so exceptional? It told a real story. Each and every piece was an expression - not of a politically bent perspective on society or comparable critical lens - but of a real human life. And through this narrative I was humbly affirmed of the philosophy that I am not a teacher of geography but a teacher of students; that I do not teach a class of 30 but teach 30 singular students. There were insights embedded in the works too, that served as a window into a generation. The overwhelming majority of works were speaking of the environment, of nostalgia, and of self image. Of looking forward into a future being inherited, of looking backward as an acknowledgment of formative timescapes, and of looking inward at themselves and their place as they transition between the former two. Young people are looking inwards, sure, this is after all the selfie generation, but they are also looking at themselves and their peers looking inwards and this is inherently profound. The recognition of the effects of this process were beautifully summed up in a series of mock Vague’ Magazine covers depicting people distorting their own faces with nothing but their own hands, serving up a powerful metaphor for a generation that in many senses is not metaphorical at all.