Conceptual
“Art bound in organic beauty that is not wound up with materialism.
It is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete.
It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional…”
Volatile blossom chooses to celebrate the body through ritualistic piercing, suspension, body play, characterisation and conceptual performance art into a visually exquisite event. Volatile uses these forms and symbols to create a narrative that simultaneously questions and maintains the limitations of our psyche, our physical and emotional boundaries, and supposed identities that constitute the body and self.
The philosophical backbone of Volatiles’ art comes from the creation of a moment, and then letting it go. Volatile is ephemeral and rejects ownership – only flickers of photography and the cinders of the artist’s image remain. Volatile represents the value of simplicity, the notion of anti-art and anti-commercialism inspired by the Fluxus movement. Volatile perpetuates the D.I.Y ethos by utilising one tool that is universally available yet always unique: the body. We each have the capacity and potential to use our bodies as an art form.
Another core ideal is the Japanese philosophy Wabi-Sabi, an aesthetic appreciation of the evanescence of life: “All that remains of a splendid mansion is a crumbled foundation overgrown with weeds and moss.” Koren, 2008 p. 54. Volatile evokes beauty in horror and wonder in silent decay, an acceptance in the inevitable.
Volatile also draws attention to the paradox of pain verses suffering. By letting go of suffering attached to pain and experiencing it as neither positive or negative but apart of the spectrum of emotions illustrates freedom from culturally learnt responses and opens our minds to possibility, be it physical or conceptual. By pushing emotional, social, cultural and bodily limits we are forced to contemplate the status quo, the preciousness of life and the acceptance of our inevitable mortality.
