ANU Art alumnus shows talented youth the possibilities of art

ANU School of Art alumnus Dave Caffery believes in the philosophical importance of art and culture. 

 

When he returns to the university to mentor youths attending the Australian Talented Youth Project (ATY Project), he will show them how they can imbue their work with more meaning and be more self-critical when creating art.

 

Dave spoke about the artists he’s known who, despite being immensely talented, have seen their art lose effectiveness because they couldn’t contextualise what they were doing or view it as a cultural practice.

 

He encountered one artist recently who said that art’s greatest opportunity is to make the subject feel good.

 

“I just think that’s a really limited perspective of the possibility of art,” Dave said. 

 

“Artists will find a lot more meaning in their careers and themselves and just create a lot more meaning for the people around them if they have a wider perspective of their practice.”

 

In his ATY Project session, Dave will draw on philosophers such as Nietzsche and Jean-Francois Lyotard. 

 

“Some of these ideas are really accessible,” Dave insisted. 

 

“For example, Pythagoras was saying that everyone contributes to form a wider harmony. And if you have that perspective of how things connect to each other then you’ve got a wider perspective. That’s not profoundly difficult philosophy, but it is profoundly important that we see ourselves connected into a wider culture.

 

“We’ll be using that philosophy […] to be more practical in what their work can do and how they can achieve their goals through proper marketing, and being confident in their ambition while also not rendering themselves irrelevant in the market.”

 

In a video for the College of Arts and Social Sciences (CASS), Dave said he didn’t think that he would become an Events Manager after studying philosophy. Today he is that for the Molonglo Group, which is responsible for the NewActon precinct near the ANU campus.

 

“Just because I’m studying philosophy, it doesn’t mean I need to be a philosophy academic,” Dave said in the video. “I can do a lot of other things with my life – in fact, I can do anything with my life.”

 

He spoke in this vein in talking about his ATY Project session.

 

“I’d like to help some of these youth be confident in their more peripheral ambitions around art,” he said. 

 

“So they don’t just create a type of painting their whole life; they’re open to the multidisciplinary opportunities of art. So they might then get into how a different lighting can affect their art or they might get into dance or performance that could in some way interact with their work so they’re thinking outside of the traditional methods of practicing art.”