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So as promised here’s my experience of my studies at UWS. Its pure anecdote with a creative rationale that finds its antithesis in the economic rationalism that would shut down our art schools. Its a way of affirming the positive experiences of my arts education at UWS by giving them a new textual life here, regardless of whether or not the institution that provided those experiences survives in its current form. I think affirming those experiences is the first step toward making sure that this sort of experience continues.

I started my undergraduate studies at UWS in 1998. I was fresh out of high school and had decided over the summer that studying art was a more attractive proposition than continuing my full time work as a waiter (best decision i ever made). On my first day at uni we were given a “project” which was to take the form of a response to the idea of “the presence of absence”. There was an Ives Klein retrospective on at the MCA at the time and as part of their presentation of this idea to us the lecturers decided that it would be good to tell us that when Klein died he was cremated and that his ashes were dyed his trademark IKB. They even went to the extent of creating a slide that they told us was the ashes in a museum in Europe. If this was a test to find out who amongst us fresh faced first years would actually bother to check the information that they fed us in that first presentation then i have to admit that i failed. In fact I think I was probably one of the last ones to find out that the blue ashes thing was an invention.

The “presence of absence” project set the tone for the study units which basically involved us responding to an idea in whichever medium we saw fit. beyond that there was the study of impressionism for our art history unit and an electronic arts unit. after a splattering of video, digital imaging and sound in first semester we were asked to choose one of the three in second semester, i choose sound largly due to the most excellent teaching of Chris Fortescue, aside from my high school english teacher i am yet to meet anyone who can manage the dynamics of a group discussion as good as Chris. He was able to balance the two most important aspects of this task, making everyone feel like the contribution is worthwhile and keeping the discussion focussed. Apart from that he helped in the education of our ears in providing us with a smorgasboard of sound art/experimental music to listen to each class.

Over the course of that year i emulated a range of modernist approaches to art making including pollock inspired drip paintings, Naumanesc video performance, abstract photography and nob-turning adventures in sound. i also recieved my first exposure to what i would later come to recognise as art-school cliches such as the classic “driving” or “smoking” videos.

Second year highlights included the realisation that instead of studying art history i could do a philosophy or cultural studies subject. As it turned out the introduction to cultural studies was the one that fitted in nicely with my other units, so from there i began to understand the world as structured by gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality etc. At the time this seemed to me to be far more relivant than knowing the title, date, place information for some of the key images of impressionism. Excessive marijuana consumption also led to some half-arsed acessments and the lovely Deborah Porch telling me at an appropriate moment that the work that i pinned on the wall on the morning of the group crit didn’t cut it. It was the kick in the arse that i needed and it added the ingredient of motivation into the mix created by Terry Hayes’ Beckett inspired experimental writing unit that put me on the path to a series of projects which continues to this day.

In third year there was more nob turning, more writing and more cultural studies. So while most of my friends were taking shit-loads of ecstacy I ate one or two pills and wrote a marxist-influenced critique of the situations that surround the sale and consumption of the drug. For me this was the cool thing about the way those cultural studies units were taught at UWS. The emphasis was squarely on providing you with ways of interpreting and analysing your surroundings.

The first semester of third year also brought a healthy coming together of UWS and SCA students initiated by Mikala Dwyer this was the occasion for the afore mentioned nob turning as well as the perfect excuse to paint myself white in the shopfront window of Newspace while being blasted by a soundtrack provided by Vicky Brown and Koji Ryui.

Coming after a classic “i’m gonna die” senario with magic mushrooms this was a particularly intense experience which had earth shaking implications that continued right up until the end of the year. reality was pretty thin in those days and it was a kind of thinness that left me with all sorts of doubts and fears. while in some ways those experiences were an affirmation that a lot of what the buddhists say about illusion is true, it took me a while to come to terms with such a hefty presence of absence. By the end of the year I’d managed to anchor myself a little more firmly in this world and finished third year with some solid work, (at the time i was definately quite thankful for the solidity of it).