Amanda Coogan

I highly recommend in your studio or workspace, do the big blue sky thinking, everything is possible, and always make sketchy notes in your book. Then I turn those sketchy notes into a costume, into a photograph, into a performance or into a video but you have to let the ideas just flow. Even if they sound completely impossible and mad, who cares, think them out.

There is no one answer, it’s lots of different curiosities but I think if you allow yourself to trip along with those questions that you have, be it through drawing, or moving your body, or making installations, making sculptures and you’re constantly asking the question about why is that flower looking so beautiful, why are these people doing that action, it will just lead you into this beautiful, curious moment. And if we’re asking questions and sharing those questions through art then I do believe that things change, everything moves and changes so art contributes to the whole evolution and change of our society, of our country and of the world.

We really need art. We need artists to make art because it’s another way of almost feeding ourselves. Yes we need actual food but we need to have some beautiful nourishment for our soul, for our brain, something that makes us think, something that makes us ask questions, something that allows us to read the world around us in a different way. We need this beautiful stimuli of art. Imagine the world without any art, with no images, no music, no books, it’s impossible, our world would be so less rich. Art is as essential as oxygen.

You have to go with what you absolutely love, and if you have an idea or you keep dreaming of these images or these gestures and you really want to make them and you can’t stop thinking about them, then you’re an artist. I think it’s really important for all of us, for us older artists and for the new and emerging artists, to believe in your ideas, they are fabulous.

You might not be the best person who can draw amazingly in your class, that’s not important, the ideas are the most important, and don’t stop believing in those brilliant ideas.  You have to note them down in a notebook or your sketchbook. I never go anywhere without my sketchbook in my handbag. I’ve just read something that’s given me an idea, I’ve just been listening to something that’s given me an idea or I’m actually seeing something and it’s given me an idea, you pop those all in, it’s so rich, who knows how they’ll come out in the end but you have your sketchbook full of ideas and then when you start a new project, you open the sketchbook and say which one of these might fit in here, which one of these is talking to me now. 

So this wide brilliantly open theme really allows you to give us the artworks that you’re making or that you’re buzzing to make. Sometimes themes are just a channel for you to focus your work into but really this is just an invitation to be Extraordinary, to show us something Extraordinary. So it’s super wide open, everything can be Extraordinary.

As part of your submission, we’re asking you to send us in an Artists Statement. Don’t panic, lots of artists hate writing statements, all of us have to do it. But what it is, is that it gives us an idea of who you are and where the work came from. So for example we love making and doing, we don’t like the writing down part but it should be super simple. Just tell us why you’ve chosen that piece of art to make, why you’ve chosen that medium, whether it’s a photograph, or a drawing, or a painting or a sculpture or an installation, whatever it is, tell us why and then tell us why you love making art.

I’m really honoured and delighted to be one of the judges in This Is Art! 2022 but I’m terrified because how do you judge art, it is subjective. I might think one thing, someone else might feel another but for me it is always going to be about the great ideas. The great enthusiastic ideas, and I will fight for those great ideas so what I’m asking you to do is tell me those brilliant ideas, through art.