ART EXHIBITION AND FLOOR TALK
A presentation by Tanja Stark for the Queensland Jung Society
Thursday, December 2, 2021 7.30pm – 9.30pm
Venue: St Mary’s Anglican Church Hall
455 Main St. Kangaroo Point, QLD 4169
“Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.”
— C. G. Jung
https://jungqld.com/events/dec-2021/tanja-stark/suburban-gothic-and-the-sublime-divine/
Artist Tanja Stark will host an interactive conversation spiralling around the archetypal symbolism and themes that have emerged in both the form and the processes around her art practice. Across a range of media, including clay, bark, and metal, her iconography explores the mysterious dimensions of the psyche, and the dynamic interplay between the destructive and creative, the visceral and cerebral, and the numinous. Jung believed the recurring mythopoeic symbolism, imagery and narratives found across cultures in art, myth and religion drew from the powerful energies of the collective unconscious. Manifesting through dreams, visions, art, intuitions, spiritual experiences and synchronicities, active attention to these expressions could provide pathways to greater integration and wholeness, while unhealthy repression, denial or unbalanced inflation of unconscious energies could result in pathology, illness and psychological disintegration.
Artists, he felt, had a particularly unique and complex role in this process. “Every creative person… is a duality or a synthesis of contradictory aptitudes… Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument… There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of the creative fire” C.G. Jung
This evening offers an opportunities to playfully explore some of the curious and synchronistic stories around the creation of Tanja’s work, and some broader ideas around the role of the arts in culture, in a relaxed end of year celebration.Tanja Stark is intrigued by interplay between the arts, psychology, philosophy, and spirituality. She has worked as a social worker and counsellor, in research, writing and the arts and is a contributing author to books on contemporary culture and creativity by Routledge and Bloomsbury Press. She maintains fulltime art practice from her studio in Brisbane’s western suburbs.