How can a Contemporary Visual Artist use Experiences as an Artist-Tourist to Critically Respond to Cultural Changes in a Globalised World?

Abstract

Since the age of the Grand Tour at least, artists have travelled to foreign lands to make art that responds to and reflects their experiences. In the role of the ‘artist-tourist’ mode, the artist is a tourist who makes art as a result of touristic activities. In this exegesis, I will refer to my alter-ego ‘Captain Eric’, a character inspired equally by the mythology of my own heritage and by the urge to creatively re-interpret identity. Captain Eric is valuable as a character through whom I am able to operate as an artist-tourist using unconventional strategies to negotiate and critically reflect on cultural changes in the contemporary global landscape. I use this character to discuss two recent projects that took place in Indonesia and Finland where he functioned in the capacity of artist-tourist. This research explores how the artist-as-tourist may navigate through and operate effectively in the contemporary landscape of this rapidly changing globalised world where cultures are becoming increasingly hybridised.