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IMAGINATION
us infinite."
John Muir
IMAGINATION
As humans we are uniquely gifted with an imagination. “People always ask me: ‘Where do you get all these ideas? Information is coming from all kinds of sources, new sources every day…I digest [it], channel it through my own imagination, and put it back into the world.” - Keith Haring (1984) Imagination is our ability to form a mental image of something that is not perceived through our five senses. Historically, imagination was seen as a fundamental and unified human faculty, essentially enmeshed in conscious life. Similarly, early aestheticians thought that all the questions of art — its definition, its appreciation, its value, and its judgement — could be subsumed under one general
Artwork from top left: Annie Catford, Vincent Matthews, Marina Murvanidze Mitchell, Qixuan Wo.
theory. Today we have a much greater awareness and appreciation of ourselves and the world we inhabit, and the idea that imagination is a single, unitary faculty has been comprehensively scrutinised and challenged, not least by the surrealists. One might thus doubt that a single sort of mental state or capacity is identified by the word “imagination” - Kind (2014) There are now eight recognised and widely accepted subsections of imagination: • Effectuative imagination – combining known information to create a new idea • Intellectual or constructive imagination – conscious creation • Imaginative fantasy • Empathy • Strategic imagination • Emotional imagination • Dreams • Memory Reconstruction
In this section we will showcase artists identifying imagination in its many subsections as the primary inspiration for their artwork practice.
