We here at Toi Ōtautahi are thrilled to have multi-sensory artist Jo Burzynska on board as our new Arts Advisor. In case you haven’t met Jo yet, we asked her to share some of her creative secrets with us.
How would you describe what you do?
I wear quite a few creative hats. As a Community Arts Advisor, I’m part of a team that supports local artists, art organisations, events and the council to make great creative projects happen in Ōtautahi. I’m an active arts practitioner myself, using sound, scent, taste and touch in my work, regularly in combination to explore ideas of interconnectivity. I’m also a writer, with a background in wine. And I dabble in making niche perfume!
What are you working on right now?
I’m currently preparing Creative Communities Scheme applications for panel assessment. Outside of my Arts Advisor role, I’m in the final stages of a book about multisensory art and aesthetics. It’s based on my PhD research, and will be published early next year. I’m also finishing off a wine soundscape project that premieres at a festival in Western Australia in November.
What are you most looking forward to in your new role as arts advisor?
I’ve always enjoyed facilitating art as well as making it. I experienced firsthand how invaluable assistance from arts advisors can be in realising creative ideas with the community arts project I was involved with some years back, the Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery. I’m now excited to help and support other groups and individuals with exciting visions in our inspiring local arts community. I’m also looking forward to seeding more creative activities and gatherings at our amazing Toi Auaha community arts hub.
What project have you worked on that you’re most proud of?
My PhD, which was the biggest project of my life: four years of intense research overseas. Taking a novel approach that blended creative practice and art theory, with perceptual and sensory science, this took me and my art institution right out of our comfort zones. The result was a body of original research of which I’m extremely proud. It even ended up winning the university’s Dean’s Award for Excellence, which was a wonderful surprise.
What is essential for creatives to have in their life?
Support from a community and great friends really helps build and retain self-belief – in the face of the numerous rejections and challenges that can snuff out creativity. Clarity in the vision of what you want to achieve also helps, in combination with realistic ideas of what can be achieved with often limited resources.
What inspires you about Ōtautahi?
Nature: bordered by the sea, volcanoes and mountains. The people: so many creative folk here, and increasing. It feels like a particularly vibrant time in the city at present.
What piece of advice about your creative work has served you well?
Keep creating, even if it’s just for yourself, and ensure you always set time aside for this.
What’s the biggest misconception about your creative work, or creative work in general?
That nonvisual art, and especially that engaged by the so-called “lower” proximal senses of smell, taste and touch has no aesthetic value. We’re multisensory beings, why restrict art to a single sense?
What artwork/piece of music/performance has taken your breath away?
There has been so many, it’s hard to pick one. However, experiencing a live multisensory performance of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Suite for Krug in Tokyo a few years back was so sensorially and emotionally powerful it brought me to tears.
What do you wish you’d have known about creative work when you were younger?
That there was creative work! I went to a very academically focused school, which undervalued creative subjects as worth pursuing at a higher level. It took some floundering around to realise I could do what I loved for a living.
If you could host a dinner party for five artists – dead or alive – who would be at your table and why?
Contemporary artist, Anika Yee. I’d love to quiz her about her visceral multisensory work, and the challenges of getting wet and smelly materials into major galleries!
Michel Serres. He was a philosopher, but his writing was so poetic. We’d talk about the senses and he’d bring a great bottle of wine. Radiophonic composer, Delia Derbyshire, to talk to about sound and science, and drink wine.
The late novelist, Kathy Acker. I did get to meet her before she died, but still have a lot of questions for her. The writer and philosopher, Georges Bataille for more transgressive conversation.
Pioneering woman Ōtautahi painter, Margaret Stoddart. I became closely connected to her work and legacy while running Stoddart Cottage Gallery and I’d love to learn more about how she navigated a the male dominated art/world over a hundred years ago.
Place you love best in Christchurch?
My home in Ōhinehou Lyttelton. A place I truly feel at home, surrounded by a wonderful creative community, looking out over a stunning volcanic harbour.