That is such for practical purposes though not in name or according to strict definition...

Bob Georgeson, Explosion and The moment I had been waiting for, Mixed media, 2012

My original idea was to have an online presence for my art and thought that a blog might be marginally more interesting than a static image repository. I wanted to be able to 'point' interested parties (like prospective gallery directors) at a site so they could get an idea of what I did and where I was coming from.

Then I started to think about the 'blog' becoming the art work in  itself. This had great appeal because of my distaste for being 'curated' and having to deal with art wankers, not to mention the cost and stress of mounting exhibitions that few people see because I happen to live in a remote part of the planet. In this environment I can control what I want to exhibit and how it is presented, and reach a far greater audience than in the 'physical' world. Like many other artists around the world I am also concerned about the way in which the conventional art 'system' works and is controlled, and look for ways to exhibit in, and support, non-elitist public spaces.

Virtual art is a term usually associated with computer generated imagery and gaming, but art displayed in the virtual environment is a relatively new concept. I had been flicking through an art mag recently and thought how do you know that these images of installations are real? And since so much of our experience of art comes from reproductions in books, magazines and the web does it even matter? British man of letters Samuel Johnson said a very long time ago that 'a room full of pictures is a room full of thoughts'. Does not the thought linger regardless of the medium?

It may be hard to make money out of it but as an artist with a dismal sales record anyway it really doesn't make much of a difference, although it would be nice to get funding for large scale installations and the video work that I want to pursue...

The title of this post is the definition of 'virtual' from The Concise Oxford Dictionary. I hope you find it helpful...