guyan porter
God Is In Your Mind 2006 ©
Paints, Various Liquids, Furniture and Text

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god is in your mind is an installation exploring clichés about creativity and inspiration, looking at the nature of consciousness and consequently, the nature of god. First shown at Art Futures, Glasgow, the work recreates an artificial artists studio, a small laboratory of thought without action. Placed incongruously within a hotel, within an art exhibition, which was placed incongruously along side an art air.

Through taking everyday and specialised objects; paints, furniture, artists materials and drawing equipment, and arranging them to create a moment of potential, Guyan Porter aims to question the purpose of art, as an ongoing exploration of thought and materiality. Is integration of mind the purpose of creativity, which has, within many historical traditions proposed a detachment, an un consciousness, where messages can supposedly flow un abridged from one part of the brain to another. The installation displays the message; god is in your mind , as if to illustrate a Eureka moment after a long period of fruitless work. In a studio without art, is the problem of god the ultimate investigation.

god is in your mind is part of a series of works exploring consciousness, belief and the theory of bicameralism. Bicameralism argues that the human brain once assumed a state known as bicameral mind, in which cognitive functions are divided between one part of the brain that appears to be "speaking," and a second part that listens and obeys. In the bicameral human, unconsciousness could be described as a separation of mind, opposed to conscious integration.