Poem by: Luke Wren Reid
Inspired by: 2014 RACT Insurance Tasmanian Portraiture Prize
31 October - 22 November 2014
Front & Middle Gallery, Sawtooth ARI
Photograph by Mel de Ruyter  

I don’t go to enough exhibitions
When I do its usually just for the free drinks

I wander aimlessly and stare at things
Trying to avoid eye contact with people

Who stand between me and the bar

I feel bad for the artists
Mingling

Having to speak to people
And explain the unexplainable

I have done it myself
Exhibited, I left the opening

And cried

Because I just wanted to be left alone
But artists exhibit that’s what they do

Sometimes people even buy things
Sometimes people care

But mostly they just amble past
Staring

Wishing they were a musician

This is the terminal condition
Artists have ears in their eyes that listen
To the songs hung like voices of innocent children

On white walls
To be picked apart or ignored

So mostly I go to galleries
For the free drinks
And wander like a drunk uncle
At a zoo