Now anyone can be an art investor

The idea of investing in art has been mostly reserved for millionaires who would bid at Sotherby's for over-valued masterpieces ... or the absolute junk ... of dead artists.

Postmodern art added to the equation of art lunacy where an Italian artist - Piero Manzoni - decided to can his own excrement and sell it to prestigious art galleries around the world for an equal weight in gold. His idea worked. But to bid for a can of Manzoni's shit at Sotherby's, you would need about £100,000.

The creation of Art Investment Gallery is to set in motion a number of advancements in the realm of art. Firstly, the idea is to equip art and culture with a sense of direction. Instead of the postmodern or pluralist idea that any direction is equally valid ... even to the point of giving vast value to a can of crap ... Art Investment Gallery is linked to the philosophy of Ken Wilber, Alice Bailey and Fritjof Capra, where evolution is shown to function as a ratchet.

If you know how a ratchet works you will know that when you pump it to a certain height it can only get higher. It doesn't slip or sink to a lower level.

When you go to school for example, your mind normally functions like a ratchet. In other words, you sequentially advance from one grade to the next. Although a trendy saying is "moving forward" it is not normal to walk backwards or start at grade 12 and move to grade one. "Moving forward" seems to be "pluralist speak" for a society and a world that has lost its way.

As it happens, life on Earth is also a school and - like it or not - humans are here to learn, to evolve and to expand their consciousness like an evolutionary ratchet.

Acknowledging an evolutionary direction in life will bestow a new meaning to art and culture and redefine the way in which art is approached, valued and used as a vehicle of expression.

I've used this concept of "directional art" to select certain works of Brisbane street performing artist, Jared Lyell. The works I've selected constitute the first online exhibit of Art Investment Gallery ... www.artinvestmentgallery.wixsite.com/artbank ... or just "art bank" for short.

This example of Jared's painting (below) doesn't really do justice to how it appears for real. I snapped it with my mobile phone while still framed behind glass ... but you can get the main idea. It is perhaps the best combination of pyramids, moons and comets of his available work.

The reason I selected 20 of Jared's paintings for this exhibit is that Jared's technique serves as a platform to manifest "moments of genius" that might be mistaken as "accidents". Let me explain.

Jared's technique is to apply layers of acrylic spray paint on art paper and use this as a platform to build certain shapes or lift off the top layer with newspaper or a palette knife to capture what may be lurking beneath.

The economy of action and speed in which Jared works can give the appearance that some of his art is "accidental" ... yet I would suggest that nothing is accidental. To me, it appears that Jared's technique allows him ... from time to time ... to bypass his limitations as an artist and demonstrate "moments of genius".

By building an art bank of "directional art" it is of prime importance to support this direction to guide us (humans) in the direction that will connect us with our own inherent genius.

Art bank facilitates the support of "directional art" ... not only through maintaining this link to inner genius ... but also on a very practical economic and financial level. For example, the motto of the gallery is to "invest, frame, hang, re-exhibit and profit" ... meaning that "whatever you select as an investment from the gallery can be re-presented at a higher price in a subsequent exhibit at a later time.

Just as a promotional offer ... since it is the first exhibit of art bank ... for a limited time, any painting selected from Jared's exhibit will include matt, frame, glass and delivery by courier (within Brisbane and surrounds) or by registered mail (within Australia).

This offer is great for three reasons. Firstly, you don't need £100,000 to become an art investor. Secondly you are not investing in a can of crap or some other type of artistic insanity because of a society that has sadly lost its way. You would in fact be doing the opposite by driving values in the opposite direction and assisting a growing trend of integral awakening.

This trend is written about by dozens of authors such as Ken Wilber, Fritjof Capra, Maynard and Mehrtens and Buckminster Fuller. In their view, humanity has no choice but to increase the value of inherent genius or suffer the consequences. We(humans) must awaken or perish. This is the certainty that we should value. This is the basis of art bank.