Written by Nikita Mettananda

The word “Delulu” is cringe. And that’s the point. In Australia, to put yourself out there, to risk failure, or to declare ambition is to invite the snip of tall poppy syndrome. The cultural reflex is to dismiss before it grows too visible: who do you think you are? If reaching beyond prescribed limits is delusional, then we choose to lean into the cringe, not away from it. As emerging artists, this is our way of claiming visibility on our own terms and highlighting why supporting other creatives is vital.

DELULU is both a provocation and a wager. It asks what it takes to persist in an industry where labour precedes recognition, value is speculative, and survival and practice blur together. To be delulu in 2025 is to double down when the rational response would be to step back. It is to make work that is bigger, riskier, more technically demanding, more conceptually rigorous, despite no guarantees of sustainability. It is to insist that self-belief is not a liability, but a strategy.

Culturally, the term signals a generational strategy for navigating instability, economic precarity, algorithmic obsolescence, and the collapse of linear career paths. Delusion functions as a psychological coping mechanism. To be delulu is to turn creative practice into a weapon against the inertia of a tightening arts economy, the scarcity mindset that governs contemporary creative labour, and the homogenising force of digital hyper-visibility. We recognise the mindset that governs contemporary labour and insist that belief itself is a form of creative labour, a testament to resilience.

This exhibition brings together three ceramicists and two painters, who are testing both material and personal limits. Each work pushes experimental processes and technical thresholds, revealing what becomes possible when delusion is recast as survival. We offer this exhibition as part of a broader discourse on creative survival, artistic risk, and professional autonomy. To lean into the cringe is to take ourselves seriously, even when seriousness is culturally unfashionable.