An anti-establishment artist who depicted gallery curators as a giant funnel web spider has come full circle by becoming the curator of a new exhibition.The artist, who calls himself what - with no capital letter and no surname - gave Wollongong City Gallery one of its most colourful chapters in 2003-04, when he was in residence.He began the residency soon after he buried a Kenworth truck in the bowels of Razorback Mountain as a tribute to the road haulage industry and the struggles endured by drivers like his father. In 2001 he staged the exhibition Mother Truckers, somehow winning approval from Campbelltown City Council to include an image of his penis on a 13m truck curtain, to object to macho culture.The present exhibition, Near Earth Art: The Knock of the Shoe, is part of a new visiting curator program allowing outsiders to contribute to Wollongong gallery's offerings.It includes work by five visiting and two Illawarra artists, chosen by what, partly because they are not represented by a gallery."We're using Near Earth as an analogy. These artists are at the beginning of their careers. They're kind of in orbit around the art world, they're sort of viewed cautiously," said what, who took his name - an abridged version of his surname - after it was used as a put-down for him in high school, an exercise in "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger".The Near Earth works are intended to be free from the commercial cares that sometimes accompany work by represented artists.Works include Will There be Starts, a series of photographs by Melbourne's Vivian Cooper Smith, the 38-year-old, non-religious son of two travelling missionaries.His happy portraits end with a photo of a photo, making it look as though the night sky is falling in.Wollongong City Gallery owns what's White Noise, a product he created in 2003-04 along with works including The Curator. He laughs at the irony of becoming the curator."I don't know if it's the gallery trying to play a joke on me," he said."There's always a little bit of humour in the work I like," he added.