Foreword

For the student who fully enters into the demands of our diploma, art school will challenge and change you. For some it can be a defining moment in your life, or at least a change in how you think about art and the world. Shifts in perception may be caused by a single event, a sudden revelation, or there can be an incremental, imperceptible change from one day to the next. Art school is a special place where significant changes can occur. How you conceptually, visually, and emotionally respond to your world, and the world around you, is what this program asked of you. The opportunity that art school offers is the freedom to pursue a personal visual language and to feel part of a past, present and future cultural endeavour.

Of course the most recognisable change is evident in the student’s art work. The development of skills, ideas, and directions taken: from the skill building of Year 1 to the more focused, self directed art work of Year 2. Art schools should avoid house styles,

where students are expected to collectively come to the same conclusions. Journeys of personal discovery lead to outcomes in many different directions.

The transition from first year to second year also presents a significant transition. That fresh studio space you enter in February with its blank walls can be daunting. This years’ graduates have faced challenges and changes and are to be congratulated on where they are now.

Many of our graduating students will go on to degree courses and beyond. Some will take time off study for work or travel before deciding to return. Others will set themselves up in a studio and pursue a practice. Whether the creative directions they began are continued, or further study leads to broader pursuits, these years at TAFE have set you off on an exciting journey.

Phillip Allan First year coordinator

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My work tends to revolve around the more morbid side of art, separating myself away from what is expected to something that will shock and repel people. My concepts have usually been based on urban legends and concepts engendered from horror movies and my own imagination.

I feel comfortable with these themes because to me they’re more realistic than anything else I produce, with these concepts I feel more confident and more myself. I like the fact that some people uneasy about my work, that in itself makes me feel accomplished.

Aside from the artistic part of work I include a lot of text within the artworks I produce. For most of the works I feel the text completes the painting or sculpture I’m working on. My written inspirations include William. S. Burroughs, Sylvia Plath and Charles Bukowski. These three authors/poets have been a huge stimulus towards the development of my work. 

Mary Asi

Chaiël Balcombe

My work is about patterns of journeys, what they are and how they can be defined and expressed. I have been exploring geographical maps and the flight path of birds for their individual metaphorical significance to instinctual journeys, such as migration.

I am particularly interested in exploring journeys and the connections that unfold within them.

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Moon

Gouache on cotton rag paper

290 x 290 cm

Ellah Blake

The bathroom is a private and personal space, one where we go to ‘prepare’ ourselves for the outside world. It is where we shed, clean and wash away what is not wanted.

My current body of work explores the human figure in relation to this space and the intimacy that is held within it. I am particularly interested in the physical characteristics of a bathroom, such as the metamorphic process that occurs when temperature, pressure and light interact with water and the different layers and filters that are created.

I have investigated the way in which the body interacts with the physical reflection of ‘self’ - in mirrors and wet surfaces, but also how this further correlates to our personal sense of self.

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Mikaela Blease

My work is predominantly an exploration of portraiture through a non-traditional combination of pencil and oil paint. The portrait paintings capture, through their photographic beginnings and artificial lighting, a studio look. The paintings present a high tonal contrast, dramatic, photo-realist quality. The portraits are painted on exposed raw plywood that softens the image and contributes to the reading of the person.

Each portrait has caused me to reflect on the relationship shared between myself and to the person depicted, exposing them as I see them. Some of the images are of family members who I have not known, allowing me to explore a connection other than seeing them in the flesh.

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Self Portrait

Oil and graphite on plywood board

60 x 90 cm

Jodi Blokkeerus

My artwork looks at a sense of place and escapism. I am interested in places which seem ordinary and every day, yet hold a sense of mystery. It is intended that the works depict a sense of space that feels familiar, yet somehow forgotten, like a dream or memory.

Photographing predominantly at night time, the works reveal only part of the space, with elements obscured and dreamlike. I want the viewer to be lured and seduced into the comfort and darkness of these spaces.

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Escaped silence

Inkjet print

30 x 20 cm

Luke Boslem

I relate my work to a string of romances.

I become obsessed with a creation, devoting time and effort into it, and then once its complete I move on to the next piece and rarely look back. My art practice acts as an alter ego in a way, allowing me to express what I want to say but in a visual manner.

I explore concepts relating to human nature and the borderline between reality and fantasy. I’m predominantly focused on sculpture, exploring as many materials and methods in my grasps. Experimentation is an important role in my practice.

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Time

Cardboard, liquid nails, acrylic & clear acrylic

50 x 30 x 60 cm

Louise Cormick

Fear of the dark is based on the idea of our distorted perceptions in darkness, or when viewing something that may be considered “dark”, our ways of reading such situations or forms depending on subconscious interpretation.

My works delve into the idea of the illusions and my reflections of reality. Thematically the pieces I have created are about choice and how we explore ideas or concepts of reality that can be distorted. It is about being enlightened but to be enlightened one must acknowledge the strife. In order to have the good, one must endure the bad.

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Sunken

Watercolour, gouache, ink

35 x 21 cm

Nyah Cornish

My current series of paintings explore the impact that thick andcolourful application of paint has in relation to portraiture. This painterly style of portraiture appeals to me because it is very honest in relation to the medium that paint is. The body of work I am currently working on is a tribute to the medium that is paint, using portraiture as a common theme. In this style of painting, the paint pops out of the surface, drying in the same shape in which it was applied in a playful, childlike manner. I love everything about this style, including bold colour use and the appearance of brush strokes all over the canvases.

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Sara Crotty

Art provides me the opportunity to explore and process some of the complex psychosomatic symptoms that can accompany mood disorders. A basic, organic communication expressed by the subconscious as experimental artistic processes, gives these complex ideas an outlet; form - to fill in the gaps, or to compliment theories that have attempted to explain some of these phenomena by science and medicine (and some of the more abstract and less specific answers explored by many other theorists).

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Clusters of micro cysts (detail)

Etching

14 x 22 cm

Carly Diep

Chapter XX

Etching

I am an aspiring artist/hoarder based in Melbourne. Born in 1990, I fancy that I came into the world with a 4B graphite pencil in hand, but it would be slightly more correct to say I’ve been drawing incessantly since kindergarten. With an obsession for female forms, unusual creatures and the downright strange, my artwork all aim to bring out what I refer to as ‘gentle emotions’, with a focus on nature, lines, intimate scales, soft colours and textures.

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Ellen Fairbairn

My artistic practice revolves around the physical nature and properties of materials. Specifically, my work contemplates the use and place of geographical elements of our natural surroundings in a contemporary urban environment. The constant attempt to ameliorate the natural has formed a basis for my conceptual practice. By creating works which comment on the endless reformation of natural substances to generate new forms, materials and products, I hope to remind viewers of what these reformed elements used to be.

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Brhiannon Fritz-Hammond

My work is influenced by fantasy, illustrations in children’s storytelling related to animals, the skeletal structure, historical re-enacting, and travelling in Europe as child.

My paintings personify animals’ skeletons in clothes from different eras in history reflecting my love of history and costuming, children’s stories that feature animals, and the structure of their skeleton.

My sculptural works are complex and based on animals and shapes.

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The Bite

Dimensions variable, coloured paper and card

Kaitlyn Gibson

My work focuses on the relationship between human and animal, exploring the way we interact with our non-human counterparts, notably our pets, by looking at the physical and emotional reactions we share.

This series highlights our attachment through graduation of fragility and lightness to a dense collection of marks; it addresses time and shedding, suggesting differences between species though reminding us of our ultimate similarities, our mortality.

The contrast between minimal and detail, strong and fragile, light and dark is constantly explored in my work.

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Collection Series (Detail 1 of 15 / size varies)

Etching

Sara Gingold

My work addresses the theme of childhood poverty, with images and knowledge sourced from my time in Cambodia. The aim of it is to encourage empathy by breaking down stereotypes about children in poverty that make them seem distant from us. Through the work I aim to show the difference in circumstances. I try to keep my drawings rough and expressive with a “raw” quality that reflects the developing world. My sculptural practise aims for a similar, rough aesthetic but thematically explores the more internal world of human fragility and private emotions.

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Swimming

Ink, graphite,

charcoal, conte

42 x59 cm

Haruka Kagawa

Sometimes, we do not realise our true selves, our hidden identities, ignorance and fragility. We surprise ourselves.

Sometimes, it is difficult to admit the truth. It can be confronting to see images of our negative sides. Emotions created by stress, solitude and loneliness, are not necessarily bad, but intense and personal. The images I have created explore these emotions and reveal something of our inner selves.

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Untitled

Oil on canvas

36 x 26 cm

Sophie Luchetta

My works reflect my country upbringing and explore a sense of belonging between individuals and their homes, communities and environments. I work mainly in printmaking and painting to create images that are whimsical and illustrative. The work is often experimental in technique, use of materials and methods. Using subjects such as animals and girls, my works portray a sense of belonging, innocence, loneliness and vulnerability.

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Bird

Etching

23 x 44 cm

Jacquelyn Macdonald

My work reflects on the idea of change, both in my life and in the world around me. The growth in technology, the constant change of architecture and the way these things interact with nature are explored in my work.

I have looked at the different ways we adjust to these changes or how a particular space can affect how we act or the decisions that we make each day.

I am interested in the idea of ‘home’: the different ways we interpret it, what it means and how we sub-consciously feel the need to ‘decorate’ with artificial things to make it feel ‘like home’.

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No more boxes

Digital inkjet print

Fiona Magee

The focus of my work has been interpreting the idea of the seven deadly sins. I wanted to examine the rich history of the ‘sins’ and make appealing works.

I use colour to evoke emotion and meaning. I hope to reflect the course, rough nature of the sins. My intention is to create works that look like “scabs”: a sore infectious wound that humans inflict on each other, contrasted by the beauty of the natural world around us.

I hope that my works reflect imagination and provoke thought.

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Greed

Josephine Mead

At present I am concerned with the aesthetic experience, in an emotional sense.

I am inspired by the transient colour and light of natural environments and want to represent and abstract this within my work.

I believe the aesthetic beauty of natural environments has a fleeting nature, akin to that of human emotionality. Paint has become a vehicle to explore the emotions I feel, when confronted with places of beauty, and to ultimately simulate this emotional experience for the viewer.

I hope to create works that the viewer can get lost in.

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Abstraction # 1

Oil paint on canvas

200 x 150 cm

Emily Ann Meagher

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Jessica Millsom

My main practice is photography. I’ve always been interested in capturing oddness or abnormality in everyday things. Last year I began to experiment with digital colour photography and painting for the first time. Through my work I am exploring an abstract expression of ideas through colour and form.

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Katherine Nguyen

My practice explores childhood and the idea of innocence, play and imagination. Creating my own personal narrative of childhood with the theme of human and animal relationship bringing out personal and anthropomorphised forms combined. The works look at the bond between humans and animals. Using myself as subject, the images morph my dogs with human form creating my own imaginary friends. This body of work is based around my childhood memories and imagination. I have created a playful exploration of childhood from an adult perspective.

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Enchanted

Oil on board

85 x 50 cm

Thu Nguyen

My artwork is concerned with portraits, culture and space. The works include observation of friends, family and being a youth group. With the subject matter of the work I am mainly drawing and sketching images of my daily routine throughout the week. Who I see and events that happen with the people I see and meet.

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Pray

MDF board

90 x 60 cm

Morgan O’Neill

My practice focuses heavily on the materials I use in the creation of the work. Colour, form and texture are a major focal point for me, as I create work purely for the experience of using a vast array of materials and processes. I have developed an obsession with circles and the colour blue, I just can’t do anything without them!

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Untitled 1

Manipulated photocopy of artist’s own photograph

30 x 42 cm

Heather Ogilvie

Currently I am in the process of experimenting with the idea of motion. The relationship between body and motion is a fundamental aspect of everyone’s lives. Although we don’t necessarily consciously think about our movements, it pervades every instant of our being: this vibration and rhythm are fundamental to nature, to life. The movements that we create with our body are representative of the human soul. In capturing the motion in a photograph I hope to reveal the body’s inner force and the essence of the human soul, the rhythm and motion that is so essential to our body.

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Figure of motion

Photographic print

46 x 30.56 cm

Tricia Page

My works are constructed using discarded tins, plastic, material scraps, and whatever else seeks me out. I like that objects with an established history can be transformed into a work with new meaning. Encouraging viewer reflections on consumer excess, waste, the valuable resources we throw out every day, and the footprints we are leaving behind.

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Albatross

Genevieve Pikó

Mental illness, obsessions, and boundaries of reality are ideas that are heavily ingrained in my work. I explore contrast, particularly the hazy line between what is real and what is not. I enjoy the unexpected and the play between the delicate and the aggressive.

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I Love You, I Never Met You And You’re Dead

Cotton, thread, wooden frame

Size varies

Dalia Poratt

In my work this year I have been interested in exploring cannibalism and what our society would be like today if it was considered our norm. I have explored this idea through a series of portraits of models, using human bones and body parts as a fashion accessory. My work shows the contrast between being innocent and guilty and what is beautiful and what is considered grotesque. The main influence of my work is the question: ‘What if?’.

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Human Skull

Oil paint

12 x 12”

Stacey Raymond

As an artist I like to set challenges or missions for myself. Be it letting materials develop the idea further or, placing myself in different and sometimes awkward situations.

I tend to use materials such as clay or plaster to express my physical mark such as in my sculpture series of pugs. Being a strong believer in Buddhist teachings, my work focuses a lot on developing my state of mind while at the same time analyzing myself and my surroundings.

I believe each piece is a self-portrait.

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RIP Langford

Wire, plaster, modeling clay,

acrylic pant, synthetic hair, dye

Elouise Robinson

As an artist, my interest lies primarily in the relationship between human beings and nature. The rural areas in which I grew up instilled in me the value of seeing humanity as just another part of the environment, not an entirely separate or more important entity. Using a wide variety of materials, I aim to make sculptures that demonstrate the impact of humanity on nature, and that of natural forces on humanity. My work highlights the loss of innocence and the hopelessness that a lack of respect for nature inevitably brings.

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Time Deflates All Balloons

Found objects, glass, balloons

20 x 22.5 x 11 cm

Alexander James Rollo

As an artist, I like to engage within the awe of the landscape - to challenge the viewer within an emotional field of view, by using a range of soft and harsh lighting in setting a specific ambiance. Be they artificial or natural, spaces can affect us psychologically in many different ways, sometimes we don’t know it, but they do. Putting oneself in the infinite can invoke an atmosphere and provoke imagination. “Strange, is it fear? Perhaps insanity?” You know something, see something familiar, then reinterpret it from the inside looking out.

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Outside looking In

Photograph

207 x 21 cm

Sam Simmons

My artwork is focused on utilising photography as a tool to explore elements within the urban environment. It allows me to investigate commonly overlooked objects that are abundant within the urban landscape and transform them into images that convey a greater sense of meaning.

My work examines a sense of disconnection from the city that I live in. This is influenced by my belief that society is geared towards placing a high regard on self-interest, rather than adopting a more global perspective.

I am aiming to perpetuate an underlying sense of discord to the viewer. I want people to look at my images and be drawn to issues that I endeavor to portray within my work such as isolation, authority and control.

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Untitled

Digital image

29.7 x 21 cm

Anika Simon

My work is motivated by observations of the daily life, how overwhelming and emotional it can be, with a focus on self-doubt.

Inspired by the power of familiar and unfamiliar places my work explores landscapes and interiors. I am drawn to images that have been shot in dim light and that are low in contrast.

My aim is to create works with an overall soft, calm and melancholic mood.

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Untitled 2011

Photographic print

Alyssia Surace

Transmutations is a body of work that has evolved from both my personal experiences over the last year and my long-term connection to spirituality and sacred totem animals.

One aspect of my art practice is meditative. The process of making art encourages the constant evolution of consciousness, inciting a spiralling maturity into my fullest potential.

Sacred symbols and archetypes make their way into my art for many different reasons. My totem animals, the serpent and the fox have been of high importance in this body of work, representing self-portrait, intuition, strength and constructive transformation.

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Mercurius

Oil on canvas

31 x 76 cm

Kris Traeger

Exploring the possibilities of materials that come into my personal environment has resulted in my work incorporating collage and recycled elements. I enjoy layering a range of materials on paper and in my sculpture, found objects such as bed-springs and old photographs.

Certain materials tend to resonate with me, prompting a memory or striking me as an opportunity to combine with another material, which often takes my work somewhere unexpected. While ranging from abstract to figurative elements, there is a familiar spatial and aesthetic sense informing my artistic practice.

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Voyage

Paper, collaged

papers and ink

40 x 52 cm

Ellie Watts

My work documents a search for a tangible explanation of my own reality. Of course this task is as elusive as it is age-old, and promises only a journey with no answer. The works explore stereotypes that I come across as a white, female from ‘Generation Y’, Life and Death with a particular focus on grief, and reality from a universal to microscopic perspective. These big picture and small picture studies demonstrate some aspects of my understanding of reality at a personal level.

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Ni Zeng

My focus is on oil painting and watercolor painting. Themes I explore include the natural environment that relate to the intimate relationship of trees, plants and people and the secret each keeps.

Connections occur through people, animals and plants as I observe the everyday and incorporate this into my work.

Something as simple as the grass that I saw in the park or grass shinning in the rain can all be inspiration for my work. It is the small simple pleasures that can be my greatest creative assets.

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Acknowledgements

The graduate students would like to extend their appreciation to the following staff and organisations:

Belinda WilsonPhillip AllanKim LawlerFiona HillarySaffron NeweyDeborah WilliamsHelen KennedyLoretta QuinnCarolyn EskdaleDavid Van RoyenAnthony RiccardiJennifer MillsGeoffrey CarranStephen CottrillNinna CikojaJohn Curtain HotelJean CotchinXavier at Dawn Press

Thank you!