Fault Lines

Fault Lines An exhibition by UNSW Art & Design, Master of Art students.

It is with great pleasure that we present Fault Lines, a group exhibition showcasing the diverse studio-based practices of the students of the Consolidated Studio course, at Gaffa Gallery in Sydney.

This course is designed to support the development of practice-based research and provides an opportunity for students to consolidate their practical and conceptual skills through the production of a resolved body of work, in the context of a professional group exhibition experience. The works presented before you reflect an intense period of engagement with studio practice and are as diverse as they are ambitious. Some engage with global concerns, like the environment and the effects of the Anthropocene, while others engage with issues closer to home.

Memories, childhood experience and issues related

to social and cultural change inform some works, while the pervasiveness of social media informs others. One work gives us a glimpse into a dystopian future, while another quietly suggests that change must come from within. These works, though they vary in subject and form, are united in their desire to meaningfully convey the issues that drive their respective practices.

On behalf of the students I would like to thank the staff at Gaffa Gallery; Richard Crampton and Christian Davis from Darkstar Digital, and course convenor Professor Paul Thomas. Most importantly, I would like to congratulate this committed group of emerging artists and commend them for the true spirit of collaboration with which they conducted themselves throughout this experience.

Michelle Cawthorn Sessional Lecturer UNSW Art & Design, Sydney

Gaffa Gallery 25 April - 6 May 2019

Aarushi Kumar

Transition Oil on canvas

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it”, (Joan Diddion). Aarushi Dutt’s work examines grief with specific reference to the recent loss of her father. She demonstrates this transition in her life through the mode of painting. Responding to this traumatic event, Dutt has completed Transition as a means of catharsis from her overwhelming feelings.

Transition is an abstract piece of art, the idea being to convey emotion without discussing it metaphorically. The utilization of strong hues in the right hand corner captures the trauma and pain of her father’s murder. The splendid hues on the left hand side allude to her deep feelings for her sibling. Transition conveys how he has stepped into the shoes of their father. There are patches of imprints across the canvas, reproduced from her father’s garment designs.

In including this element Dutt adds another layer of personal reference to the work. In painting Transition, Dutt strives to depict a deeply emotional and private side of herself.

Aayushi Shah Aayushi Shah is a textile artist from India. She is passionate about how crafts inform culture in her country. Shah’s works are influenced by these traditions and they revolve around how traditional techniques are affected in today’s digital world. Since moving to Australia, Shah’s practice amalgamates western methodologies with traditional techniques, as a means of keeping traditions alive.

Shah was disheartened after the initial bliss of married life was cut short by her separation from her husband while she moved to Australia. This led to her experiencing great trauma. Through this work, Shah re-lives moments spent with her husband, and her state of mind informs the different textile forms in her work. She relates the moments lived with her husband and how she has packed up her emotions and carried them with her.

Absence in the Presence – Presence in the Absence Mixed media

Ameli Tanchitsa

Everything is Becoming a Mountain Charcoal drawing on Arches paper

Ameli Tanchitsa’s practice explores deep dimensions of identity. Tanchitsa questions the automated identification with mundane stories we all continue to revisit, to place ourselves in the world, be it culturally, historically or in any other preset category. Tanchitsa investigates the relationship between ego-centric and eco-centric viewpoints. This relationship between inner space and outer space is merged into one, where subject and object lose their ordinary functions.

In his work Everything is Becoming a Mountain, Tanchitsa uses a preconceived notion of form – and the absence of form – to evoke deeper dimensions. The work relies on the aesthetic of absence and loss. Marks on the drawing are made by erasure of the charcoal substrate. The mark itself is an agent and narrator in the story of Tanchitsa’s personal myth of transformation. Text used in the work refers to the most intimate experience embodied by Tanchitsa.

Through the presence of absence, Tanchitsa locates his identity in the open space attached to nothing, yet informed by everything.

Aurora Li Time and space are subjects that Aurora Li engages with and forms the main theme of this body of work. To Li and to Einstein, time is relative to our individual lives. Subtle moments which punctuate our life, come as memories allowing us to loop in time. Dissolving the linear trajectory humans conform to, creating a sense of fluid moment between past, present and future. Inviting the audience to step out of reality and to explore notions of eternity.

In this project, horses are used as a symbolic metaphor to represent human beings. They were the first creature used by humans to enhance efficiency of time in relation to labour. Horses are served as a genetic code in history to pilot the present and the future. In linguistic terms, humans are still using “horse power” to describe the speed of a vehicle.

Human beings are unrested in “folding the time”; think about closing a Chinese fan, while now it’s time to unfold the time. That is to say, to extend the fan. It demands active and purposeful participation like that which is alluded to in the timeless Roman expression carpe diem (seize the day). This phrase is a concise exhortation to actively explore, experience, and embrace each unfolding moment.

Unfolding the Time Acrylic on acrylic screen

Brian To Brian To is an artist interested in street photography and the phenomenon of chiaroscuro. To’s work is concerned with taking photos of different people on the street.

This work focuses on different ‘body’ parts – no faces can be seen in the photos. To’s rationale for this is that his photos must be taken without people knowing. To argues that without the face, the personal nature of the body is made the subject of the image. He uses the street as an open studio, where the sun provides light for the shoot. This interests To because he loves the inability to plan ahead, plus the sense of randomness in the chiaroscuro of his photos. To is influenced by the photography of David Goldblatt and Philip-Lorca DiCorcia. To created these shots in Pitt Street, Sydney.

Untitled Photography

Fei Huang Fei Huang has explored themes of love & intimacy in this body of photography. Her work examines details of the body, as related to tenderness & intimacy. During the filming process, Huang invited a group of different gender couples to sit as subjects, choosing to capture close ups and details of their bodies. Huang moves away from revealing gender, focusing on shooting their intimate postures. Her images feature lightly held hands and intertwined feet, as well as private whispers. These photographs are expressions of love, regardless of their differences.

In this exhibition, Huang has included elements of coloured lighting. Light beams refracted by transparent colour illuminate each photo. Red makes the audience feel the enthusiasm of love, orange represents vitality, yellow is happy, and purple is romantic.

Love Photography

Hannah Saunders

Home House paint on polyester curtain

Hannah Saunders is a multi-disciplinary artist who is primarily concerned with relationships to place, including connection, colonisation, gentrification and occupation. Urban landscapes and everyday materials are commonly employed in Saunders’ practice.

This work investigates the malleability of the physical spaces we inhabit and how we respond to these spaces to create a home. To explore the interplay between permanence and transience, Saunders has measured sections of her new house and reproduced these elements proportionately on sheer curtain fabric with white house paint. Extracting and highlighting specific components begs the question – what makes a home a home?

James Varley-Ross Quis, Quid, Ubi, Quibus Auxiliis, Cur, Quomodo, Quando? – ‘Who, what, where, with what, why, how, when?’ – Quintilian

James Varley-Ross is an unconstrained emerging multi-disciplined artist. In this work he concerns himself with the exploration of mankind’s possibilities. In particular Varley-Ross addresses alterative futures and outcomes resulting from planetary or environmental transformations, brought on by man’s ‘misremembers’ and possible mistakes.

Through his technology-driven practice Varley-Ross brings together a conglomerate that allows the viewer to explore – or even perhaps decide – the future.

What is to be the future building block if not the milk crate? In this work Varley-Ross explores his personal liminality through a parallel referencing of Lithostratigraphy, a sub-discipline of stratigraphy, the geological science associated with the study of strata or rock layers. Important areas of focus include geochronology, comparative geology, and petrology. In general, a stratum will be primarily igneous or sedimentary relating to how the rock was formed. How will this modern age of pollutants, micro plastics, radiation and the resultant effects alter our planet in the future?

Varley-Ross creates a digital diorama which displays the present and incorporates an optical element that allows the viewer a glimpse of the future.

Digital Diorama of the Post-Anthropocene Mixed Media

Jiahan Ge

Fickleness Mixed Media

Jiahan Ge’s work strives to make meaning of the way that we are influenced by a society in continuous flux.

For example, money can make anything happen, people are constantly changing jobs and the divorce rate is increasing‌ Through her work, Ge aims to bring awareness to, and critique the instability of life due to the fickleness of people. The lack of individuality driven by standards that are socially acceptable or popular has become a pressing contemporary issue. Although it is impossible to change social trends, it is important to keep one’s self constant.

Jiangwei Liao With such advanced technologies in our modern lives, we seem to forget how to look at our surroundings with our eyes. We post, look up almost everything and chat with friends with social media. The conventions we have accepted around aesthetics in life are fading away.

This piece of audiovisual work is composed of clips of close-ups of different everyday natural phenomena such as insects, fruits and the ocean. Liao has added to this a glitch effect, which creates the sense of technology that is out of control. Background music is synced with the images altering in speed and pitch. This work addresses how we increasingly access the beauty of life through technologies and have forgotten to appreciate life directly.

Projected into three boxes like a peep show, Liao’s work invites audiences to engage with the minutae of the everyday.

Zoom Video

Jiaqi Cheng Jiaqi Cheng has long been committed to combining elements of traditional Chinese and contemporary Western art, and her latest series of works continues this exploration. This work is titled the Shadow, expressing Cheng’s reflection on her current situation and future pursuits. The work is divided into two parts, establishing a dialogue between life and love. Cheng’s images suggest that longing for a life of leisure implies that happiness can be found just by looking for the beauty beyond the little things. With regard to the expression of love, as it is impossible to predict the longevity of love, it is better to pursue a connection with one another’s souls.

Love that is well maintained can have true longevity, and be forever engraved on one’s consciousness. Following ancient Chinese tradition, Cheng also pursues this line of thought. Wisdom is cultivated throughout one’s life and love.

Cheng’s work is also informed by traditional Chinese philosophy, and inspired by paintings with themes of realism and the persistence of love. Cheng uses shades of ink to build a dialogue between different stories and characters, and integrate Chinese ancient poetry into the painting. The silhouettes of the characters and the smallest elements are the key details which strive to address the rationality of existence.

Shadow Chinese traditional brush painting

Jiawei Kevie Song As an artist, Jiawei Kevie Song’s practice is modern and recombinant, and makes use of whatever media best accommodates the subject matter, content, and purposes of the project at hand. Song has used many materials and formats including painting, photography, video, installation and pin painting. These have mainly been dictated by her personal experience, self-identity and biography.

The topic of Song’s current project mainly focuses on concepts around time and life. The Apple is an artwork which employs video and installation. The projected video shows the process of an apple’s decay, and in so doing strongly refers to time. Furthermore, the fresh apple in the glass vase alludes to concepts around life. After years of working in the field of art, Song finds it to be an important vehicle for sharing thoughts and ideas. Throughout our history, art has survived a tidal wave of information, and remains an unpredictable yet endlessly absorbing source of imagination.

The Apple Glass, Apple, Projector

Jingwen Li

Evolution Light clay, air dry clay, acrylic paint

As an artist, Jingwen Li began to reflect on the consequence of climate change and humanity’s relationship with nature. Evolution represents a scenario which resembles a dark fairy tale. When facing the worst effects of global warming, some species may evolve instead of becoming extinct.

This work presents a hypothesis of our future situation. In Li’s work, the two fish represent a metaphor for all species affected by environmental changes. However, Li does not want the artwork as a whole to create a sense of hopelessness in the audience. She hopes that it will bring more people’s attention to issues concerning our environment.

Kate Dunn Kate Dunn is a multidisciplinary artist exploring class and identity in contemporary Australian society through sculpture, painting, costume and zine making.

This work interrogates class identity on a personal level, engaging with formative memories of places the artist has lived. Playing on the idea of the diorama as an historical educational tool, There Goes the Neighbourhood depicts scenes from Maryborough Queensland, and the Sydney suburbs of Canterbury, Beverly Hills and Neutral Bay as a means of exploring intersections in place and memory, and environmental influences on a sense of class and personal identity.

Both the iconography of the diorama and the materiality of its sculptural form explore the idea of the ‘class signifier’. In this context, a class signifier is an object inscribed with social meaning through which an individual might enact class identity, or aspirations for social ascension. There Goes the Neighbourhood interrogates these meaning-encoded objects, serving as an explorative exercise into class identity and how this manifests within everyday experience.

There Goes the Neighbourhood Mixed media

Kerry Anne Boer

Sweetie Pie Blackwood Lead Crystal

Kerry Anne Boer’s practice evolved from working with Australia’s first 7° axis stone milling robot. She is a cyber sculptor and passionate story-teller, whose works are informed by her life experiences as a woman and cancer survivor.

Boer’s recent foray into glass casting, as an extension of her story-telling, has expanded her practice in exciting new directions as she combines glass, a conduit of light, colour, form and surface embellishment to portray memories and emotions. Her sculptural triptych Sweetie Pie, comprising: “She sells sea shells by the sea shore”, “Birds of a feather” & “Done and dusted”, documents her recent raw, emotional journey with her paternal Aunt who raised her. Sweetie Pie is an exploration of grief processing, something Boer has struggled with for half a century, and the duality of a relationship spanning 62 years.

This contemplative series follows Boer as she re-lives the radiation experience, this time from the point of view of the loved one, as her 83-year-old beloved Aunt becomes the cancer patient. Boer’s first piece is a self-portrait symbolically stripping back the layers that make her who and what she is. The second part of the triptych delves into the supporting and learning aspect of the relationship with her aunt and the duality of the significant role reversal as the child becomes the adult and the adult becomes infirm. Boer’s final poignant piece depicts the spent nature of the radiation process both physical and emotional.

Leonardo Shi Qi Da Today is the era of mobile phones, and any International, cultural, scientific, artistic or technological developments can be displayed via your finger touching a mobile phone. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter and We-Chat, allows all people around the world to become friends, lovers and perhaps to even form families.

Leonardo Shi Qi Da’s work is comprised of a big mobile phone. The content is the daily loving communication of his family on We-Chat. This is a conceptual artwork which invites audience participation. Shi Qi Da has used concave and convex mirrors, which allow the audience’s reflection to be visible when they are contemplating his work. Shi Qi Da invites the audience to join with his family to demonstrate that all people on earth are a big family. These mirrors reflect the complexity of the picture and reveal that social media is a virtual world. This world contains risks that people must carefully navigate, but consequently they might become true friends. Regardless of brand or manufacturer, there is no sense of ‘intelligence’ or ‘espionage’ for honest people.

Come In and Let We Chat 3D mixed media

Michaele Cameron

Wish you were there Mixed Media

Michaele Cameron explores the concept of distorted memory in relation to one’s own life. Her work investigates the elaboration of memories into stories through retelling. Memories of life events are often reframed once retold in order to protect the teller. Negative decisions or experiences, fears, even joyous moments and achievements are distorted as they are continuously - dynamically embedded over time as memories. Everyday objects with deep emotional resonance for Cameron are repurposed in her work to materially embody personal memories. Old objects have a mystery and a sense of the unreliable – we will never know exactly what memories they hold or for whom.

American author Barbara Klingsolver said that “Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin”.

Memory is mutable and fallible. A souvenir is something collected from a different place – an aide memoire of one’s journey beyond the ordinariness of everyday life. However not all our important journeys are spatial. Cameron references formative places in her own travels through time. 12 miniature oil paintings adorn the tips of souvenir spoons on a circular rack, with more resting nearby. Each painted spoon represents a mutable memory of an event from Cameron’s life. There is no beginning middle or end to the rack. Cameron invites the viewer to engage with any temptation they have to compare their life to the lives of others. Is there a more attractive life story to be written from the reordering/deletion of memories available on the spoons?

Monica Renaud Monica Renaud’s new works on linen originate as a single iPhone image taken during everyday domestic ritual.

She transfers these palm sized pictures into distorted large-scale realms before gently hand manipulating the photographic data.

Colour, line, composition and space inform these painterly abstractions from the artist, who says she “finds solace amongst the valleys and folds” of the digitally generated landscapes.

The meditative process of transforming something presumed artless or banal into a complex, multilayered, parallel Universe, Renaud says, “acts as metaphor for her experience of being born into Motherhood.”

Untitled No.4, (land of the lost) Plant based dyes on Belgian linen, various textile elements

Shamanthi Rajasingham

Metric Me Inkjet print on Arches paper

Shamanthi Rajasingham is a Sydney-based Sri Lankan artist. Her practice explores the construction and performance of the ‘self’ online.

This work acknowledges that individuals ‘speak’ themselves into being online, through the stories they tell on social media platforms. Consistent use of these platforms leads to people’s senses of self being shaped by social media metrics, algorithms and parameters.

Each curve in the form of this work references the Facebook statuses Rajasingham shared in a particular year.

Facebook statuses are arguably the most revealing type of user-generated content as they are articulated entirely by a user, without the aid of visuals or links to other content. Metric Me thus becomes a portrait of Rajasingham’s online self, creating and using a visual language informed by the metrics of her statuses. These include each status’s word count, tone, and engagement. The variation in size and intensity of each segment of the overall form articulates the development and erosion of a ‘metric self’ over eight years.

Quantifiable data points inform the structure of the works, but its lines are rendered fluidly. Although the image is based on digital information, this information originates from expressions that are complex, organic, and qualitative.

Sijie Li Sijie Li’s works are focused on Chinese traditional residential buildings, and aim to explore the relationship between contemporary aesthetics and traditional culture, as well as the intersection between architecture and art.

China has a long history of architectural art and Li greatly admires the architecture and culture of her hometown.

The basic forms of traditional architecture contain a rich cultural and historical background, in which residential buildings can better reflect the cultural customs of various nationalities. Although there are 56 ethnic groups in China, traditional architecture can be divided into seven categories: Yue, Min, Chuan, Wan, Jing, Su, and Jin. Each faction has its own architectural style and is mainly associated with cultural customs and geographical conditions. Li selected 14 representative residential buildings, and then made a comprehensive series of images by using different colour schemes to show the structural characteristics of these buildings. In addition, the contemporary visual language of the work was presented through screen printing — a relatively traditional method, in order to further combine contemporary aesthetics with traditional culture.

Square Inch Screen printing

Sophie Su

The Fragments of thoughts Fluid acrylics on canvas, found timber stripa

Sophie Su’s installation-based project traces time and space by engaging with viewers through their senses. It invokes empathy by drawing attention to commonality between people. It also synthesizes abstract painting and found objects to create a narrative ambiguity by deconstructing conventional painting practice, and by seeking incidental accidents.

The kaleidoscopic fluid paintings on painted wooden strips aid the navigation and choreographic movement of spontaneous painting. The performative nature of the paints challenges the edges of conventional perception, but is still tangible. The works are framed by found timber strips, which parallel the paintings’ deconstructive approach.

The abstract nature of this work invites the audience to derive their own subjective visual and cultural metaphors from it. The cloud-like flows navigate a sense of flexibility and the potential of fluid paint.

Steve Starr Over the past 18 months, Steve Starr has embarked on an interrogation of the body as a ‘site’ of intimacy.

The works revisit the Sexual Revolution and the Punk movements of the 1970s and 1980s that critiqued gender roles, gender politics and gender stereotyping.

This interrogation is timely as Starr reflects that a cultural and attitudinal backslide into deeply entrenched conservatism has occurred over the last 25 years. This has manifested a ‘toxic gaze’ of poisonous judgment and criticism of people’s appearance and behavior. The Sexual Revolution and Punk attitudes were confronting to conservative society, at a time where these two movements engaged fashion, design, art, film and music, to redefine what femininity and masculinity looked and behaved like at the most real, intimate and personal level.

We all interact with lovers and friends on various levels.

The model who inspired these works during a photo shoot in the early 1980s is Starr’s longtime friend.

Rowena Place I & II captures her strength, defiance and powerfully provocative sexuality.

Rowena Place I & II Mixed media

Tuan Anh Le

Defining Moments Digital print on matte paper

Tuan Anh Le’s current practice is focused on digital arts, employing an exploration of 3D modeling using aids such as Photoshop. As an emerging artist, he is interested in how technology can support the creation of contemporary art.

Defining Moments (2019) is Tuan Anh’s personal perspective on how he has reached who he is today. There are two different perspectives: Present and Past. These moments comprise of visual storytelling and personal symbolism and illustrate his hardships and difficult experiences. Present embodies his current personality, including objects around him. Past is the untold story that nobody knows, as Tuan Anh is reticent to reveal the flip side to success, even though he wishes to share his less positive experiences. The world surrounding him is dark and gloomy, as if it is just another generic drama story – but this is his own suffering and hardly anyone can tell.

Defining Moments features two separate printed digital artworks that represent both Present and Past. Present faces the audience for direct visual communication and tells a story of success, while Past is behind, as a metaphor of hiding something away. Only the curious will find out the untold alternative story to success.

Wenting Wang People sometimes find it difficult to distinguish between dream and reality. This relationship cannot be explained by science or logic. It is in this state of liminality that one weighs the conjecture of play between these two states.

A dream could become reality unpredictably, and people always chase their vision, calling it a dream.

Like anti-gravity, this idea does not follow the laws of nature. The video loop of a pricked balloon further expounds the inscrutable aspect of the dream. In this installation Wang utilizes balloons as a metaphor for the dream, helium gas changes the status of balloon, suggestive of dreams turning into reality. The balloons falling down to the ground signify a process of the individual’s manifestation of their dream.

Balloons Video and balloon installation

Xiaolei Sun

Concomitance I Acrylic on canvas board

Inspired by found family photo albums, Xiaolei Sun searches for the everyday, fragile and mysterious details of growing up as a child in China in the 1990s. Employing the artifice of painting, she aims to reveal the staged absurdities and reversals from the narrative stories that bear witness to a search for meaning, in a society torn between tradition and modernity.

Sun composes peculiar combinations of objects and figures with unusual perspectives, to challenge the viewers to draw their own connections to memory and tradition. She also wants to give the memories new intensity, the scenes that once existed, but now transformed, by which somehow identity arises and is further inscribed.

The politics of everyday life do not possess the seductive pull of ‘big picture politics’ with which we are familiar – it is not nearly so dramatic or stirring. But the power of the everyday is like water, flowing through the here and now and growing as we become more sensitized to our inner world. Through an interrogation of how the individual reflects the Zeitgeist, this is the beginning of Sun’s exploration around creating a type of individualized universe.

Yao Zhang Yao Zhang’s project depicts metaphysical landscapes through a series of paintings and sculptures. Her body of work presents the landscape as a metaphorical virtual world, which conveys the uniqueness of each landmark through different perspectives employing colour and structure to do so.

As an immigrant, Zhang has experienced feelings of dislocation from her birthland, and issues related to connecting to a new land. Her personal experience has inspired her to make artworks that explore these issues as connected to Chinese and Australian landscapes and their metaphysical and mythical content.

Zhang is inspired by traditional Chinese landscape painting and Chinese Jade carvings. She aims to combine Western expressive methods with ideas related to the inner peace of Taoist theory to convey that human beings, mountains, rocks, trees and animals are all modalities of energy matter that interact with each other.

Lost My Heart in Landscape Habitat Acrylic on canvas and mixed media sculpture

Yiqian Cai Yiqian’s artwork is about marginal groups in our society: the types of people that are different from the social mainstream. They find it difficult to integrate into society or build relationships with others. These people are forgotten easily by the world because they are frequently isolated. However, difference does not mean ‘weird’.

These individuals should not be ignored or alienated.

Yiqian reveals the marginal status of these people with this work. The viewer will only see the abstract back of the crowd. However, when backlit, they will see a hidden face, and the blurry image of the city. The concept of overlapping between people and city is representative of intricate social and interpersonal relationships. Marginal people deserve attention, which explains why the viewer will only see their face when lit up. Yiqian wants to demonstrate that these people exist in our society, and yet seem not to exist: they loom in the mist.

They Watercolor, watercolor paper, wooden board, LED light strips

Yufeng Pei Yufeng Pei’s practice explores the imprints that culture produces in photographs. As a traditional Chinese artist, Pei has experienced more than ten years of Chinese education, and cultivated many characteristics that can only be found in Chinese cultural life. Pei subsequently came to Australia to study and develop as an individual. After experiencing the culture of Australia and feeling the unique atmosphere of this land, Pei tried to make sense of these contradictions by capturing as images all the items that he uses in his daily life.

Pei photographed these items because they are imbued with symbols, which speak to the fusion of Eastern and Western cultures. In the context of the rapid development of this era, human migration and cultural integration have become one of the dominant themes of the world. These photos express the characteristics of this time of change and exchange through Pei’s concise arrangements and meticulous design.

Life Photography

Zhen Guan Following a period of painting artworks inspired

by Sydney’s Eastern suburbs, Zhen Guo Guan has developed an interest in the mesmerising beauty of nature. Upon arriving at the beach, his sights instinctively extended to the rolling waves and silken sand, unearthing the surrounding natural greenery and protected environmental habitats. The rock formations and colours of coastal plants imbue unforgettable memories and inspiration into the artistic mind.

Inspired by these beachside impressions, Guan imbued these thoughts and memories into his paintings by employing abstract concepts. During this process, the first step of research is centred on colour impressions, the second step is about forms of expression. Colour impressions can be created through painting techniques and are followed by deeper reflections in developing a type of abstract memory. Guan’s core focus is to create a new form of artistic expression based on the emancipation of abstract memory. He strives to create work that resembles beautiful musical melodies.

In the process of creating this work, Guan focussed all energy and concentration on the paintbrush. He aspires to imprint his inspiration and sentiments into the finished artworks.

For each artwork, Guan journeys into an endless process of continuous improvement which furthers his research.

The artworks constitute an abstract display of nature and change, nurturing Guan’s new-found appetite for historical and cultural experiences.

Traces of Inspiration Painting

CO V ER

Shamanthi Rajasingham

D E S IG N

Ameli Tanchitsa Hannah Saunders Shamanthi Rajasngham

PHOTOGRAPHY EDITING PRINTING WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO

Brian To Tuan Anh Le Michaele Cameron Darkstar Digital Sessional Lecturers Michelle Cawthorn Jodie Whalen Course Convenor Professor Paul Thomas