2018 Honours Graduate Catalogue
Queensland College of Art, Griffith University
2
QUEENSLAND COLLEGE OF ART GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY
HONOURS
GRADUATE CATALOGUE
2 01 8
4
CONTENTS
7 FOREWORD Dr Laini Burton
8 PHOTOGRAPHY Victoria Reid Emma Schwenke Patrick Lester
11 FINE ART Michelle Jae Andrews Kim Ah Sam Kerrie Anne Mackay Aaron Perkins Jean Claire Martin Alannah Dair Gerry Murphy Asher Veling Emmalyn Hawthorne Matthew Newkirk Rosie Bird Siena Hart Jodi Woodward Warraba Weatherall
25 CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS ART Dianne Hall Debbie Taylor Worley
28 HONOURS STAFF
6
FOREWORD
Entering into an Honours year, artists and designers often begin with the end in mind, naturally making assumptions about their studio processes and anticipated outcomes. What transpires is an unprecedented growth that no candidate can predict. Such is the experience of undertaking Honours—a year where practice reaches greater depths and where candidates embrace new levels of rigor and understanding of their place in the contemporary art world. 2018 has been no exception to these principles, what remains, however, are the age-old questions that drive innovation: What am I examining? How will I explore this? What have I learned from this inquiry? Why does this matter? Questions that are crucial to the vitality of art and design research. The works produced by graduating Honours candidates represent their unique responses to these questions. They invite you to remain open to their responses, while asking that you raise your own. On behalf of the QCA teaching team, we congratulate the graduating Honours candidates for their commitment to practice, professionalism and enthusiasm which will serve them well as they move forward. The QCA wish them every success in this adventure, and welcome them into the proud and acclaimed community of Griffith Alumni.
Dr Laini Burton Program Director, Honours; Senior Lecturer Queensland College of Art Griffith University
7
My childhood place of solace | 2018 Archival Inkjet Print Detail from artist book He threatened to kill me with a machete like this one, I had to get out with the kids | 2018 Archival Inkjet Print Detail from artist book Muscles like Dad, a moment of appreciation for my second husband | 2018 Archival Inkjet Print Detail from artist book
8
VICTORIA REID Photography victoriareidphotography.com.au | victoriareid.photoshelter.com Motherhood is an autobiographic and collaborative documentary photography research project exploring what it is like to be a mother in my family. I examine historic and contemporary lived experiences of myself and my family through a feminist lens. The photographic series includes candid moments, portraits, objects, memories and locations which are created into a handmade photo artist book.
They have all of the money and all of the power | 2018 Black and white medium format photography David McCabe, after the bull sale | 2018 Black and white medium format photography Untitled | 2018 Black and white medium format photography
EMMA SCHWENKE
9
Photography emmaschwenke.com Coal Seam Gas (CSG) has been extracted in Australia for more than fifteen years, but plans for large-scale developments in the agricultural region of the Darling Downs, Queensland, Australia, only began to increase from 2006 onwards, with the boom taking place in Chinchilla from 2012-2014. “Life After Gas” is a photo documentary series that investigates the on-going effects the CSG industry has
had on the Chinchilla community, the individuals that live in the region and the land. This series is a combination of portraits, landscapes and everyday scenes, alongside text and quotes to form a documentary book.
Emperor of Lang Park | 2018 Digital Ink-jet Print, Photography 119 cm x 84 cm ANZAC | 2018 Digital Ink-jet Print, Photography 119 cm x 84 cm Bundy R. Bear | 2018 Digital Ink-jet Print, Photography 119 cm x 84 cm
10
PATRICK LESTER Photography patricklester.net ‘Not Man Enough’ asks how individual identity construction is shaped through my relationship with masculinity, as a queer person. Through androcentric monuments, the series highlights the lack of representation for minorities and the overpopulation of shrines to masculinity in public spaces.
Casuarina Vessel | 2018 Casuarina, wire, sheep fleece 15cm x 15cm Harvest Dolly Spiral | 2018 Wire 17cm x 14cm Wild Harvest | 2018 Wire, grass seed heads 16cm diam.
MICHELLE JAE ANDREWS Fine Art
My body of work explores the relationship between place or landscape, myth, belonging and embodiment. I use myth and story to embody the feminine spirit of the place and create vessels to hold and nurture her or talismanic objects to evoke her. I use traditional European basketry and harvest ‘dolly’ techniques.
11
Weaving my story through country | 2018 Weaving 79 cm x 55 cm x 61cm Weaving my story through country | 2018 Weaving 79 cm x 55 cm x 61cm ‘Shard’ 1,2,3,4 | 2018 Drypoint approx 57cm x 13cm
12
KIM AH SAM Fine Art https://kimahsam.wixsite.com/mysite I am a proud Kuku Yalanji and Kalkadoon woman, my printmaking and sculpture is based around my cultural identity and spiritual connection to my father’s country the Kalkadoon country. Through exploring expressive ways of representing landscape in a variety of medias. I reinforce how art can be a way of reconnecting my cultural identity with country.
Dad was so scary when he was mad | 2018 Mixed media 30 x 42 x 30 cm Something was wrong with Mum | 2018 Mixed media 30 x 42 x 30 cm Mum would not wake up and the doctor called a helicopter | 2018 Mixed media 30 x 42 x 30 cm
KERRIE MACKAY Fine Art kerriemackayart.com.au The hidden histories of specific sites relating to my family’s intergenerational trauma, were communicated via a series of sculptural memory boxes containing artefacts, objects and images related to traumatic events from 1964 to 1980. The interaction between artefacts, objects, images and sensory and kinetic effects within and between boxes, creates complex multi-layered narratives that communicate trauma and the uncanny.
13
22 May 2018 (your star, sitting solo in the sky, eclipsed by a football) | 2018 Acrylic paint and oil pastel on canvas 112 x 112 cm
14
AARON PERKINS Fine Art aamapepe.com | instagram.com/aamapepe 22 May 2018 manipulates the relationship between reportage and cryptic crosswords to offer a contemplative frame through which individual agency might be explored. Using lineal and grammatic abstraction to loosen the apparent meaning of words and images, the work eschews objective narrative in favour of subjective interpretations found in the space between looking and reading.
Reflect and Repeat - I am my mothers daughter | 2018 tmax 100, 120mm Reflect and Repeat - Four Generations | 2018 tmax 100, 120mm Reflect and Repeat - dolly legs / “this one looks like you” (me) | 2018 tmax 100, 120mm
JEAN CLAIRE MARTIN Fine Art
“Reflect and Repeat” explores how individual identity is constructed through the transitions experienced from daughter to woman to mother. Using photographic imagery of the domestic environment, coupled with an audio component to tell the story of the collective experiences of women, this project portrays the perpetual cycle embodied in feminine identity through intergenerational relationships.
15
Outstretched | 2018 Medical tights, thread, dressmakers pins and metal frame. 41cm x 43cm x 64cm Deteriorate | 2018 Sun-bleached blind with metal rod. 104cm x 215cm
16
ALANNAH DAIR Fine Art Instagram: @alannahdair These works exist within my project ‘Liminal Beings’, a body of work which acts as my response to the social and cultural frameworks that pathologize my body. The impetus for this work comes from my experience with chronic illness. Through the lens of expanded painting I explore the tension between my discursive and material bodies and my constant state of liminality between health and illness.
The Centaur’s Birth, and the First Flight of Angels | 2018 Pen and Ink and Coloured Pencil 76cm x 56cm
GERRY MURPHY Fine Art funcoloringbutterfly.com.au Gerry Murphy has produced many artworks commenting on social issues. This time he has combined his art practice with his studies in Archaeology to produce a surprisingly optimistic vision for humanity’s future. These imagined space cities have been particularly inspired by the Italian Futurist movement of the early twentieth century.
17
‘Rick’ | 2018 0il on poly-cotton canvas 71cm x 61cm
18
ASHER VELING Fine Art
Exploring the painted portrait through studio and theoretical research this project engages with central themes of portraiture such as ‘likeness’ and representation, and the encounter with ‘other’. Is the portrait a representation, or is it an encounter? This is the overwhelming question currently being explored though my practice of painting people.
Sky as Syntax (12 of 178) | 2018 Cartridge paper Approximately 4.5cm x 2.3cm hand-cut from 15cm x 10cm image
EMMALYN HAWTHORNE Fine Art
‘Sky as Syntax’ asks if poetry can do to reality what it does to words. When a word is placed within a poem a process of re-contextualisation occurs: existing semantic associations are loosened and the potential of the word expands. If I look at the sky and nothing else I could be anywhere. Reality’s potential expands. This sky could be part of anything.
19
What Choice? | 2018 2 layer screenprint 885cm x 120cm
20
MATTHEW NEWKIRK Fine Art matthewnewkirk.net Artists see things as they truly are, and it’s their responsibility to infiltrate and expose facets of the ‘spectacle’ so as to educate and inform, and use its own brand of sensationalism to showcase its absurdity and sleight of hand. To make the viewer question the ethics and integrity of those pulling the strings, as well as their agenda.
Mammals at Rest | 2018 Oil on canvas 60 x 70 x 2.5 cm A Collection of Creatures | 2018 Oil on canvas. 100 x 70 x 3 cm
ROSIE BIRD Fine Art
At some point in humanity’s evolution, we departed from the animal kingdom and became an exterior manipulator of nature, rather than a part of it. My paintings offer an alternate co-existence that consists of the raw anatomy of both humans and other species. The human figures are stripped of their clothing, unique features, and overall identity. Humans are returned to their animal state of being.
21
Rain Season (detail) | 2018 Transfer print on muslin 30cm x 240cm
22
SIENA HART Fine Art sienahart.net Adopting a collaged approach, Hart provokes shared, but unique senses of intimacy and relation by probing audience’s fixed notions of subjectivity, identity and meaning. Focusing on outward manifestations of embodied experience, and the dialogue between the real and imagined, Hart invites audiences to challenge the architecture of their own identities.
Make It Darker | 2018 oil stick, charcoal powder, paint, wood, black twine Variable
JODI WOODWARD Fine Art
Like a shroud of fractured memories Make It Darker is a brooding work that aims to examine endurance, perseverance and repetition as expanded drawing.
23
Single file | 2018 Sculpture Various
24
WARRABA WEATHERALL Fine Art
Single file (2018) questions the disciplinary role of the Archive within contemporary society. Through historical surveillance practices, documentation of Indigenous peoples is continually reaffirmed and renders Indigenous cultures as ‘knowable’ and ‘possessable’. Through processes of appropriation and mimicry, Weatherall’s sculptural forms recontextualise understandings of Indigeneity.
Sugarcoated | 2018 Mixed Medium Varied One pound Two and a half ounces | 2018 Mixed Medium Varied Sugarcoated | 2018 Mixed Medium Varied
DIANNE HALL Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art
Replacement’ explores the devastating effects of the early government policy, the distribution of rations - flour sugar and tea, under ‘Protection of Aboriginals Act of 1852’ and the ongoing physical and psychological effect on contemporary Aboriginal society. With an ephemeral element the works convey the insidious impact of rationing through materiality and subject.
25
Beyond Gavrinis | 2018 Mixed medium on canvas 100cm x 180cm Ritual | 2018 Digital print Women’s Business | 2018 Mixed medium on canvas 100cm x 180cm
26
DEBBIE TAYLOR WORLEY Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art debbietaylor.com.au Examining what it is to be powerfully feminine in a patriarchal world led me to create work based on primordial symbols of ritual practices honouring the sacred feminine. A Gamilaraay woman, I am drawn to art of antiquity. Demonstrating the universality of women’s business symbology, Beyond Gavrinis refers to a Neolithic womb tomb carved with designs akin to those of Indigenous artists.
27
HONOURS STAFF 2018 PROGRAM DIRECTOR Dr Laini Burton
SUPERVISORS Dr Bianca Beetson Dr Isaac Brown Dr Sam Canning Ms Amy Carkeek Ms Rae Cooper Dr Beck Davis Mr Daniel Della-Bosca Ms Michelle Douglas Mr Seth Ellis Dr Dominique Falla Dr Julie Fragar Assoc Professor Rosemary Hawker Dr Chari Larsson Dr Lorraine Marshalsey Dr Mike McAuley Dr Tim Mosely Ms Petra Perolini Mr David Sargent Mr Tristan Schultz 28
Dr Elizabeth Shaw Mr Martin Smith Mr Peter Thiedeke
Honours Programs would like to acknowledge the contributions to teaching in Honours from our colleagues in allied disciplines at QCA: Dr Bianca Beetson (Program Director, Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art)
ADMINISTRATION STAFF Ms Sandra Kane Fine Art Administrator & Team Leader SLTC Ms Natasha Kershaw Administration Officer, Gold Coast
Professor Susan Best (Deputy Director, Research)
Mr Max Lloyd-West School Administration Officer
Professor Andrew Brown (Program Director, Interactive Media)
Ms Georgina Peart Executive Support Officer
Dr Dominique Falla (Deputy Director, Learning & Teaching)
Ms Aileen Randle Project Officer
Mr Seth Ellis (Program Director, Master of Interactive Media) Ms Naomi Hay (2018 Teaching team member) Ms Therese Nolan-Brown (Visual Arts Librarian) Mr Rick Williams (Human Research Ethics Committee Manager) Ms Carol McGregor (Cultural Advisor)
Design by Nikolina Sika at Liveworm Studio, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University