Fine Art Honours Graduate Exhibition 2012 Queensland College of Art | Griffith University
Spread: Fine Art Honours Graduate Exhibition 2012 Queensland College of Art 28th November – 2nd December 2012 Published in Australia in 2012 Queensland College of Art 226 Grey Street, South Brisbane Qld 4101 Printed by GEON print & communication solutions ISBN 978-1-921760-88-4 Copyright Š 2012 Images courtesy of artists All rights reserved by the individuals published in this catalogue Catalogue Design Maya Walker Cover Image Dan McCabe, Photo-drawing, 2012 Inside Cover Image Llewellyn Millhouse, Mexican Wave Starter (detail), 2012 National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Spread : Fine Art Honours Graduate Exhibition 2012. ISBN: 9781921760884 (pbk) Notes: Catalogue design, Maya Walker ; Cover image, Dan McCabe ; Inside cover image, Llewellyn Millhouse ; Fine Art Honours Graduates 2012. Subjects: Queensland College of Art--Graduate students--Exhibitions. Art, Modern--20th century--Exhibitions. Art, Australian--Queensland--Brisbane--20th century--Exhibitions. Art students--Queensland--Brisbane--Exhibitions. Other Authors/Contributors: Queensland College of Art Dewey Number: 709.9940749431
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F O R E W O R D Talking about things; thinking about things … During October this year, Brisbane has experienced an expansive festival of Artist Run Initiatives (BARIs) — which has consisted largely of exhibitions in a number of venues — shop windows, rooms in houses, rooms in office blocks, under houses, caravans, and in artists’ studios. As well there have been forums, discussions and countless ‘openings.’ This festival may have passed by many general art gallery goers, but to art students it has been a wonderful revelation of the local ecology of art practices and sites for exhibiting and viewing art, and importantly for conversing about art with other artists. Actually the main demographic for Artist Run Initiatives is rarely a general audience, but as Professor Terry Smith says in his publication Contemporary Art World Currents, the audience is ‘often affinity groups who come together to think about things.’ Here are some of the reflections that students from my first year class made after going to some of these BARI events: ‘the exhibitions seem 2
very accessible’; ‘it makes me feel I could exhibit my work too’; ‘made me feel like an artist’; ‘makes me realise the importance of community and network’; ‘I experienced the excitement of looking at art with like–minded people’ — and a particularly perceptive comment, ‘viewing other artists’ work enables you to see your own work more clearly.’ I talk about local Artist Run Initiatives on the occasion of the 2012 graduating exhibition of Fine Art Honours students because moving out of an art school situation into the wider world has always been for artists quite a frightening prospect. In the hot house environment of art school, ideas, creative expression, and experimentation is highly valued, and like-minded people are everywhere! Not so in the wider community. Hopefully, however with a lively local ecology of art platforms that are able to foster and support diverse practices — for art can be as fleeting as an idea, a suggestion or the studied expression of the world around us — the experience for graduates will be one where art making will prosper through shared action, opportunities to think together, and a receptive base. Congratulations to the Fine Art Honours graduating class of 2012. The QCA staff wishes you in every way a wonderfully rewarding career. We see you being very much part of an enriched art community where drive, passion and commitment will find ways for creative expression. You have the skills to interrogate the world around you, and the experience of finding ways through art practice to understand this world more clearly.
Susan Ostling Convenor Fine Art Honours 3
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B R YA N - B R O W N
Above: Current (installation views, POP Gallery from 4rd July to 13th July 2012) Artists: Courtney Coombs, Tor Maclean, Dominic Reidy, Leena Riethmuller, Camille Serisier, Sancintya Simpson, Tyza Stewart, Bindii Thorogood Below: Addition 3 (installation views, Addition gallery from 27th September to 11th October 2012) Artists: Dale Harding, Alice Lang, Dana Lawrie, Sancintya Simpson, Tyza Stewart, Athena Thebus
I am interested in the potential for curatorial practice to be used as a platform for activism, through the initiation of socially and politically substantive exhibitions. Current and Addition 3 each presented artworks that engage with issues surrounding contemporary feminism. Through the installation of these works, the publication of supporting texts, and the hosting of public forums, these exhibitions facilitated the communication of multiple and varied perspectives on feminism. It was my aim for these exhibitions to contribute to the continuation of feminist discourse within Brisbane’s artistic communities, and illustrate the persistent relevance of artistic practice to feminist dialogue.
C A I T L I N
F R A N Z M A N N
Light render (installation view at Hold solo exhibition, The Hangar), 2012, timber, mirror, string, slide projection and live video feed projection
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G R E G G
Pupa (detail), 2012, plastic bags and milk bottles, dimensions variable
My research is centered on drawing as a re-contextualised material practice, addressing mark making beyond the two-dimensional surface, focusing on line extension.
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H E F F E R N A N
The Documentation Dilemma: Reconsidering the Relationship Between Performance Art and its Documentation in Contemporary Culture Excerpts from Chapter Seven: How We Study and Examine Documentation: How Documentation Operates Within Cultural Discourse When considering how the performance is analysed and studied post-event, documentation becomes the only substitute to memory. In discussing how documentation is studied and interpreted there must be an acknowledgement of a variety of factors. Initially, it is necessary to consider how the understanding of a performed action translates to documentation, and the relationship between these interpretations. It is also necessary to consider what it is that separates these experiences and how our interpretations of each are formed and altered by the means through which we experience them. While it is impossible to deny the significance of witnessing performance art live, it is not necessarily (or even more likely) that the privilege of live witness enables a better understanding of the performance. As Gough states, Whether the audience is sharing the same physical space with the artist’s body in real time, or whether they are contemplating it in documentation or other relic, that audience is unable to have a purely objective response to the artist’s body. Each viewer must project knowledge of their own body into that other body they are looking at. (1998, p. 119)
Gough’s interpretation is far from uncommon and is a position shared by many contemporary theorists, including Sayre (1992), Wagner (2012) and Jones (1997, 2006). Jones examines this in her essay ‘Presence in Absentia: experiencing performance as documentation’, in which she describes how the symbolic power of the body in performance art transcends the live experience and thus, does not privilege the live witness with a better understanding of the act. As she comments on Schneemann’s Interior Scroll (1975, opposite, far right), Having direct physical contact with an artist who pulls a scroll from her vaginal canal does not ensure “knowledge” of her subjectivity or intentionality any more than does looking at a film or picture of this activity, or looking at a painting that was made as the result of such an action. (1997,p. 13)
Of course, seeing and interacting with an artist is powerful, but there is no guarantee that the viewer who is watching it live will have a better grasp of the concept than somebody viewing it through the images it produces. In fact, Gough has argued that viewing a performance through its documentation
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may even provide a more suitable space to engage with the meaning of performance. As he explains in a discussion on the nature of interpreting the body in performance, our engagement with concepts of the body and the understanding of our own, is the basis for interpretation, we project our own knowledge into the performance. In the live experience of performance art ‘one is distracted in this projection by the fact that you have an audience yourself’ (1998, p. 119). Similarly, Susan Sontag affirms the role of the photographer in the act of ‘dramatising the dramatic’. Through viewing the photographic representations of violent acts (or of the explicit performances by Abramovic or Parr) the ‘contrast that is sharper than the contrast between successive events in real time’, removing these single, still representations from a broader narrative (1977 p. 168). While sharing space and time with an artist, and experiencing the performed work first hand may not insure greater understanding of a performance— or as Gough argues, may even compromise our interpretation — there are a range of performances as previously discussed that are inclusive of audience interaction. This interaction is an experience inherently compromising to interpretation. In performances like Abramovic’s Rhythm 0 (1974, opposite left) or Ulay and Abramovic’s Imponderabilia (1977, bottom left), the audience become test subjects— their actions forming the artwork. It is they who, in the case of Rhythm 0, inflict pain on the artist, or, in the case of Imponderabilia, are photographed walking awkwardly between the naked bodies of the artists. Thus, it is the documentation that becomes the work to be analysed. It is the reactions of the audience that make the work, and that become intrinsically interesting after the event. Being involved in a performance is fundamentally removing the audience from their traditional role, and therefore, rendering them unable to analyse a work through the bias of being a part of the artwork. This leaves the privilege of interpretation to the viewer of the documentation.
Gough, R 1998, Performance Research: On place, Psychology Press, Sussex Jones, A 1997, ‘Presence in Absentia: experiencing performance as documentation’, Art Journal, vol. 56 no. 4. pp. 11-18 Jones, A 2006, Self/image: technology, representation and the contemporary subject, Routledge, New York Sayre, H 1992, The object of Performance: The american avant-garde since 1970, University of Chicago Press, Chicago Sontag, S 1977, On photography, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York Wagner, A 2012, ‘Regarding Art and Art History’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 94 no.8, p. 8
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Proposal for Placemaking, Straddie Auction Classic (installation view at the North Stradbroke Island Lines In The Sand Festival), 2012, mixed media, dimensions variable
In historically informed work, the past has forgotten more than you will ever know. Or to say it in a more prosaic way, what you already know is useful but never adequate. Therefore when you encounter landscape in Australia, you have to remind yourself to go through imaginative processes that change your self as you try to come up with some good what-ifs in response to the skerricks that the past has left behind, in response to what you don’t know for sure. - Ross Gibson
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Barely, Tag, Lock, Capture (installation view), 2012, oil on board, 10 x 7 cm each
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Untitled, 2012, oil on board, 16 x 40 cm
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As a contemporary abstract painter, I am driven to understand how my work can shift relationships between depth of surface, colour and texture to produce expressive illusions in paint itself. This prompted the decision to re-examine how abstract painting can depict qualities of the sublime through investigations into colour perception, spatial expression and how light and space functions in painting.
Above: Hidden (detail), 2012, oil on canvas, 125 x 100 cm Right: Hidden, 2012, oil on canvas, 125 x 100 cm
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Photo-drawing, 2012, pencil on archival matte photograph, 29.5 x 44 cm
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Above: Scotch and Soda (detail), 2012, foam, tent poles, pine Top Left: Extra Active / Mexican Wave Starter, 2012, readymade canvas, advertising material, pine, concreting plastic, acrylic paint Bottom Left: Gold Mattress, 2012, readymade canvas, foam, acrylic paint
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M I K A
N A K A M U R A - M AT H E R
My work is based on my home city of Tokyo and explores the question of how abstract painting can assist in understanding a city’s sense of place. It is based on mapmaking, spacial anthropology, psychogeography and the persistence of memory. Techniques of layering and masking allow geometric forms and the patterns of Tokyo’s transport grid system to emerge as abstract compositions. In my paintings the multi-layered history of Tokyo is acknowledged and the city’s status as a dynamic ever-changing metropolis is revealed.
Above: One Hundred Years of Ginza, 2012, oil on wood, 98 x 98 cm Top Right: The world outside the Palace Walls (side 1), 2012, oil on wood, 98 x 182 cm Bottom Right: The world outside the Palace Walls (side 2, detail), 2012, oil on wood, 98 x 182 cm
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My work explores how collected objects can be used to investigate an afterlife existence. I assemble objects with established histories so as to evoke memorial of the deceased; the act of remembering symbolically reinvigorating past lives into the present context. The construction of an immersive installation enables present and absent beings to interact, the conscious audience’s participation within the work sustaining the dead and providing them with a means to exist.
Above Left: Hot air balloon for ghosts, 2012, light globe, salvaged cardboard box with collage, 30 x 10 cm Above Right: Untitled (detail), 2012, vintage tin with collage 15 x 15 cm Left: Family Reunion, 2012, cotton-bound vintage photographs, 100 x 100 cm
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Above: Decomposition (nails and hair), 2012, HD video, duration 8’ 36�
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The body is not a thing, it is a situation... - Simone de Beauvoir Above: Figure in motion, 2012, photocopied image and acrylic paint, 30 x 40 cm Below: Self-portrait (drip) (detail), 2012, oil paint and wax 150 x 2 x 1 cm Right: Self-portrait (smear) (detail), 2012, oil paint and wax on perspex, 30 x 45 cm
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Drawing 2 (from The Space Between Thoughts series), 2012, video still, duration 4’01”
My current practice is concerned with expanded drawing, which I define as works that use non-traditional tools and techniques that engage with conceptual possibilities of point and line. I am currently working with video and audio to examine the relationship between the temporality of drawing and time-based media. I also look at ways in which time-based drawings can translate gesture and negotiate the interplay between bodily presence and absence.
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Above: Untitled, 1998, pencil in school book, 17 x 16 cm Left: Field of dreams, 2012, oil on board, 45 x 30 cm
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My work explores grief, loss and Otherness in relation to experiences of the female body. I employ a narrative in my work to either construct alternative views of the ‘ideal’ woman, provide parameters for understanding and disseminating trauma and bereavement, and express notions of grief and Otherness. My aim is to move away from producing art that is prescriptive and to open up the question of what art itself might tell us about the lived experiences and memory of trauma and loss.
Above: betadine, 2012, digital video still Left: m(othering), 2012, paper towel, lamp, installation view
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Above: Conflation II (detail), 2012, watercolour on paper, 84 x 59 cm Right: Punctum (detail), 2012, oil on board, 30 x 30 cm
C O N TA C T LISA BRYAN-BROWN
CAROL MAC
NICOLA SCOTT
www.lisabryanbrown.com lisabryanbrown@hotmail.com
www.carolmacart.wordpress.com carol.mac89@gmail.com 0433 834 598
nscottmail@gmail.com 0412 224 563
CAITLIN FRANZMANN caitlinfranzmann.tumblr.com caitlinfranzmann@gmail.com
KYLIE SPEAR DAN McCABE
LOUISE GREGG
danmccabe.info danmccabe@live.com.au 0438 772 360
note2lulu.wordpress.com note2lulu@gmail.com
L L E W E L LY N M I L L H O U S E
TARA HEFFERNAN tara _ heff@hotmail.com 0422 071 289
www.llewellynmillhouse.tumblr.com llewellyn _ millhouse@hotmail.com 0423 725 179
www.kyliespear.com www.kyliespear@hotmail.com
TYZA STEWART tyzatyzatyza.tumblr.com tyzatyzatyza@hotmail.com
KAYE STUART www.kayestuart.com koalakaye@hotmail.com
MIKA NAKAMURA-MATHER LUKE KIDD www.vimeo.com/lukekidd luke.kidd@hotmail.com
DANA LAWRIE
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mikanakamuramather.com mikamather@bigpond.com mikamather0731@gmail.com 0404 176 262
www.danalawrie.com danaelizabethlawrie@gmail.com 0408 792 122
LAURA RICHTER
LEE LOMBARDI
LEENA RIETHMULLER
www.leelombardi.com lee-lombardi@hotmail.com 0429 469 205
leenariethmuller.tumblr.com leena.riethmuller@gmail.com
www.laura-richter.tumblr.com laura.richter@live.com.au
MAYA WALKER www.maya-walker.com mayawalker@live.com.au 0439 727 357
T H A N K Y O U Dr Chris Bennie Dr Jess Berry Professor Mostyn Bramley-Moore Dr Laini Burton Mr Sebastian Di Mauro Dr Craig Douglas Dr Donald Fitzpatrick Mr Andrew Forsyth Dr Miles Hall Dr Rosemary Hawker Professor Pat Hoffie Dr Jennie Jackson Ms Susan Ostling Associate Professor Debra Porch Professor Maura Reilly Mr Dave Sawtell Ms Elizabeth Shaw Ms Sandra Stocker Ms Lynden Stone Mr Jonathan Tse
Many thanks to
Mitchell Donaldson Liam O’Brien Athena Thebus
Source: http://www.museomagazine.com/MARINA-ABRAMOVIC
Bachelor of Fine Art Committee 2012 All QCA Staff and Students, friends and family
Griffith University Student Representative Council Queensland College of Art 226 Grey Street South Bank QLD 4101 07 3735 6336
Photos Page 2: courtesy Lee Lombardi Page 10: Marina Abramovic, Rhythm 0 (1974)
Page 11: Abramovic and Ulay, Imponderabilia (1977) Source: http://sldepot.wordpress.com/tag/odyssey/ Page 11: Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll (1975) Source: http://www.artnet.com/artwork/426032944/115663/ carolee-schneemann-interior-scroll.html Page 40: courtesy Leena Riethmuller
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