Selected works from RMIT Culture collections and International Collections

John Wolseley, Sea Wrack: Tide after Tide - Baniyala, 2010

My wonderful year twelve art teacher, Luisa Bezzi, took our class to a talk by John Wolseley during his exhibition Heartlands and Headwaters. I was struck by the exuberance inherent in his art-making. Ingrained in my consciousness is an action from a video he showed us: Wolseley diving into a muddy lake to retrieve a decaying pelican corpse, which he then covered in ink and heaved onto paper as a primitive print-making tool. The integration of natural material, the moment of finding inspiration and seizing it, and the pleasure of unpredictability have stuck with me since.

John Wolseley

Sea Wrack: Tide after Tide - Baniyala, 2010 
etching on hahnemühle paper

Edition: 3/50

49.5 x 62 cm (platemark), 78.5 x 68 (sheet)

Purchased through the RMIT Art Fund, 2010 RMIT University Art Collection

Rosalie Gascoigne, Galahs Rising, 1984

I adore the way Rosalie Gascoigne creates subtle beauty from found objects, the choices revealing a life before they were chosen to become artwork. My practice often involves the searching for, and selection of discarded or used objects and treating them with softness. I find this piece endlessly elegant: the subtlety of the hues and the way the repeated undulating lines are echoed by the natural patterns in the timber grain. I’m riveted by the contrast between this careful consideration, and the industrial nature of these rough-hewn, raw segments of wood.

Cresside Collette
, Twenty Four Evocations of the Wet/Dry Landscape, 2011
 Cresside Collette's woven landscapes are so incredibly colourful and textured, imbued with the comfort that I find inherent in textile works. I love working with wool and fabric—it brings to mind the crafting of my grandmother, my mother, and my sister, and it allows me to feel connected to the time-honoured female textile tradition. I find that in capturing an image, there's a way that it is held tenderly—first in the mind, then made permanent. This feels immensely evident in the way Collette has recreated these landscapes at different stages with the slow, meditative act of weaving.

An empty bus stop in a familiar place

During isolation, I’ve been walking the streets more than ever. I feel a sentimentality towards the sameness of the suburban streets that I know so intimately. Walking alone, I find myself noticing moments of minutiae, specific to me, yet echoing intermittently in the memories of others or the streets that they walk. An empty bus stop from across the road called to me on a melancholic meander: the way the light reflects, the way it exists almost ornamentally and its usually familiar function feels presently foreign. Who’s going anywhere?

2020

132 x 73 mm

The sun sets daily while we sit still

There seems to exist a perpetual stasis, unsettled upon Melbourne, while we settle into our slippery routines and find solace in small comforts. Each arriving month is heralded by a chorus of ‘Can you believe it’s this time already?’. We lament our useless diaries, and social media memories show me alien moments from another life: a festival, a different country, a hug. Despite it all, nature continues: the trees drop leaves, bitter winter drifts away, the springtime flowers arrive and leave in a revolving cast that move too quickly for my liking. The sun keeps on, and so do we.

A phone box held dear & never used

I pass this phone box regularly, yet it exists as a strange partial knowledge where I can’t, with absolute certainty, recall which one it is. An archaic phone box strikes me as the perfect metaphor for the struggle to connect in isolation, so much so that while I paint I wonder if it’s too heavy-handed. Endlessly walking, I feel like a moth drawn to lights—warm-glowing within windows, offering outstretched safety in dark streets. I hold these nondescript moments tenderly, and paint them on wood that has been salvaged from the street in the same way.

Sally Won

Won Nan (Sally) is a Bachelor of Arts (Photography) student at RMIT University. She creates photographs containing both Abstract and Realism in images and portrays the position she stands within the world. The primary genre she is passionate is contemporary art photography.