Rmit - Master Of Fine Arts Catalogue 2009

RMIT UNIVERSITY MASTER OF FINE ART GRADUATE SHOW

FRANCES BATTERSBY KATY BOWMAN KATHERINE BRUNACCI HUA CUN CHEN SAMUEL RUSH CONDON HAN, YEE-SAK DOUGAL HASLEM SUE ELLIOTT JOHNSON YENA JUNG JODI KEET CAROLINE KENNEDY-MCCRACKEN CHARLENE KING HELEN KOCIS EDWARDS SIMONE KROK JESS LAWRENCE YINGHONG LI NORMA MCGOWAN CHRISTOPHER EARL MILBOURNE MOON, HYUN-JUNG LIANNE MOORE SASKIA MOORE ARIELA NUCCI CRISTINA PALACIOS CORY PUGH HANNAH XIAO JIA REN ISHTIAQ SANDHU NADJA SLOVAK HAMISH TOCHER PATRICIA TODARELLO JAMES VOLLER JADE WALSH CHEE YEUNG WAN LYNDA WILSON JESSICA WONG

RMIT UNIVERSITY School of art MASTER OF FINE ART 2009

David Thomas essay “Taking Your Time” : 4 Patricia Todarello essay “Making An Artist” : 6 Coordinating Staff 2009 : 8 Artists works : 10 Acknowledgements : 78

Taking Your Time. Associate Professor David Thomas PhD Program Director of the MFA Australia and NZ

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The development of original art takes TIME. Originality differs from novelty. One of the privileges of being engaged with the people in the MFA program is to participate with them in their journey in time. At the end of each year I think of the time invested by these artists, by their families by their lecturers, administrators, technicians and by the surrounding associated arts industries and I am amazed. We will never know how much time, effort has been spent… we can never quantify it, but it is truly wonderful. Art practice takes discipline and TIME, both to view and to make. It cannot be rushed. Each artist needs to understand their own rhythms of development and how these change over the course of their LIFEtime. Art practice is no mere folly or naive personal outpouring. Art does not need to be easy, entertaining or quick although it can be, it does not need to be tedious or elitist although it can be…but what it does need to be is ethical and honest in its celebration, critique and negotiation of meaning in the world. And what a NECESSARY occupation it is for both artist and audience. For Art generates knowledge and experience through material realities in forms like no other discipline in the world. It can make us think, laugh or weep; it can create wonder or boredom. Its ideas can be blatantly asserted or sneak up on us. It can raise questions, it can be rational or irrational. The artist needs to understand their responsibilities in defining what art is necessary to make and why. This takes TIME.

The Consul General of Germany to Australia recently asked in speech celebrating the contribution of a well known contemporary gallery to the cultural lives of Cologne and Sydney, this question: what contributed more to the collapse of the Berlin wall and the reunification of Germany… the military build up of the Cold War or the freedoms and insights offered by contemporary art? There was an element of humorous provocation in his answer that suggested it was art not tanks, thinking and feeling not economics. We all know that life and history is not as simple as one thing or another, but art, culture, ideas are critical parts of the mix and should not be underestimated. The 2009 graduating candidates realise this and hopefully they will use THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES towards this end, that is, of making necessary and meaningful art. They are part of a successful program that has continued to produce innovative artists that make a difference in the world. Each individual is different and as the current graduates become part of a new generation of artists they will define their own issues and pathways, and good luck to them. On behalf of the School of Art at RMIT University, I would like to thank each and every candidate, the academic, technical and administrative staff for their enthusiasm, professionalism and for their CARE about their work and each other. We ALL wish each other well.

Making an Artist. Patricia Todarello 2009 Graduating MFA student.

As this Master of Fine Art program comes to an end, it’s worthwhile to reflect on the experiences shared. As a coursework program making artwork is a major part of ones time spent here, but there is also the likelihood of another kind of making occurring along the way. The making of an artist. The students in this program come from diverse backgrounds, people of different ages, both International and Australian students, from a variety of art disciplines and life experiences mixed together with one common purpose to make art. Through such diversities and the shared interest of art, connections are made. With an emphasis on making this program generates a process of art making through a studio based practice individual and group tutorage.

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Part of that process is the studio environment that allows students to have a home base, a space where to create and be creative, and a place to communicate with other students and share experiences, whether they are about art or about life in general. The prospect of the studio is its potential to become a place for the student to belong for the duration of this program and to share in the studio environment, a place to meet people to belong with. Having discussed the place to make art it is also important to acknowledge the role that staff plays in this program. Through individual and group tutorials their guidance, knowledge and

experience as professional artists is invaluable. It is rare that one would have the same degree of opportunity to individual guidance outside the university system. As positive as this prospect of professional guidance through a studio environment sounds this is not to say that everybody’s journey or course runs smoothly. Candidates face what can feel like a barrage of constant challenges throughout the program, whether they are constraints of time and money or issues of self confidence. These are common problems that students confront. One does not have to be an international student to feel disconnected. What has been my experience and I hope applies to the majority of students also, is that through a supportive environment of students and more importantly the guidance of staff, one is able to consider and build on their prospects as an artist by developing a professional attitude to art practice. This is where this MFA program can take the individual if they choose or allow themselves to take that journey. What I have realised throughout the duration of this program is that opportunity is always present even though one might not be in right frame of mind to see it. Opportunity is not just about being offered a great show it is about creating with a positive frame of mind, and being confidant about the decisions you make. It is not about wasting ones efforts on absolutes of right and wrong or objectives to create art for some kind of reward. The reward I have found is to celebrate the ability and creative inclination to make art

in the first place, and as an artist I feel extremely privileged to have embraced that ability. It has been a great experience shared with both students and staff and I would like to wish all my fellow students and staff the very best of opportunities in the future.

Coordinating Staff 2009

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Program Director of the MFA Australia and NZ ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR DAVID THOMAS PHD MFA Academic Advisors PROFESSOR ROBERT BAINES PHD GODWIN BRADBEER SALLY CLEARY GREG CREEK DON GORE MICHAEL GRAEVE SHANE HULBERT DR RUTH JOHNSTONE LARESA KOSLOFF DR KEELY MACAROW SALLY MANNALL ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR DAVID THOMAS PHD DR LES WALKING Postgraduate Administrative Officer KATHRYN WARDILL Technicians ALAN ROBERTS JASON WADE ROBERT DOTT

MFA Advanced Seminar “Focus On Independent Practice” Seminar Coordinators DR PETER HILL ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR DAVID THOMAS PHD Contributors ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR DAVID THOMAS PHD DR PETER HILL GODWIN BRADBEER DAVID SEQUIERA SHIAU- PENG CHEN RHETT D’COSTA RENEE UGAZIO LISA SULLIVAN ROBERT OWEN KATHY TEMIN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR CLAUDIA TERSTAPPEN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR TERRY BATT PATRICK POUND KARRA REES MAGGIE FINCH ROSS WOLFE DR KEVIN MURRAY GARY CARSLEY DR ALEX BAKER

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www.francesbattersby.co.nz

Tel: +64-27-228-7679

Email: [email protected]

1100 x 3 x 89 mm

Powdercoated Suspended Aluminium

The Pixilate Ceiling, 2008

11474 x 1000 mm

Digital Print on Paper

Double Memorial-Seijaku, 2009

IMAGEs

Examining and recording the elusive and dynamic through photographic constructions and sculpture. Contrasting or synthesising bodies of knowledge, including traditional Japanese art, gold and silver-smithing, and contemporary art practice. Playing with the disruption of the perception of the order of a work by the audience, and examining the concept of ‘Ma’/space-time/ and being within a work.

FRANCES BATTERSBY

Katy Bowman My work activates and transforms space through the use of light, form and colour in site responsive interventions and installations. Temporality, transition and perception are explored in order to physically engage the viewer in an experience and awareness of time and space. Ideas of thresholds, membranes and veiling are considered in work that references soft sculpture, minimalism and the monochrome.

IMAGE Blue Passage, 2009 Sculpture/Spatial Intervention L: 360cm H: 250cm W: 120cm

Email: [email protected] 12

Katherine Brunacci Designs sourced from Jewellers dating from 1850’s to mid 1900’s are reviewed and revisited. The aim in referencing these designs is to reinterpret the gem set jewel and position it into a modern context, creating a new genre with a strong historical reference.

IMAGEs The Prince of Hamlet, 2009 Gold and Silversmithing 250 x 450 x 20 cm Cordelia, 2009 Gold and Silversmithing Ring, 50 x 40 x 40 cm

Email: [email protected] Mobile: 0439393053 14

Hua Cun Chen Drift with the uncertainty In my work, I present real and unreal aspects of familiar imagery suggesting relationships between the revealed and concealed subject. I endeavor to construct a regular rhythm that might convey multi–sensory thinking between worldly and spiritual states. The presentation as a floor installation is an invitation to the viewer to read this interplay between conscious and unconscious experience.

IMAGE Drift With The Uncertainty, 2009 Gouache, print on paper 336cm x 267.3cm

Email: [email protected] Website: huacunchen.com 16

Samuel Rush Condon I create landscapes from imaginary and dream like spaces. The nostalgia of houses I have seen and fragments of memories of these structures. Working with slippages between the possible and impossible in these somewhat iconic buildings. A quietly shifting utopic world that aligns to its own purpose and rules.

IMAGE Chimney, 2009 Watercolour on Paper 13cm x 15cm

Email: [email protected] 18

Han, Yee-Sak This project explores feelings of alienation, doubt, suspicion, and displacement. The sculptural works investigate how scale, materiality, and placement can affect the reading of the work in an installation context. My research investigates How the placement and installation of these works can be used to create surprising encounters that reflect my psychological subject matter.

IMAGE Self-portrait in a space, 2009 Cast plaster approx 45 x 55 mm (wall installation)

Email: [email protected] Tel: 0405 903 656 20

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www.dougalhaslem.com

Tel: 0417 382 117

Email: [email protected]

90 x 40 x 20 mm

Sterling silver, collected object

The Elephant and the Umbrella, 2008

75 x 70 x 30 mm

Copper, sterling silver, collected object

Pants and Drongo, 2009

IMAGEs

In this body of work, Dougal Haslem creates miniature whimsical characters that indicate movement through their mechanistic form. He uses traditional jewellery making techniques and materials along with the re-interpretation of collected objects to create anthropomorphic and zoomorphic forms. The result is a menagerie of absurd robotic creatures, a kind of exhausted automata inviting re-animation by the wearer or viewer.

DOUGAL HASLEM

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Tel: 0403192089

Email: [email protected]

1000 of 6”x 4”

typing on index cards

list, 2009

6” x 4”

Photography

kitchen sink series, 2009

IMAGEs

Working with familiar and domestic imagery and lists I am interested in how to successfully translate the personal into a wider context using seriality, repetition and everyday domestic spaces and objects to elevate them to a status and significance that they do not possess in real time

Sue Elliott Johnson

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Email: [email protected]

40 x 28 cm

Gouache and inkjet print on paper

dream of paper rose, 2009

IMAGE

“My research investigates how intangible sensations such as the passing of time can be represented through drawing and painting. It is informed by free-form jazz improvisation, and explores experiences of control, energy, and spontaneity that I associate with this genre. I use intuitive mark making, colour, materiality, composition, layering, chance and gesture to explore energy, harmony, improvisation, and flow.”

Yena Jung

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www.jodikeet.blogspot.com

Tel: +64-27-228-7679

Email: [email protected]

27 x 38 cm (image supplied is a crop of original)

photography

husband and wife, 2008

27 x 38 cm (image supplied is a crop of original)

photography

grandmother and granddaughter, 2009

IMAGEs

This project utilises photography as a medium to examine identity through family relationships in order to explore the notion of an accumulative identity (an identity that is builds up characteristics and/or thinking with those that we associate with).

Jodi Ruth Keet

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www.myspace.com/carolinekennedymccracken

Email: [email protected]

H: 372 x W: 310 x D: 62 cm

thirty boxes

Untitled

IMAGE

I am interested in pattern, colour and scale, and how these devices relate to individual and historical narratives. In much of my work, the concerns of minimalism and formalism are taken into a dialogue around contemporary life.

Caroline Kennedy-McCracken

Charlene King What do the books you like, or are reading at the moment sayabout you? This question is at the centre of my project, which uses drawings of books spines arranged in various groups to express the associations of identity and knowledge that are embedded within the readership and ownership of books.

IMAGEs Title/Book (What’s informing Sarah’s practice?) Detail, 2009 Pen on Paper 60 x 40 cm Bookshelf/ PostPak, 2009 Acrylic on cardboard postpak 30 x 25 cm

Email: [email protected] Tel: 0416622128 www.charleneking.com 32

Helen Kocis Edwards Helen Kocis Edwards explores the body, through drawing to explore emotional states, relationships and the individual’s sense of self. The careful rendering of subjects representing the commonplace, attempts to edify the ordinary and create a blurring of the distinction between human and animal, masculine and feminine, naivety and sophistication.

IMAGE Doglets, 2009 Ink and pencil on canvas 168 x 217 cm

Email: [email protected] Tel: 0402 271 597 www.helenkocisedwards.com.au 34

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Tel: 04242 86479

Email: [email protected]

variable

Dimensions

RED &GOLD Series 1, 2009

variable

Dimensions

GREENSeries 1, 2009

IMAGEs

I was born in South Africa and have lived in many parts of the world. My MFA reflects the diversity of cultures and religions. Using the Kaballah as a base I create jewellery that incorporates the historical iconography of various cultures and unify them in an idiosyncratic and eclectic way.

Simone Krok

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841 x 1189 mm

digital print

silver II

841 x 841 mm

digital print

untitled II

IMAGEs

My work seeks to explore the ways in which processes of representation operate to inform notions of the self and body that are increasingly abstracted from physical realities. Applying the techniques of collage, appropriation and abstraction (duplication, enlarging) to found images, signification is perverted raising issues of the instability/unreliability embedded in all forms of representation.

Jess Lawrence

Yinghong Li My art practice translates elements of my everyday experiences into my painting. Square serves as a symbol to describe the different gestures that represent life’s rhythms and changeability. Colours refer to my emotions, and the contrast between translucence and opaque colour creates depth and space. Emptiness is important in my work as it represents life’s energies and mysteries.

IMAGE 0809 , 2009 Acrylic on paper 78 x100 cm

Email: [email protected] Tel: 0433419466 www.yinghongli.com 40

Norma McGowan This project utilizes a personal language in representational painting and sculpture to explore paramnesia. An examination of the dichotomy of actual memory and constructed memory where time and distance obfuscates the clarity of memory making it unreliable and elusive.

IMAGEs Translocation, 2009 90 x 70 cm Oil on canvas reverie Resin on light box 67 x 50 x 40 cm

Email: [email protected] Tel: 0400985703 42

Christopher Earl Milbourne Fusion is the phenomenon upon which my arts practice is built. The process can be defined by the heating of objects constructed of sterling silver until they join together. The individual pieces symbolise a microcosm or microenvironment. They are not place- or time-specific, but more-so future ruins of an empire that never existed.

IMAGEs Trinity Gas Station, 2009 Sterling Silver 60mm x 130mm x 60mm Fuzed Vessel withSTAND, 2009 Sterling Silver 80mm x 50mm x 60mm

Email: [email protected] 44

Moon, Hyun-Jung Simple techniques of cutting and folding to a vitality a plain image. Pop- up cards focuses on visual dimension as my reference. Use of pop-up card function mixing with contemporary jewellery statement beyond limitation of material and wearable.It creates a surprise !

IMAGE Trolley pusher man , 2009 Sterling silver, postcard 170 X 60 X 360 mm

Email: [email protected] Tel: 0413 682 675 46

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Tel: +64-021 1344565

Email: [email protected]

14.5 x 10.5 cm

Watercolour, acrylic and pen on paper

In the Hay Barn, 2009

240 x 160 cm

Acrylic and pen on canvas

The end of the Visit, 2009

IMAGEs

In this project I have investigated the elusive process of personal remembrance, the boundaries between remembering and forgetting and family dynamics using family photographs as a starting point and representational / figurative and narrative based painting and drawing techniques. My work utilises colour as a psychological and emotive element

Lianne Moore

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Tel: 0439 426 356

Email: [email protected]

H:10 x W: 40 x D:30 cm

Porcelain, ceramic stain

Feather Collection, 2009

H:12 x W: 40 x D: 40 cm

Porcelain, Mix Media

Specimen Box A, 2009

IMAGEs

My current work explores the beauty and frailty of fragments from the natural world. I am also interested in the relationship between ceramics and drawing, in particular how texture and form can bring a three-dimensional quality to drawings, and how the space a vessel inhabits can be defined by a drawing.

Ariela Nucci

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Tel: 04314 25927

Email: [email protected]

dimensions variable

Installation

NUCLEO, 2009

850 x140 cm

Mixed media - Installation

PACHAMAMA’S PONCHO, 2009

IMAGEs

“She who dreams in the dark hours of the night with far away worlds comes upon, in the abstract language of the mind, the path to unknown mysterious universes, finding herself traveling into the mesmerizing luminosity of the cosmic womb”....

Cristina Palacios

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Dimensions variable installation

IMAGE Dreamscapes, 2009

Dreamscapes is a video work and installation that explores aspects of my subconscious, through the re-creation/performance of remembered dreams, nightmares and fantasies. Nothing is sacred. The work is about living as a trans male and dealing with the limitations of socially constructed gender norms.

Cory Pugh

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Tel: 0422819501

Email: [email protected]

110mm x 115mm x 19mm

Sterling silver, gilding metal, glass, steel

Brooch - Untitled, 2009

IMAGE

My work is a play with colour, material and illusion, I like the mystery some materials are able to provide when made into a wearable object. Thus adding as little mystic into the world of craft.

Hannah Xiao Jia Ren

Ishtiaq Sandhu In these works I am investigating into the phenomenon of suicide bombing in contemporary political and social conflicts. It is a form of meditation on contemporary martyrdom. The handling of the paint is as important to me as the subject matter. These works contribute to the tradition of painting figuration in an abstract format, i.e. A vertical figure painted in a square within a horizontal plane.

IMAGEs The Reluctant Martyrs 1, 2008 Oil on Canvas 137 x 122 cm The Reluctant Martyrs 2, 2009 Oil on Canvas 137 x 122 cm

Email: [email protected] Tel: 0432606748 58

Nadja Slovak “There is only nervousness and death.” 1 I live in “the three moments of expectation, attention, memory” 2, of which stillness is the embodiment. I seek stillness. Surprised by the unexpected appearance of light moving in time, I want to hold the moment still - listening for the story that is not-a-story; told by the light and the space – I want to look at it, unhurriedly. And wonder. 1

Fran Lebowitz 1978

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Umberto Eco 1997

IMAGE blindlight, 2009 single-channel black & white video projection [interior wall] + audio approx 300 X 225cm

Email: [email protected] Tel: 04 3305 5550 60

Robert Scholten Robert Scholten’s art encompasses a world of realism tinged with the fantastic; a desire to integrate the extremes of human experience: the sublime and the profane, the reality and the immaterial, the inner and the outer. Inspired by sources such as ukiyo-e, typography, printed ephemera and everyday life, Robert plays with the fragments of existence, sewn together by the experience of the individual.

IMAGEs Hunger, 2009 Acrylic and oil on canvas Diptych, 50 x 50 cm each She Sat In Her Room And Watched The Sun Fade, 2009 Acrylic on paper 100 x 70 cm

Email: [email protected] Tel: 0433 992 988 www.robobop.com 62

www.robowhat.blogspot.com

Hamish Tocher My work uses photography and projection to examine artwork from Classical antiquity, in order to create spaces where viewers can reflect upon history. By reworking Classical sources with contemporary methods, I generate new knowledge about the past. The authenticity of this knowledge is undermined by the ad hoc nature of the projection devices I employ.

IMAGE Overhead Project (Catacombs) Room of Mirrors , 2009 Perspex mirror, lights

www.hamishtocher.co.nz 64

Patricia Todarello Focusing on the qualities of form, surface, colour and light, my art practice converses both mediums of photography and painting to extend the reading of actual and pictorial space through time. Sequentially in repetition I review the multiple , not as a beginning or an end but as a moment in time, an unfolding structure.

IMAGE Open Space Constructions: white series (Installation and detailed views) , 2009 Acrylic on acetate, photographic paper, paper, adhesive tape. Dimensions variable

Email: [email protected]

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www.jamesvoller.co.nz

Email: [email protected]

70 x 60 cm

L.E.D Photographic Print

Happy Valley Intervention, 2009

70 x 60 cm

L.E.D Photographic Print

Raycroft Intervention, Christchurch , 2009

IMAGEs

My practice is concerned with photographic superimposition and public interventions. The works shifts the perception of urban and gallery spaces through the insertion of photographic representations of New Zealand residential dwellings. Which generates areas where illusion and actuality exist simultaneously, one sees the impression of a house where one does not actually exist. These public interventions create illusions of housing which echo New Zealanders’ desire of having their own house in a climate where there are more social and economic barriers than previous generations to doing so.

James Voller

Jade Walsh I am interested in intimate dialogue in the private and public domain to emphasize personal content and concerns. All works relate to the theme of ‘The Difficult Search For Love’.

IMAGEs from My Single People Project, Couples Anon; Bin, Darwin Colour Photograph 25cm x 18cm My Joke Fabric (The One), 2009 Screen-print and Thread on Fabric 60cm x 135cm

Email: [email protected] Tel: 0409 804 672 www.jadewalsh.com.au 70

Chee Yeung Wan My work is informed by Zen Buddhist philosophy, as well as my Hong Kong/Chinese heritage. I use everyday objects and natural materials such as wood and paper to explore Zen teachings, in particular concepts of ‘emptiness’ and ‘unity’.

IMAGEs Erhu, 2009 Wood, rock dust, moss 1.3m x 1.3m x 1.5m Kasāka, 2008 Brick, acrylic 7.5 x 10 x 23.5 cm

Email: [email protected] 72

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Email: [email protected]

W: 60 x H: 40 cm

digital print

Matt’s Place, 2009

Mixed Media Installation

Primetime, 2009

IMAGEs

This project centers on miniature environments constructed from an assemblage of domestic and landscape motifs to create the sense of an enchanted yet absurd world that explores the tension between comfort and unease in the home.

Lynda Wilson

Jessica Wong I wish to explore human strengths and create awareness about our cultural creations using sardonic humour. I deconstruct and analyse social inequalities through cartography and doodling while embedding it with a personal journey from a feminist viewpoint. I hope to promote change by highlighting the fragility of our social constructions.

IMAGE New world, same history , 2009 multi-plate woodcut and pen on hosho paper approx. 46cm (h) x 200cm (w) x 40cm (d)

Email: [email protected] [email protected] Tel: 0409 264 356 www.jessiwong.com 76

Acknowledgements

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MFA 2009 RMIT UNIVERSITY MASTER OF FINE ART GRADUATE EXHIBITION 2009 CATALOGUE © Rmit University 2009, Copyright in the individual essays and artwork remains vested with the individual authors and artists. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this publication may be reproduced by any process, electronic or otherwise without the permission in writing from the publishers and authors. Neither may information be stored electronically in any form whatsoever without such permission. All opinions expressed in the material contained in this publication are those of the authors and not necessary of the publisher.

Graphic design: Rushdi Anwar



SCHOOL OF ART



RMIT UNIVERSITY



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acknowledgements



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Thanks to all who have contributed to the success of the Postgraduate

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