Visual Arts

The Design Centre is usually a buzz with Design and Technology and Visual Arts students engaged in the completion and refinement of the projects they have spent many months realising. It is mid-term now and the building is almost empty and unnervingly quiet. I am surrounded by Bodies of Works from the 2021 Visual Arts cohort - personal, meaningful, engaging artworks that represent countless hours of work. My gaze is drawn to a series of paintings by Manxi Zhang called The Weekender. A young woman, the artist herself, sits on a large worn leather couch, which could be mistaken for the couches from old boarding days. So familiar that one could almost hear the old leather as she shifts her body slightly. “What is she thinking?”

I am sure I hear the frozen clock tick behind her and then I realise it is the identical clock in the classroom I am standing in, indicating the passing of time. Next my eye is drawn to the painting of the girl, resting on a bannister, staring out a sash window and I am transported back to my school days, gazing out windows and contemplating my future. But as I look at this carefully painted window the scene is unmistakably Barker College with its iconic purple jacarandas. The third painting depicts two girls laying on sunlight dappled grass. I can imagine them carefree, chatting and laughing. They could be anywhere, but the utilitarian rail and pathway gives the location away. “In ‘The Weekender’ I sought to illuminate simple moments within a series of paintings and drawings. Left as a memory, each vignette is a miniscule version of my own. I saw merit in remembering these ‘insignificant moments’ whenever light shines at a day’s end.”

Manxi Zhang (Year 12)

These poignant paintings have indeed captured simple moments in time, ‘insignificant moments’ that now feel so significant.

Tara Jongsma Head of Visual Arts