Art School Confidential
Whilst teaching together one day, the late artist and educator Kate Daw, said to me, ‘Time is the school in which we learn’, quoting Joan Didion.i As time passes ever more quickly, I remembered this observation when I began to write down my thoughts about Deakin University Art Gallery’s first exhibition of 2023, Art School Confidential. An ambitious project that celebrates the work of current teaching staff from the School of Communication and Creative Arts and the wider faculty group including contributions by Bradley Axiak, Jane Bartier, Anindita Banerjee, Zoë Bastin, Wendy Beatty, Cameron Bishop, David Cross, Joel Gailer, Tara Gilbee, Simon Grennan, Aaron Hoffman, Victoria Holessis, Penelope Hunt, Ilona Jetmar, Todd Johnson, Dan Koop, Fiona Lee, Katie Lee, Sean Loughrey, Olivia Millard, Amber Smith, Luigi Vescio, Sorcha Wilcox, Anne Scott Wilson and Bruce Zhou, featuring artworks they made whilst they were students.
I am always perplexed when the value of artworks is neatly wrapped together with a fixed idea of the artist’s identity and public persona. The standard formula seems to be, creating artworks that are easily identifiable and consistent, equates to commercial appeal and success. Of course, artists don’t just arrive fully formed with practices and ways of working into any given art scene. Like other professions and cultural practices, before becoming established, artists are part of long lineages of knowledge via art school education, creative art institutions and pedagogies going back many years. These observations shaped this exhibition celebrating the recent history of teaching and creative practices here at Deakin University in Naarm/Melbourne.
Over the years I heard lots of rumours about well-known artists and the unrecognisable types of works they made at art school. As though, these artists should be somewhat ashamed of what they once made as students and had ugly charcoal drawings hiding away somewhere like The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde, 1992). But rather than focusing on the works of more established artists and operations of fame and power, as I worked through the logistics of this project, a more modest and local story emerged. This extended to inviting a group of twenty-five current teaching and learning staff to re-present artworks they created whilst they were students. The result is a collection of vastly divergent and disparate student artworks including never seen before examples of classical life drawing, folio entry submissions and first forays into formative developments in new and old mediums such as moving image, installation, painting, print, photography, sculpture and performance.
For many years my partner had a photocopy excerpt of one of Gough Whitlam’s speeches pinned up at home on the wall. I think it might have been an extract from the first National Arts policy or cited in the formation of the Australia Council. We have long since lost the A4 printout and I have had difficulty sourcing it again. But I remember his discussion around the importance for the arts to not just pursue and value an idea of excellence, but to recognize that each individual act of creativity is a break-through that should in some way be commended all on its own terms and on its own merits, especially when we consider greater context of who you might be and where you have come from.ii Of course, following this methodology, everyone should be encouraged
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to make art and to be an artist and in-doing so, we create culture, discourse and in turn strengthen our communities and democratic principles. With this in mind, we should be especially proud of our artistic failures and embrace them all.
Over the summer months just gone, the teaching group were busily tasked with a hunt through their garages, under their beds and through their studio storage spaces and old hard drives (that don’t open easily anymore) to find works they made as students. Works that were still in presentable condition and that they were willing to display to contemporary audiences (a big thank you to all for their efforts!). Hence, we came to a kind of compromise between what remains from the past and how they would like to be seen in the present. The exhibition became a mixture of undergraduate, Honours and Masters’ student artwork examples spanning four decades and from various different art schools and teaching institutions from across the country and beyond.
Art School Confidential takes its title from Terry Swiggoff’s (United Artists, 2006) movie, and similarly shares with the film the appreciation of artist’s unexpected beginnings. As the new academic year of 2023 begins, the purpose of this exhibition demonstrates to students, staff and wider audiences, the different histories of artistic endeavours at Deakin and in turn, the remarkable transit of these artist’s practices over time.
Artists Olivia Millard, Luigi Vescio, Dan Koop and Zoë Bastin had the even more difficult challenge of remembering their first solo dance, choreographic, movement and performance works. And as part of the exhibition, they very generously reimagined these artworks for a contemporary audience. I thank them for the dedication in piecing together and choreographing new works from just a few ephemeral scraps: printed flyers, a prop, a song lyric and clothing items that were the only remnants remaining many years later.
Todd Johnson’s 12 hours 1 month 3 weeks (2010-2022) similarly represents his creative exploration and the weathering effects of time. Johnson works with analogue cameras, shooting onto film to make images. Around the beginnings of his studies at Deakin, Johnson buried this large format negative photograph and only recently uncovered it. The resulting corroded image has been created through twelve years of chemical and environmental reactions.
Alongside Johnson’s photograph, artist Penelope Hunt is represented by two portraits created whilst she attended photography college in Richmond in the late 80s. As a student Hunt began documenting local residents in her lunch breaks. For Art School Confidential Hunt chose to include a touching image of her determined looking mother in their Richmond backyard. Behind her strong looking subject, the young photographer is reflected in the glass window of the backyard shed with her camera in hand. Viewing this image thirty-six years after it was taken Looking Forward (1990) captures a palpable sense of time passing and a cycle of sharing perspectives and positions.
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Each artwork included in this exhibition perhaps more acutely reflects the times and contexts in which they were made, and the shifting focus of differing pedagogies and materialities over the decades. As a method of presenting the artworks, I have displayed them in the manner of the salon with most artworks exhibited as a large group, clustered from the floor to ceiling at one end of the Deakin University Art Gallery. Here my aim was to reference the Victorian era of a drawing, painting or sculpture gallery. With apprentice and mentor presented alongside each other for peer review and as a space of both display and education. I also exhibited the artworks without direct labels, wanting to loosen the artworks from their maker (a little) and to challenge our student audiences in identifying the works of their artist/lecturers.
This academy style is further elaborated by the presence of two large plaster cast replica statues borrowed from Deakin’s drawing studio. As noted by Adjunct Professor and artist Rob Haysom, these sculptures were once part of the teaching at Deakin’s ‘the Mill’ studios in Pakington Street, Geelong, in the 80s before arriving here at the Burwood campus sometime in the 90s.iii Since then they have continued to be used as drawing aids in understanding the figure and anatomy. The two sculptural statues are like ghosts in this new context, remains of a bygone era. Looking at them now, I wonder about all the students over the generations that have drawn them. Their hardened plaster forms remain resolutely inert to the years of constant observation. Yet, as silent witnesses, it’s difficult not to imagine what stories they could tell?
Historian John Gregory notes in The rise and fall of Melbourne’s plaster cast collection, at one point the Gallery School at the National Gallery of Victoria was home to over 300 plaster replicas, their disappearance from museums and teaching spaces today explained by the changing times, tastes and meaning.iv
As regards to the plaster casts, the claims for moral superiority implied by the classical gods and heroes (typically male) and ideals of beauty (typically female), and by the effigies of exemplary individuals, have seemed increasingly irrelevant as the last century progressed.v
After dusting off the most recent students various ‘knowing’ new additions of glitter, lipstick, stickers and fake feathers these two copies of classical sculptures added both a historical context to the exhibition and an aura from long ago. As changing contexts and pedagogies for the visual arts continue to evolve critic Irit Rogoff recently redeployed the metaphor of the academy to describe ‘the conflation of exhibition and learning spaces as continued sites of emerging potentialities’.vi
Thinking back to my own education it is difficult now to remember many details. But what types of knowledges and skills do we gain when we study, practice and disseminate art? These ‘soft’ skills cannot easily be quantified. Whilst completing her Master’s degree the now Geelong based artist Fiona Lee gives voice to these questions which remain difficult to answer. Lee’s Potential Unlimited (Level ARI) (2010) take the form of three
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framed certificates. With each, she awarded friends and colleagues working in various artist run initiatives with a recognition of their unique skills and experiences. My favourite being ‘On the twenty-third day of June Two Thousand and Ten it was discovered that Courtney Combs is a Specialist at: Measuring a Space without a Measuring Tape… Summa cum Laude.’vii
Closing the exhibition, artist and lecturer Anne Scott Wilson has contributed the twenty-six-minute documentary video Art School Job (2008-23). A collaboration with artist Domenico de Clario that poetically tracks his last official day as head of a local art school in Melbourne. He begins by singing songs of love and lament in the early hours of an empty building, before wandering through studio spaces and then packing up the contents of his office. He remembers important works of previous students, minor break throughs and exhibition leftovers, placing these precious items into boxes before going off to cook dinner for his aging parents. Looking back further in hindsight, the artist and lecturers have shared their personal memories of art school amongst the pages of this catalogue. In reminiscing they reveal many different stories, contexts and educational experiences and I am grateful to them for sharing these insights.
As the world turns in 2023, how can we create a sense of belonging when change is such a constantly influencing companion? By engaging in an exercise of reflection Art School Confidential seeks to create both lineage and continuity for our current student audiences. So that they can connect their own discoveries to those before them and to cherish their education as a special time of experimentation: embracing risk and the unknown.
James Lynch Curator, Art Collection and Galleries
i Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, Alfred A. Knopf, United States, 2005, p. 23.
ii For more information see Kim Williams, Whitlam, the Arts and Democracy, Whitlam Institute and the Western Sydney University Press, 2019, https://www.whitlam.org/publications/2019/11/13/whitlam-thearts-and-democracy
iii Adjunct Professor Rob Haysom in conversation with the author 1 March 2023.
iv John Gregory The rise and fall of Melbourne’s plaster cast collection, The La Trobe Journal, No. 106, September 2021, p.45.
v Ibid
vi Irit Rogoff, Academy as Potentialities, cited in Angelika Nollert and Irit Rogoff (eds), A.C.A.D.E.M.Y, Revolver, Frankfurt, 2006, p. 14.
vii Text cited from Fiona Lee, Potential Unlimited (Level ARI) (2010), artwork created as part of Lee’s Master of Fine Art by Research, University of Tasmania, Hobart, (2010).
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from left:
Simon Grennan
Untitled examination drawing 1995
Sean Loughrey
Untitled study 1987
Sean Loughrey
Untitled (sticks) 1987
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These paintings were made during my Postgraduate Diploma in 1987, at the Victorian College of the Arts (before it became part of The University of Melbourne). It was memorable because numerous, interesting artists taught there at the time. Artists such as, Geoff Lowe, John Nixon, Tony Clarke, Jenny Watson and others. Our studios were in, what was once an old police hospital, across the road from the NGV. Having previously lived in Warrnambool I could not have been closer to galleries. We all had a room each, some bigger sections were partitioned off. We had BBQs on the balcony and watched trams whiz around the corner. Having a studio was the most critical and memorable part of all my art school experiences.
Sean Loughrey
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Art school was the most integral part of my career
all the way from BFA Hons through a research MFA to a PhD. Back then it was an atelier model where the genius artist-lecturer came into the studio and you were expected to stay all day and work alongside their instructive workshops, where they offered masses of critical feedback and encouragement on the ground. Equal emphasis was placed on conceptual ideas and art history and theory which were embedded into practical, technical and material methods of working. Art school is a lot different now.
Fiona Lee
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–
Fiona Lee Potential Unlimited (Level ARI) 2010
Todd Johnson
12 years, 1 month, 3 weeks 2010-2022
In The Reflective Practitioner: How professionals think in action, Donald Schön (1983), speaks of the practice of learning in professionals as an ‘indeterminate swampy zone’. Schön’s swamp offers a productive metaphor for my own art education; a complex, ambiguous and often messy terrain. My photograph for Art School Confidential visually articulates the complexities, ambiguities, and contingencies of the visual art and design educational landscape; a shifting entanglement between agencies, environments and materialities. In the case of my own art education, everyday materialities were frequently neglected, overlooked, or shunted by the wayside. This was especially the case in my photography and art education, which foregrounded representation, identity, and semiotics over everything else. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, my own creative practice has embraced materiality, detritus and mistakes as vital material components of creative process and content.
Todd Johnson
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Art schools have been integral in my artistic journey. I studied photography part time over four years in my twenties, R.M.I.T in my thirties, completed a Master’s at the VCA in my forties and now in my fifties I am doing my PhD at Monash and teaching photography at Deakin University. My memories of photography college are still vivid. All night colour printing marathons! Great friends keeping each other going with whatever means, not realising the more tired you got, the more your colour vision disappeared. Also, art lectures by Norbert Loeffler – a way of seeing that was so inspirational in breadth and potential!
Penelope Hunt
Penelope Hunt Looking Forward 1990
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Pages 16-21 installation views at the Deakin University Art Gallery
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from left:
Aaron Hoffman
Untitled (door) 2015
Bradley Axiak
Applecore 2009
David Cross
Closer c.1994
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I vividly recall working on these two pieces. The first took minutes to complete. Once I had the right parts, I tied the forms together and switched the work on. Satisfied. The second piece demanded care and consideration, a complex process of casting with resin. Each moment spent with it balanced between success and failure. In a way, this summed up my time at art school. Engaging in my practice, surrounded by a motley crew of creatives, peers, and enablers.
Aaron Hoffman
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Aaron Hoffman (Bed) 2015
photo by Kerry Leionard
Joel Gailer
I remember painting the little waterfall painting Natural Arch (1998) during my second year in a Diploma of visual arts in Noosa, Queensland. It was my first resolved painting. I can still recall the elation I felt as the work unfolded, the newly learnt accuracy and brush control was thrilling. Completing the work was a breakthrough moment for me, jumping around my little painting desk in the kitchen of a rented flat I thought, ‘I can do this!’.
Joel Gailer
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2002
Untitled
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Bruce Zhou
Lily 2001
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In 2001, I studied animation at the Victorian College of Arts, Film and TV school, Melbourne University. I made the first Chinese watercolour painting style animation in Australia. It was the most challenging year. I really enjoyed the filmmaking, storytelling, drawing, painting both traditionally and digitally, acting and animation. I did lots of reference drawing, and life drawing at VCA art school, I also took extra lessons to learn Chinese watercolour painting over the weekends. I tried to step out of my comfort zone and challenged myself to create my own style of animation. I did animate Lily by using a traditional light table, and made sure the timing and position were right, then painting each frame on the Chinese rice paper, and scanned them. The animations were a lot of work, but I really enjoyed every step of it.
Bruce Zhou
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A sociology teacher said to me ‘I could tell you were from Frankston by the way you dressed.’
I made my own clothes.
I didn’t know how to do university, I hardly knew what it was. No one in my working-class family had gone to university. I studied photography, philosophy, and secondary teaching. In first and second year I didn’t understand that we were asked to re-hash information. I only found my feet in third and fourth year when we were asked to explore things independently. It became apparent that I can’t follow instructions. I need to experiment to come to my own conclusions.
Sorcha Wilcox
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Sorcha Wilcox Squid: Quantum Interference Studie s 2009
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After a career in entertainment, choreography for public events etc, art school was a huge relief. As a single mother, art school over stimulated me, in a good way! Painting and conceptual practice released the imagination from being tethered to the body and I was fired up and full of ideas – too many – so many they are still active in practice today. Socially ‘Art School Confidential’ the movie encapsulates the stereotypes into which I fall. The older female (except that my child was a toddler) in her second career. The attrition rate was big and today out of a class of 60 about 2 in my class that I know of, still practice!
Anne Scott Wilson
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Anne Scott Wilson
Billy 2008
I went to Art School in Nipaluna (Hobart), and the building is on Constitution Dock in an old Jam Factory, surrounded by the salt water river and a working wharf. As a typical 20-somethings art student, I was often running late for 9 am classes. Rather than bad traffic, the hazard I would run into was trying to cross the docks to get to school. Frequently I would arrive on the dock at the same time a fishing boat would be leaving, or coming back in. This meant I would have to stand there and watch the excruciatingly slow process of the wharf bridge lifting up and away, before it slowly rotated back after the boat had chugged past. We would work at Uni until about 10 pm when we would be dragged out of the building by security (whom we frequently argued with about wanting to stay later or not having the right security forms signed). For lunch or dinner we would get fresh fish’n’chips from the boats. After we left Uni we would stop for drinks at a pub along the wharf. Living in Nipaluna, there were so few galleries, our art school culture was all about making the work. I got a shock when I first moved to Naarm (Melbourne) and realised for lots of people it was actually all about showing their work.
Katie Lee
Katie Lee Untitled
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1998
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I can still recall that first time entering the main hall of the Queensland College of Art as a commencing student, although 30 years on it is more like a tonal afterimage than a coherent memory. I remember the bright daylight flooding through the other side of the dark concrete-grey modernist lobby that led into the main courtyard. Even at the time it felt like a threshold moment. The QCA, then based in East Brisbane, was not a floor or building allocated to visual arts but an entire campus dedicated to the education of practicing artists and designers. I looked around wide-eyed, trying like many others I suspect, not to appear overawed. I had no thoughts of career prospects; all that mattered was that I was here, immersed in a world where what mattered most was art and ideas, and the only currency worth anything was the art we could make.
Simon Grennan
Simon Grennan Dalek in Landscape 2011 Deakin University Art Collection
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The studios at the Waterfront campus were set up in such a way that the higher your year of study was, the closer you were to a bank of large, heritage windows. The PhD students were the sacred bunch that had the hallowed spaces looking straight out into the sky! I remember walking in on orientation day as an undergrad and working this pattern out in my mind. Eventually, I did my rounds on the concentric circles of the studio system starting from the dark centre and finally reaching a brightly lit, brightly lit, four meter wide window facing the PhD work space! Now, years after completing my studies at art school, I look back and wonder, did anybody else studying art at the Waterfront campus think of the studio structures in similar terms?
Anindita Banerjee
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Anindita Banerjee Kalika 2008
In a chronology of age:
The heat of The Tinsheds, city road, 3 marks required out of 100 for the practical, the rest in essays, missed a lecture from Lucy Lippard, assessed in Italian, Juanita Nielson missing;
Teaching primary school children to make batik cushions for the library;
Teaching art in Walgett, well not;
The smell of wax and dye in Jogjakarta for six months batik study;
I can weave, I am too clumsy for screen print;
Enter Deakin via Treatment at Wyndham Art gallery, the best year of fear in Honours;
Getting to Venice via the local water; the hardest work in writing a sentence, in an exegesis; ever inspiring peers and teachers and people in my life. Repetition, pattern, unravelling.
Jane Bartier
Jane Bartier Dalhousie Springs, aerial view 2006
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I remember when Deakin sold Rusden and the visual arts moved to the Elgar Road campus - very old buildings that do not exist anymore. The building we were in was dedicated to the visual art department and I felt it was a haven away from the noise of the busy Burwood streets. The lecturers would walk in and out of the space offering feedback and sometimes taking a student’s brush and proceeding to work on their piece – this to some student’s horror, whilst I think others secretly loved it. It was a time of growth for me as an artist and I treasure the input I received from my lecturers to develop my work.
Ilona Jetmar
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Self Portrait 2002
Ilona Jetmar
How the air suffocates down here. Lucky, lucky. 2018
My best memories from art school were with my fellow students. The atmosphere of being in a group of artists in their early years of practice was very exciting and inspiring! I was lucky enough to go through postgrad with two close friends which was such a help – a support network that I treasured. Our cohort in those days at the Waterfront was a stellar line-up, and I can vividly recall our Honours exhibition opening – a very DIY affair, and quite the party with a fair few cases of wine, nothing you could get away with now!
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Amber Smith
Amber Smith
Cameron Bishop
Dumbluck 2008
Cameron Bishop
Near Heide 2008
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from left
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Like photography, time is similarly one of the most crucial aspects for a student. Whether it be the countdown to an end of a semester with the hope of producing a body of work that embodies twelve weeks of practiceled exploration. Or the hours lost to a wave of curiosity, ignited by finding a new material, book or artist – all because of being exposed to different ways of seeing. Then, just when it feels like large portions of the day cannot be traced back, it becomes anchored again by the fixed discipline of seconds and silver that a darkroom demands entirely from you. Despite all of this, perhaps the best markers of time disappearing were simply the hours spent with other students in the studio, haphazardly pinning up test prints on the studio walls or talking through work in progress long after classes had ended.
Victoria Holessis
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Victoria Holessis Body of work 2016
photo by Victoria Holessis
There are many stories from art school that I fondly recall (and some I am relieved there wasn’t a perpetual recording device as they’re best left for foggy recollections). As a city kid at 18, it was a bold move to transfer to Deakin University Warrnambool. Besides not knowing anyone, I had to learn how to live without parental boundaries and, of course, keep within my budget. With $70 a week, I could go out a few nights, pay for food, transport, and even buy the occasional pack of cigarettes and keep myself in stock of art supplies. However, it was an amazing experience, the classes were immersive, interdisciplinary, collaborative and hands-on, at times chaotic (and no doubt, would have made OHS sweat). There was a lot of readymade installation work and trips to the tip and salvage yard. A combination of freedom to push boundaries and critical thinking and access to multiple skills (I remember learning how to weld together another metal sculpture bound for my parents’ garden) made this such an integral part of my life experience that I am grateful for the chance to have had.
Wendy Beatty
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Wendy Beatty Untitled 2004
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When I’m reminded of my days as a photography student, it’s the time I spent in the darkroom that come straight to mind. Countless hours spent processing and analysing film and the conversations with the technician (the Irish Alchemist) about how I might compensate for an under or over exposure... or how I needed to ‘let go’ of an unprintable shot, no matter how much I struggled with it. The magic of photography was buried in the pursuit of perfection unattainable; it was the wonder of the print when it formed a window into that journey with my camera, coupled with the stink of fix.
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Bradley Axiak
Bradley Axiak Pitt Street 2009
They were a time of immense discovery, I recall walking onto the campus at VCA and feeling like I had to go there. I had trained as a registered nurse prior at the Royal Melbourne Hospital but it was at art school I felt alive. Sometimes at home and sometimes like I may not belong. It was a time in which I got to break free of my social upbringing and discover the larger world at hand. It was the best decision of my life to go but also a hard one to make possible. Inventive solutions and large warehouse vacancies were the opportunities many creatives found to keep afloat and work together. Art school opened up so many possibilities.
Tara Gilbee
Tara Gilbee
Untitled Portrait 1999
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Attending art school, or rather dance school was a significant time for me. I completed my undergraduate degree in the early 90s and we danced 8.30am-6pm every day. I felt as though I had been admitted to a world that I had not known existed. Dance and the arts were treated as important and worthy of being totally occupied with. I decided to stay in that world.
Olivia Millard
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After grinding through the final years of high school, I hoped that going to uni would be nothing but drama classes. I was disappointed – too many essays, too little time in the rehearsal room. What I couldn’t find at uni, I looked for in the real world. My impatience got me collaborating and making shows in the Melbourne Fringe, which I kept doing so alongside studying. Our use of cheap venues led me to become fascinated with found spaces, which later led me into situated performance and public art. Frustration led me into the real world, but curiosity keeps me coming back to study.
Dan Koop
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For me, studying dance felt like being a chameleon with a spongy rather than sticky tongue. Throughout those formative years I absorbed the physical languages of my dance idols, Ross McCormack, Elie Tass, Jo Lloyd and Meg Stuart among them. I placed myself in their skin, tracing movement pathways and following choreographic approaches. It was about dancing as much as I could, long days, six days a week, experiencing it all. I immediately entered a full-time company following graduation, regularly performing works for different choreographers. Simultaneously, I was continuing my own creative journey. It was the time around those rehearsals, my solo time in the studio, where the next chapter began. The rigorous yet playful temporary undoing of everything I had learnt, the ability to step into the unknown and connect with creative instinct, that’s when I started developing my choreographic voice.
Luigi Vescio
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I began to look at how to transform ways of thinking about the body to avoid practices that objectify, limit and stigmatise bodies that do not perform the feminine ideal at the end of undergrad. I was standing looking at my work in a graduate exhibition with two men who had taught me that semester. We were watching a video I had made. Three women moved sculptural materials around a gallery space on screen. They held serious expressions as they concentrated on the task they were doing. Wrapping rope around their arms, folding bits of foam, dragging sacks of flour. They moved with determination. These men asked me questions about the clothes we wore, the weight of each of our bodies, how difficult it must be to physically drag the materials (implying we weren’t strong enough). Adrienne Rich wrote ‘…the dutiful daughters of the fathers in us are only a hack’. And I decided standing there to find ways to make myself stronger by understanding and fighting against the forces that sought to diminish my power. This began my PhD, and the ongoing research I do now.
Zoë Bastin
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List of works
All artworks are listed as they appeared in the exhibition. All images are © copyright and reproduced courtesy of the artists.
From left clockwise around gallery:
Behind reception desk
Fiona Lee
Potential Unlimited (Level ARI) 2010
framed printed certificates with red circular paper adhesive sticker 30 x 32 cm each
West wall from left:
Simon Grennan
Untitled examination drawing 1995 charcoal on paper 56 x 76 cm
Sean Loughrey
Untitled study 1987 oil on canvas
22.5 x 20.5 cm
Todd Johnson 12 years, 1 month, 3 weeks 2010-2022
framed archival inkjet print 95 x 95 cm
Amber Smith
Persuasion and sacrifice: the poetics of learning to love again 2018 found wooden box with brass inlay, found atlas image, tissue paper, pocket-sized New Testament bible, waxed string, sea-glass, human hair, artists own Polaroids, tape, paper bark and assemblage
12 x 20 x 5 cm
Fiona Lee
Potential Unlimited (Level ARI) 2010
framed printed certificates with red circular paper adhesive sticker 30 x 32 cm each
Penelope Hunt Looking Forward 1990 pigment print on Cansen Rag
80 x 60 cm
Penelope Hunt Prized Collection 1988 reprint 2022 hand printed silver gelatin print 53 x 42 cm
Dan J Koop printed invitation to his student performance as part of the production I buy therefore I am 1998 21 x 17 cm
Aaron Hoffman (Bed) 2015 resin, fibreglass and paint 70 x 90 x 25 cm (approx.)
Joel Gailer
Untitled 2002 artist book, monotype and hand-written text on Magnani paper, bound 30 x 60 x 2 cm
Sorcha Wilcox Squid: Quantum Interference Studies (1-4) 2009 pigment print 30 x 20 cm each
Anne Scott Wilson
TurnReturn 2001 medium format analogue photograph digitally printed on lustre archival photo paper
97.5 x 71.5 cm
Bruce Zhou
Lily 2001 digital video and animation
6 mins
Bruce Zhou Ming (Bright) 2004 digital video and animation
4 mins
Anne Scott Wilson
Billy 2008 digital video still photograph on rag photographique archival paper 107 x 126 cm
Sean Loughrey
Untitled (Sticks) 1987 oil, paper and wax on canvas
40.5 x 53 cm
Katie Lee
Untitled 1998 etching on paper 112 x 71.5 cm
Katie Lee
Untitled 1998 etching on paper 112 x 71.5 cm
Simon Grennan
Dalek in Landscape 2011 oil on canvas
Deakin University Art Collection
Purchase, 2011
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List of works
Bradley Axiak
Pitt Street 2009
black and white inkjet print from 35mm film
50 x 50 cm
Bradley Axiak Pitt Street 2009 black and white inkjet print from 35mm film
50 x 50 cm
North wall from left:
Reproduction plaster statue on loan from the School of Communication and Creative Arts
Tara Gilbee
Xray Portrait (Stefan) 2000 black and white photograph
unique state 45 x 32 cm
Anindita Banerjee
Kalika 2008
digital video
3.23 mins
Jane Bartier
Dalhousie Springs, aerial view 2006
batik on cotton 170 x 115 cm
Amber Smith
How the air suffocates down here.
Lucky, lucky. 2018 found display case, geological and mineral specimens, hand-marbled paper and assemblage
60 x 60 x 15 cm
Joel Gailer
Natural Arch 1998
acrylic paint on box card
50 x 70 cm
Ilona Jetmar
Self Portrait 2002 oil on canvas 81 x 121 cm
Fiona Lee
Potential Unlimited (Level ARI) 2010
framed printed certificates with red circular paper adhesive sticker 30 x 32 cm each
Cameron Bishop
Dumbluck 2008
digital video
7 mins
Cameron Bishop
Near Heide 2008
digital video
7 mins
Tara Gilbee
Untitled Portrait 1999 lost wax cast bronze
unique state
50 x 45 x 40 cm
Reproduction plaster statue on loan from the School of Communication and Creative Arts
East wall from left:
Victoria Holessis
Body of work 2016 acrylic boxes, latex and liquid emulsion
40 x 35 x 45 cm each
Wendy Beatty
Untitled 2004
handmade negative Ilford photographic print on black and white paper
75 x 100 cm
Aaron Hoffman
Untitled (door) 2015
aluminium and fluorescent tube
130 x 45 cm
Bradley Axiak
Applecore 2009 colour inkjet print from MD4 35mm film
35 x 53 cm
David Cross
Closer c.1994
colour photograph
100 x 100 cm
Near door:
Anne Wilson and Domenico De Clario Art School Job 2008/2023
digital video
26 mins
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Biographies
Bradley Axiak
Bradley Axiak is the Senior Operations Coordinator, for the School of Communication & Creative Arts at Deakin University. After studying professional and creative writing he completed a Bachelor of Media Art (Honours) at Deakin University (2010).
Anindita Banerjee
Anindita Banerjee (PhD) is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher that lives and works on the land of the Wadawurrung people of the Kulin Nation. Her research interest includes cultural otherness, authentic identity and the sense of home. Banerjee has exhibited at the Victoria Parliament Melbourne, Customs House Sydney, the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata, at the Palazzo Bembo Gallery in Venice in conjunction with the Venice Biennale 2019 and various other institutions and galleries. Her exhibition Ondormohol has been shown at the Art Gallery of Ballarat as part of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale (2021) and a further iteration of Ondormohol - Bhiktoria’s Secrets was exhibited at the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre in Melbourne (2022). Banerjee currently works as the Public Art Officer at the City of Ballarat.
Jane Bartier
Jane Bartier is a visual artist based in Winchelsea, Victoria on Wadawurrung Country. Bartier recently completed her PhD with Deakin University (2021). In this enquiry Bartier sought to unravel understandings of place and process in her practice of looming and walking. Bartier has exhibited widely since 2010 and has extensive experiences in education and textile studies. Bartier completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts, First Class Honours, Deakin University (2016); Diploma in Studio Textile Design, RMIT (200508) (uncompleted); Master of Public Policy, University of New England, New South Wales (1992); Graduate Diploma of Education, University of New England, New South Wales (1982); and a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts), University of Sydney, New South Wales (1975 -77).
Zoë Bastin
Zoë Bastin is an artist. Her expanded choreographic practice considers exhibition, installation, publication and performance as part of the same political project – the reorganisation of societal structures that limit bodies. Bastin holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) and a PhD from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (2015). Bastin has previously exhibited & performed at the Villa Lena Foundazione, Chunky Move, Bus Projects, Dancehouse, Midsumma Festival, Felt Space, c3 Contemporary Art Space, Seventh Gallery, Testing Grounds, BLINDSIDE, Bloc Projects, KINGS Artist Run, MADA Gallery at Monash University, Project Space at RMIT & The Substation.
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Biographies
Wendy Beatty
Wendy Beatty has been involved in teaching, education and professional art-based practice for over 15 years. Beatty completed a PhD (2017), Master of Arts (2004), Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours (1999) awarded by Deakin University, and a Graduate Diploma of Education, at the University of Melbourne (2005). Her practice and research, explore the ecological, self and performative aspects of the photographic medium through digital and analogue processes. In her current role, Beatty coordinates Design, Communication and Film, Television, and Animation at Deakin University College.
Cameron Bishop
Cameron Bishop is a Melbourne based artist, writer, curator and lecturer at Deakin University in the School of Communication and Creative Arts. Bishop’s research explores the shifting nature of public space, place-making, and the body as a political, private, and social entity. Bishop often works in collaboration including: Deakin’s Public Art Commission, a curatorial and research initiative with David Cross. PAC recent projects include: Front Beach Back Beach at Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery (2022) and the three series of Treatment exhibitions and public art events at the Western Treatment Plant, Melbourne (2015/17/23). Bishop also has long term collaborations with artist Simon Reis, Bishop & Reis and the Bozo Ink Group and with artist Anne Scott Wilson with the Sounding Histories exhibition at the Mission to Seafarers, Melbourne (2020); and the ongoing VACANTGeelong project.
David Cross
David Cross is a Melbournebased artist, curator, writer and lecturer at Deakin University in the School of Communication and Creative Arts. His practice and creative research extend across curation, performance, installation, sculpture, public art and video. Known for his examination of risk, pleasure and participation, Cross often utilises inflatable structures to negotiate inter-personal exchange. In 2007 Cross founded Litmus Research initiative at Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand. Focused on the commissioning and scholarship of public art, Litmus produced a number of ground-breaking public art projects including One Day Sculpture, a series of temporary public artworks across five cities in New Zealand (2008-09). Cross was the CAST 2011 international curator in residence in Hobart where he developed Iteration:Again - 13 Public Artworks Across Tasmania. Cross developed the Public Art Commission, a curatorial and research initiative with Cameron Bishop at Deakin University. PAC recent projects include: Front Beach Back Beach at Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery (2022) and the three series of Treatment exhibitions and public art events at the Western Treatment Plant, Melbourne (2015/17/23).
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Biographies
Joel Gailer
Joel Gailer is an artist based in Melbourne, whose work explores materiality and reproduction. His multiartform practice explores print, painting, sculpture and performance. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, and his work is included in collections such as the National Gallery of Victoria, University of Southern Queensland, National Art School, Curtin University, RMIT University, Burnie Regional Gallery, City of Fremantle and private collections. He was the recipient of the Fremantle Print Award in 2008 and has been awarded artist residencies at Art Haus in the National Art Gallery Solomon Islands, Megalo Print Studio Canberra and the Art Academy of China. He was awarded a PhD from RMIT University (2017) with an Australian Post Graduate award. Gailer runs the Brunswick based studio Cozens Street and co-founded collaborative performance art project
Performprint
Tara Gilbee
Tara Gilbee is an artist and educator based in Central Victoria. Gilbee received a Bachelor of Fine Art Sculpture at Victorian College of the Arts, the University of Melbourne (1996) and where she completed a Masters of Contemporary Art (2019). Gilbee has exhibited widely in Australia and international. She has a multidisciplinary approach to art making and has worked in collaboration with a range of practitioners with video, sound and live arts.
Simon Grennan
Simon Grennan is a Lecturer in Art and Performance, Visual Arts, at Deakin University where he teaches contemporary art practice. Along with specialisations in painting, drawing, and printmaking, his creative interests extend to video art, interdisciplinary practices and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Grennan holds a PhD in Visual Arts from Deakin University and a Masters degree in Adult Education specialising in the tertiary sector. His primary area of research focuses on landscape as an enquiry parallel to, or cognate with, consciousness research. Grennan is an active practitioner particularly in the disciplines of painting and drawing in the expanded field.
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Biographies
Aaron Hoffman
Aaron Hoffman is an artist, writer, and academic whose practice spans installation, performance, sculpture, and digital media, examining fragile states of existence. Through architectural interventions, he explores the relationship between audience, artwork, and artist, confronting the issues and contradictions of our contemporary society, including colonization, identity, sexuality, and the human body. Hoffman completed a Bachelor of Fine Art from Monash University (2015) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) (2016) and a Master in Visual Art from University of Melbourne (2018). He is currently pursuing a PhD at Deakin University, where he is researching protest, intersecting identities, and the driving forces behind the artistic process. Hoffman’s work has been recognized with several awards, including the ART150 Fellowship, the Sutton Emerging Artist Award, and the Yvonne Cohen Sculpture Scholarship. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in Australia and Argentina and was included in the Hatched: National Graduate Show at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (2016).
Victoria Holessis
Victoria Holessis is a photographic specimen maker and artist based in Melbourne, working in the areas of darkroom practices, alternative imaging, digital technologies and sculpture. She is currently the technical Operations Coordinator of Art & Design at Deakin University, where she also completed a Master of Research (2020) and a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Honours) (2015), graduating with first class honours. Holessis previously studied at Monash University, completing a Bachelor of Fine Art (Photomedia) (2013). Through the use of alternative materials like latex, liquid light and thermochromics within darkroom practices, Holessis’ work examines how we might see, use, and touch photography differently in the contemporary digital age. Holessis’ previous solo and group exhibitions include: From All Points of the Southern Sky (2020), Material Responses. Responses to Materials. (2019), Everyday Research (2019), The Daedalus Project (2017) and Body of Work (2016).
Penelope Hunt
Working predominantly in photography and video, Penelope Hunt’s images explore memory, relationships, and our transitory existence in time and place. Her work spans portraiture and landscapes, focusing on people and places known to her, often involving complex durational studies. Hunt lives and works in Naarm / Melbourne, where she is an artist and educator and is currently a PhD Candidate at Monash University. Hunt has lectured in photography at Deakin University 2019 and prior at Arts Project Australia for over 12 years. Hunt completed her Master of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne (2014) and was awarded Martin Kantor Portrait Prize (2019).
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Biographies
Ilona Jetmar
Ilona Jetmar first began studying art and painting at the age of 16 learning in the tradition of Max Meldrum’s Australian Tonalism. Whilst raising a family and feeling the drive to achieve something more she enrolled in the Bachelor or Contemporary Art at Deakin University. Completing the degree part time Jetmar went on to study at Honours level - receiving the 2008 Vice Chancellor’s Award for her exhibition entitled ‘Light Chasing’ which dealt with ideas of the sublime and the spiritual in painting. Jetmar’s creative research interests explore: home, belonging, culture and the unheimlich, completing her PhD with Deakin University (2019).
Todd Johnson
Todd Johnson is an artist and lecturer who employs analogue techniques to investigate the materiality of photographic images. His photographs result from a physical exchange between the camera, film and elements of the environment. Todd has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including the exhibitions Climarte: Tree (2022) at Forty-five Downstairs, Melbourne; Traces Unseen (2021), Photo Access Gallery, Canberra; Abstract Prospectus, SE Centre for Photography, North Carolina, America (2020); Surfaces (2019), Millepiani Exhibition Space, Rome City, Italy; The Found Object (2018), Praxis Gallery, Minneapolis, United States; Materialist Photograph (2018); Jarvis Dooney Gallerie in Berlin. Todd completed a firstclass Honours (2014) and PhD degree (2022) in Film and Photography at Deakin University.
Dan Koop
Dan Koop is an artist, curator-producer and facilitator working in public and unusual spaces. Creatively, he makes situated performance works in unexpected and public places that engage audiences to become participants. Professionally, he has worked for contemporary multiartform venues and festivals in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and London. As a facilitator, he has also hosted conferences, lectured at several universities in Melbourne and works as a conduit between community groups and arts organisations. He holds a Bachelor of Performing Arts from Monash university, a Masters of Public Art from RMIT and is currently undertaking a PhD at Deakin.
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Biographies
Fiona Lee
Fiona Lee is a Geelong based artist-researcher, curator and founder of the art-education collective, The Rogue Academy. Her research practice and artworks focus on public art, public engagement and community participation, sculpture, installation and painting. Her major public art works include the international project Our Day Will Come, an alternative art school coproduced with Paul O’Neill for Contemporary Art Tasmania, and The Plimsoll Inquiry – a seven-week participatory intervention into a public gallery space. As part of the collective The Rogue Academy, she has been commissioned to undertake a site-specific public artwork, with Amanda Shone, for the third in the trilogy of Treatment projects curated by the Public Art Commission at Deakin. Lee holds a BFA(Hons) MFA(Research) and a PhD from the University of Tasmania Art School. She has had several international residencies in Paris, England, Scotland and Canada funded by theA ustralia Council for the Arts, University of Alberta, Arts Tasmania and UTAS. She worked for the Australia Council for the Arts during the Venice Biennale in 2009.
Katie Lee
Katie Lee is a Naarm/ Melbourne based artist and lecturer at Deakin University in the School of Communication and Creative Arts. Lee completed her PhD at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne (2019).
Working with performance, installation and sculptural form, Lee’s practice is an exploration of the physical and psychological consequences of the built environment and our negotiations within it. Previous exhibitions include: Subliminal, IG Bildende Kunst Gallery, Vienna (2019); and New12, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2013). Lee works collaboratively and is a member of the Last Collective (Light and Air and Space and Time) recent projects include: Front Beach Back Beach at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery (2022) and a commission for the Melbourne Art Fair (2022).
Sean Loughrey
Sean Loughrey is an artist and lecturer based on the Surf Coast, Victoria on Wadawurrung Country. He first studied a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art, at the Warrnambool Institute of Advanced Education (now Deakin University) (1982-84); followed by a Postgraduate Diploma of Fine Art, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne (1986-87); a Masters in Fine Art by Research, at RMIT (1996-98); and completed his PhD, Victorian College of the Arts and Music, University of Melbourne (2016). Loughrey works within a multidisciplinary art practice, which includes photography, video, painting, drawing and sound-based projects. His current studio-based projects have been devoted to experimental approaches to photography, in which digital and analogue processes are united, reflecting questions relating to the history of representation in art and what might be considered ‘medium materiality’. Experimentation has been a critical part of his art practice and his approach to teaching.
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Biographies
Olivia
Millard
Olivia Millard is a Senior Lecturer in Dance at Deakin University who completed her PhD in 2013. Olivia’s early career was as a performer and choreographer working nationally and internationally and she received grants to create twelve works as an independent dance maker as well as several local and international commissions. Olivia’s current research includes various collaborative projects centred around improvisation in dance performance including the AllPlay Dance project exploring the benefits of inclusion in dance activities for children with disabilities.
Amber Smith
Amber Smith is an artist, curator, producer, and writer working within the sphere of objects, thing theory and collection practices. Smith has a PhD from Deakin University, awarded for their exegesis Collecting, Display, and World-Building in Contemporary Art Practice: Putting the Wunderkammer back to work (2021). They hold a Bachelor of Design Arts (Visual Arts) from the Australian Academy of Design and a First-Class Honours in Creative Arts from Deakin University. They are currently studying for a Graduate Diploma in Information and Library Science at Curtin University. Amber is the Curator at Platform Arts and an academic at LaSalle College International Melbourne (LCIM) and Deakin University.
Luigi Vescio
Luigi Vescio is a choreographer, performer and dance academic creating works for theatres, galleries, digital and outdoor spaces. Notions of care, community, agency, unknowing and spontaneous shared-authorship are central to his research which acknowledges art as a site-specific social encounter. Vescio’s work predominantly manifests as live performance, installation, moving image or participatory encounter. Vescio has been supported by Australia Council for the Arts, Creative Victoria, Ian Potter Cultural Trust, Temperance Hall, Chunky Move, Dancehouse, PACT and EIRA (Portugal). Vescio is currently a Teaching Scholar at Deakin University and completed a Master of Contemporary Art at Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne (2020). He previously graduated from New Zealand School of Dance (2013). Vescio’s work is part of the Nillumbik Art Collection.
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Biographies
Sorcha Wilcox
Sorcha Wilcox is an IrishAustralian visual artist and musical performer. She holds a Bachelor of Arts/ Teaching (secondary), Honours in Creative Arts, and a and a PhD from Deakin University (2020). Her practice investigates photographic processes, often with integration of soundscapes. Key interests lie in the development of fields through creative material, and new lines of logic that can be created from abstractions of this material. Sorcha is also a musical performer including electric guitar and vocal performances, and composes and performs with La Bronco, Dowser, Aardvark, Sonic Electric and various other collaborations.
Anne Scott Wilson
Anne Scott Wilson is an artist, academic and curator. Her practice as an artist has developed from a live performance career before studying Visual Art (painting) at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and a PhD at Monash University (2006). Her works are held in public and private collections in Australia and Hong Kong. Drawing on 30 years of live performance and exhibitions she explores the dichotomous relationship between movement and meaning – the years of strenuous practice and endurance relative to brief moments of glory as a performer. Transitioning from live performance to the performative in curation and solo practice her exhibitions are often site responsive and engage in AI, photography in the expanded field, video, installation, sculpture and kinetics. She collaborates with colleagues Cameron Bishop and Mirjana Lozanovska (architecture) in projects with VacantGeelong and with ARS Electronica and was represented by Conny Dietzschold Gallery Sydney, Hong Kong and Cologne.
Bruce Zhou
Artist Bruce Zhou has worked as a writer, director, animator, graphic designer, trainer, branch manager, program manager and production manager in the prepress, graphic art, printing, multimedia, film and TV industry for more than twenty years in Australia. Zhou has received numerous award for his animations and his current practice explorers augmented reality and artistic contexts. Zhou is an experienced educator and has taught Bachelor, Advance Diploma, Diploma of Graphic Design, Graphic Prepress, Digital Printing and Multimedia, screen and media in the higher education sector for over ten years.
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Installation view at the Deakin University Art Gallery
