Capstone Project 2019 UNSW Art & Design

CAPSTONE 2019 UNSW/ARTDESIGN

UNSW Art & Design Masters of Art 2019, Capstone Project www.artdesign.unsw.edu.au

Yuheng Fu The Stage, 2019 Mixed media on paper 118 cm x 88 cm (4 pcs) Gaffa Gallery

@yuhengfu

To protect the wildlife is always a big issue to human, we believe to put the animals in a safe and guarded space is protecting them. The most ironic thing is, we buy tickets to see wild animals in a zoo, because they are no longer living in the wild. We always put what we think in the first place but ignoring the basics.

Animals should live in the wild because this is their origin, just like human lives with each other in a house. I am talking about how self-centered humanity control wildlife with their will, to create this “Utopia�and slowly destroying original states. Mixed Media type of works are always meaning the meaning of mixing. To use multiple materials to express different meanings and how to combine these together become very important in my work. Dynamic and static contrast creates a richer surreal expression.

Aarushi Kumar सुनील, 2019 Oil on canvas 40 x 40 inches Candelcollectables

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it”, (Joan Diddion). Aarushi Dutt’s work examines grief with reference to the loss of her father. She exhibits this change in her life, through the method of painting.

She has dedicated this work for her father taking inspiration from her feelings and sentiments. स ुन ील is an abstract piece of art. In this project, Dutt is portraying her sentiments and feelings into viewpoint of her father’s death onto the canvas. Her proposed work is named after her father’s name ‘Sunil’ (स ुन ील) in her native language.

In this project Dutt painted blindfolded which stands as metaphor for the absence of her father. The significance of her father’s name when translated means dark or blue and is also an epithet of Lord Krishna. The painting plays around the color scheme of hues of blue’s, while also entailing free hand calligraphy. Dutt’s idea was to compose shlokas of Lord Krishna and her father’s name combined using the procedure of calligraphy on to the canvas.

Dutt used oil paints to give the profundity and force to the layers of blue, which implicates the various stages of her life after his death, that implies the different steps of grief, while employing acrylic for the calligraphy work. Dutt believes art is truly an expression of emotion, this project depiction passes on human feelings in all its fineness, from happiness to grief to depression.

@allure.le.arte

Michelle Chanique Shift No. 1, 2019 Photography, canvas, acrylic & perspex 28 x 84 cm, unique edition Wellington St Projects

www.michellechanique.com @michellechanique

Michelle Chanique reinvents traditional visions of landscape by intervening in the photographic process, using a range of media and processes including photography, painting and sculpture. Chanique’s works explores themes of displacement or ‘re-making’, the condition of being in transit and the meaning of location of borders and boundaries. Chanique’s work proposes an alternate translation of reality and asks a viewer to contemplate their own sense of place in the world.

Dean Li A Young Black Kangaroo, 2019 Archival print on cotton rag paper 42 cm x 59.4 cm Gaffa Gallery

Woolloomooloo is a harbour side inner city suburb in Sydney NSW. It is famous for Finger Wharf, an old cargo dock that attracts a trendy clientele with fine dining, hip bars and water views on all sides. However, this is not entirely what it is. Apart from the stylish aspect, it’s known for the high density of public housing and Sydney’s the most successful homeless shelter — Matthew Talbot Hostel. A young black kangaroo is the meaning of Woolloomooloo in aboriginal language.

It is not common to see such distinctively differences coexist in this weirdly harmony. One side of the road is middle class’s go-to, place of songs and dances, while the other side is quiet, messy and filling with lowincomer’s houses. There seems to have an invisible wall segregating people apart in Woolloomooloo.

A Young Black Kangaroo depicted the lives in Woolloomooloo from the inside of Woolloomoolooer’s backyard to their street, from the life story to their prospective. Revealed people’s delight and sadness, struggle and desire.

@deanqiulinli

Tamara Pavlovic Dream, 2019 Letter to a friend, 2019 Video performance Dimension and time variable The Black Box, UNSW Art & Design

www.tamarapavlovic.com @tamara_pavlovic_artist

Tamara Pavlovic is a Sydney based multidisciplinary artist, of Serbian heritage working with a range of media including painting, drawing with collage, sculpture and recently photography. Tamara is interested in female identity and her work employs personal histories and also universal experiences such as gender issues, femininity and motherhood and they have always been a guide and a starting point of Tamara’s work. Her motivation comes from a combination of self discovery, working on social issues, the process of making and creating, aesthetics and also new ways of self expression.

In this new project Tamara further pushes her practice by expressing herself through a video performance. Spiritual connection with her ancestors is a major component of her culture, especially a strong bond with Tamara’s grandmother who was a main character and influence in her upbringing, a tough and an independent woman but with a kind and sensitive soul in love with poetry.

Through language and a ritual act Tamara mourns and talks to her ancestors and hopes to connect again.

Gigi Huang ‘see me looking at you, looking at me not looking at you’, 2019 Acrylic, ink, charcoal on bamboo 250 cm x 195 cm (2 panels) Wellington St Projects

On these two free standing murals are portraits depicting my mother and me. Based on a found photo negative – presumably taken as identification for a passport or birth certificate (mine); it is one of the very few existing and earliest recorded images from our life in China before migrating to Australia five years later.

Embedded in this work is a persistent questioning of the immigrant experience, which is often embodied by a sense of duality, between feelings of dislocation and belonging. There is a ‘double consciousness’ of sorts and identity is often a many layered and intersecting mish mash of contradictory moments. The title alludes to an individual’s need or want to be seen, not being seen, seen but not really being seen and the parts of us, through our own volition or otherwise; that will remain unseen. ‘see me looking at you, looking at me not looking at you,’ is an open-ended project, whereupon the final works become one in a series of ongoing thoughts and stages of unlearning an identity.

@gigi.zhizhi

Karen Lee Scala Sans, 2019 Multi-Channel video, 2 minutes, loop Wellington St Projects

www.karenlee.co @ karenleeart

In her work, Karen Lee explores ‘Colour Resonance’, the subjective sensory and emotional experience of complimentary and dissonant colour ‘chords’ expressed using abstraction, geometry and installation techniques. This work extends the experience into 4D (time-based) using video. Lee explored the use of time and motion to express Colour Resonance using digital and tactile elements drawn from 2d forms, 3d sculpture, photography and video, aiming to discover synchronicities and interesting congruences of colour and form.

Lee’s work intends to extend the experience of colour beyond light and hue, towards a new synaesthesia of resonance and dissonance.

Michael Blake Arid research zone, 2019 Virtual Reality, electronics, wood, copper, glass, water Dimensions variable Comber Street Studios

An eerie silence has fallen over the science lab. The smell of naphthalene hangs heavy in the air. Fine red dust has settled across most of the work surfaces and there hasn’t been a single addition to the specimen collection since 1984. It’s a land of well meaning, abandoned, and failed projects. A land where wires snake underground, bursting up through the dry red skin of the Earth only to sink back in moments later, finally emerging in a rusted, tangled mess of unconnected nothing. A place where the landscape claims ownership over whatever is bought to it; dirt and decay creating detritus. Nothing short of a sustained and bitter fight can stop it.

Grown from a pervading atmosphere of abandonment and failure Arid Research Zone seeks to evoke a sense of UNSW’s Arid Research Station, Fowler’s Gap. Presented as a homage to the facilities science lab, this work showcases a series of experiments in en plein air robotics. High tech leftovers from the studio were transported over 900 kms to the remote desert outpost where they were fused with detritus from the natural world. The result is a kind of Frankenstein’s rewilding project. A failed intervention into worlds both real, virtual and imagined. A cabinet of horrors, possibilities and semi-deranged experiments in bringing life to a hostile environment.

http://secretmystery.club

Zhen Guo Guan Memory on the Rocks, 2019 Oil on canvas 80cm x 60cm Comber Street Studios

Through this Capstone Project and the associated research processes, Guan have relinquished the solo focus on express techniques and initiated deeper levels of pursuit for stronger artistic outcome. Guan have revalued his initial objective, as well as finetuning his artistic pursuit and expressive directions. Hence, Guan have decided to proceed with the project to create “Memory on the Rocks”.

This artistic project portrays and reflects on Four different historical centuries of Chinese Australians through Rock Art, these include: • 18th Century Early Australian settlement of the Chinese Boat People • 18th Century Gold Rush Chinese People in Australia • The establishment of Chinatowns in Australia • Recent Chinese Overseas Students in Australia All four artworks will be expressed through Rock Art and generalisation of historical content. When all 4 artworks are placed together as a collection, the audience can appreciate the beauty of Rock Art expressions in conjunction with historical images painted on rocks.

Wechat (Z.G.GUAN)

This is Guan’s current creation of nature and history integrated expressive artworks.

Aurora Li Infinite, 2019 Mixed media Installation: 35 x 20 x 160 cm Video: unknown Painting: 60 x 80 cm Gaffa Gallery

Flow, while what if you mess it up? How to recollect everything and clean up with compose and dignity?

The boundaries between permanence and change, unconscious and conscious, flow and intervention, handle it in a toned way is what I explored in this project.

My work suggests a way of complying with the nature of things without struggling (too much). Flow is not meaning drifting aimless, on the contrary, the hint is one should perseveringly following their heart/instinct, while finding the essence rather than pursuing the result. “Yin”, which refers to water, the moon, darkness, the mother, femaleness and more also discussed in my work. Just like the highest excellence of water. “Yin” embodies in supporting others and in its occupying without striving.

@auronsw

Joanna Cole Passing Black Springs Creek (16:18 seconds), 2019 Oil on board 100 cm x 100 cm Comber Street Studios

My Capstone Project 2019 is inspired by two key elements of landscape painting: the road trip and en plein air painting.

Since 2015 I have travelled to Broken Hill, The Murray River, Jindbyne, the Dandenong, Hill End, Clare Valley and Napperby. I have taken many photographs and video. For Capstone I compiled a 30 minute video of footage from these trips. I painted from the video stills out-doors in Centennial Park, firstly, for one day (8 hours - the length of time I would road trip in a day). I arrived at a series of 19 gouache studies. Next I painted for three hours (the length of time between pee breaks) on a large board. I painted outdoors on an mid sized board, until cold, no paint left and bothered by pedestrians (1 hour) and then from the video stills in the studio, (1 hour each), and finally back to the large size in the studio from another painting in oil. (8 hours over several weeks).

The larger format offers a sense of the scale of the vast open spaces. Aspects of memory and sentiment start to come into the compositions, provoking questions: What do I see here that surprises and delights?

www.joannacole.com.au @joannacolepainter

Shamanthi Rajasingham Life in the Square, 2019 Fine liners, markers and reflective vinyl on paper Dimensions variable Woodburn Creatives

Shamanthi Rajasingham is a Sydney-based Sri Lankan artist. Her practice explores the construction and performance of the self online. Her work addresses the relationships between social media platforms and their users, considering how individuality and agency manifest in these relationships.

Life in the Square explores the fragmented, curated imagery that makes up Instagram, the public square in which we live our lives. This work imagines the platform as a downward-scrolling landscape that we merge into, articulating ourselves through its symbols and language. Visuals of our lifestyles, experiences and belongings merge and overlap in the identities created through the square-format images we share on this platform. Featuring forms that are composites of each other, Life in the Square suggests that subjects in this landscape not only determine what they express, but are also determined by it.

The reflective surfaces in this work shift between merging with the tones of the drawings, and differentiating themselves from them. They hint at social media’s role as an imperfect mirror, and also invite audiences to reflect on their own place in a world of digital selfhood.

@shamanthi

James McFarland The Human/Dog Race, 2019 Ceramic (3x) L 26 cm, W 10 cm, H 11 cm Comber Street Studios

The amalgamated skulls of human and greyhound are a twisted portrayal of how the both animals are locked into each other’s world. The greyhound has only extrinsic value in the eyes of the breeder, trainer, bettors, and all others who seek to gain a profit at the expense of their suffering. With a human skull attached, there is no chance of escape for the dogs, though equally so, there is no escape for the human animal either. Will the human now race as well for the greed of others? Will it be mistreated the same as the four legged competitors? Will it find sympathy or be ignored as it falls and dies or sent for meat as it outlives its purpose? Much like the reality of the racing industry, the human cost and sorrow is what is most important. The viewer may clearly recognise the human skull, though what it is affixed to is of little consequence. The fear is gone, the pain is gone, the hope for freedom is gone, the possibility of love is gone.

Gaia Starace The square and the circle: a space of playfulness contemplation, 2019 Mix Media (oil paint, pigment and diamond dust) on canvas, 150 x 150 cm; Wooden stool 450 cm L x 350 cm W x 450 cm H; Vinyl material-hopscotch; Sydney Conservatorium of Music Cello musician, Joanne Hwang for the opening night on 9th August 2019 6-8pm.

Comber Street Studios The child is entering a sacred space. The music activates the experience‌He plays at first, hopping, and then he sits to contemplate the greatness of the unknown & sense of wonder.

As a multi-disciplinary artist I focus on site specific installations: drawing from my classical education in Architecture, my Italian cultural upbringing and my interest in Eastern philosophies, I explore the spiritual, physical and emotional connections between humanity and nature. Within a visionary and playfulness framework I aim to re-discover the one’s inner child inviting the audience participation through a physical & emotional experience.

The installation entitles one gallery space, one mixmedia artwork, one stool, one roman-style hopscotch game and one sound (cello) combined as a whole.

With the allusive reference to the geometry of the Pantheon, the circle and the square are dismantled, revisited and integrated within the installation. Hopping through history-the hopscotch historical game-the audience then sit down contemplating the mix-media monochromatic canvas.

The opening night live music performance-the cellosuggests unlocking a deeper level of magical phenomena: perhaps assisting the transcendence of oneself through time and space? www.gaiastarace.com @gaia.starace

Tuan Anh Le Where do I belong?, 2019 Digital Print on Matte Paper (x2) W 59.4 cm x H 42 cm Comber Street Studios

Where do I belong? (2019) is Tuan Anh’s emotional perspective on how he has been put himself in the most difficult position possible. There are two different emotional perspectives: External and Internal. External is his strong feeling about being struggled and controlled by unknown force that harass his life – or more importantly: his fate. Putting himself in the land of unknown and passively influences by surrounding environment and cultural aspects, his undecisive nature and dilemma leads to endless mazes with unknown outcomes when he set foot on Australia.

Internal represents his willingness and determination of freeing from cursing fate. He always wants to escape, but unable to commit such action due to his passive nature. He tries to prove himself no one can control his fate but him, however he must force himself to take control despite many hardships and suffering he is taking.

Where do I belong? (2019) features two separate printed digital artworks that represent both External and Internal. There will be an interactive mechanism on two picture frames. These are able to flip open and close as External faces to audience as a cover and Internal hides behind and also faces the front if discovered. The whole action would let audiences play as a “puppeteer” on a subject who determines to restrain from being controlled.

Tempe Macgowan Gloomy Place, 2019 Pencil, photocopies, collage, trace Dimensions Variable Comber Street Studios Photographer credit: Mike Buick The work is a is a large-scale collage/mixed-media which is an appropriation of Flemish Renaissance artist, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s, The Gloomy Place, 1565.

Bruegel’s work is one of a series of six commissioned works which represents life. Breugel’s, The Gloomy Place depicts humanity’s relationship with nature, faithfully to his context. By appropriating his work, I hope to reframe and depict the complexity of human interaction with nature.

The intention for this project is to immerse viewers in a contemporary landscape that recalls the composition and symbolism in Bruegel’s work. There are religious and moral symbols in Breugel’s work and the portent of bad weather looming. In my work, I have attempted to incorporate equivalent and parallel scenes from our society, to show how despite humanity’s degradation of nature, nature will always dominate humanity. Jacques Derrida’s essay, Positions, has been a theoretical source for the work for his discussion about the binary tensions.

My art-making is concerned with experimentation to represent the features of the urban environment.

Through the intellectual and physical mark-making process of drawing and other media, I interrogate a place to reveal different relationships and features. This is done in a very physical way by layering, stratifying, accretion, discretion, gestural marking with pencil, collage, paint, oil, tearing, taping and crumpling to recreate a feeling of place which is conjured within Bruegel’s work.

Sindhu Bharathi

The Appalam project focuses on creating an environment of nostalgia through visual and audio stimuli. It incorporates the technique of screen printing to convert poppadums into a vehicle for the narration of a folktale.

The Appalam project, 2019

The table runner setup is further reinforced with the inclusion of a soundtrack that narrates a much-loved folktale from my childhood. This fable is an episode from the famed ‘Tenali Raman’ stories of South India, one that is familiar in all our households. Although screen-printed poppadums are common in India, it was a challenge to replicate the process at a small-scale without involving industrial machinery. This installation informs the audience about my identity, memories as well as its placement in society, even so as to be considered a work in the relational aesthetics genre.

Poppadums, craft wire, birds netting, screen printing ink 60 cm x 150 cm The Black Box, UNSW Art & Design

@sibuarts

I am an Indian born artist, trained as a classical painter and exploring traditional & modern visual media. Having divided my childhood between the cities of Dubai and Chennai, my art questions the concept of home and identity, provoking questions of finding oneself, with my self-identity being the center of it. In the future, I aspire to create works of art that emulate an environment of home through combinations of visual, sound and probably even tactile media.

Salome Y. L. LI “Still clouds” – a living skyscapes at present, 2019 Paper, water colours, ink, pencil, cotton/fibre and plastic Dimension variable Comber Street Studios

The idea of Li is imaging or reimaging of the nature of clouds and represent them in form of visual art.

Li concepts as Richard Tuttle said: “Artists they’re from nature, they come out of nature, they’re like the clouds that just happen”. It is a self-experience in study of differential space: (nature space-private spaceinternal space) though the contact of clouds with personal environment. Li’s intention is a process of own experiment of heart drawing of daily life.

The study of the work is performing a narrative of legacy of everyday art. By looking up, harmonizing one’s surroundings naturally connects as one.

Li’s sincerely thanks to all, which offering her a chance to work with the “Still Clouds” journey.

Kate Dunn

Kate Dunn is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores class and identity in contemporary Australian society through sculpture, painting and costume making.

Dreamhouse, 2019

In this latest body of work, Dunn reflects on the mining boom through miniature making and diorama, exploring class identity, social mobility, and ‘cashed up bogans’.

Cardboard, assorted fabrics, balsa wood Dimensions variable Woodburn Creatives

@moonfurhat

Dunn’s work will be exhibited as part of the Persona exhibition with Shamanthi Rajasingham at Woodburn Creatives in Redfern from August 22-25.

Rabia Khan Body on Display, 2019 Slip dipped cloth 3’ x 7’ Gaffa Gallery

My artwork stems from a roller coaster of all different kinds of emotions that originated when I went through a traumatic experience of sexual abuse as a child. The work is a series of clothes dipped in clay slip, varying in different sizes, depicting cloths as an armor for my body that I feel is on display all the time. Working with clay is a therapeutic process for me because I get the opportunity to involve myself in the process, thus enabling me to mold the material in any way I want and leaving the natural folds depicting imperfections in my everyday life.

The display of the artwork is kept as close to the natural process of someone taking their clothes off and either hanging them or leaving them on the floor.

The feeling of presence of the body in those clothes is what I want to recreate in my work and my audience to feel when they enter the space. The inspiration for my work comes from Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut Piece’, in which the artist uses clothes to protect her body and asks the audience to cut pieces of her clothing exposing parts of her, leaving her body to be on display.

@rabiajkhan123

RuoLan Yang Memory, 2019 Archival print on glossy paper 42 x 29.7 cm Gaffa Gallery

@ruo1anyang

Nowadays, people would feel lonely, upset and nervous because of the great pressure from studying, working or the relationship with others. Some of them are painful and finally even choose to suicide. My work is a series of photo about identity. I find the people who are under pressure and have a conversation with them. I ask them to share a great memory or a dream that did not come true in the past. Then I help them to reappear the beautiful memory or realize the dream in order to make them relax and happy.

Every two photos will be a pair to show the emotions about that memory, one is the scene about the memory, another is the words about the emotion.

Brian To (Tsz To) A view to the past, 2019 Ink drawing, water colour Dimensions variable Comber Street Studios

I am an art student from Hong Kong, always dreaming of go back to the 90s of Hong Kong because from What I learn I feel that is the best time I want go back.

My work is about how I see back to the 90s, since I can’t go back in time, so I draw those photos to reflect my expression. Total 50 drawing on A5 with style near how a boy draw would. Every drawing base on different photos from 1990s HK, When working on the project, somehow I feel I am go back to past as a visitor, feeling how much different as what Hong Kong become now, that make me want go back even more but I know I was just hoping and dreaming.

Design: Mari Uchida Print: Darkstar Digital With Special Thanks To: Professor Ian Howard