'Does My Art Look Big In This?' B. Digital Media (Fine Art) 2011, Qld College of Art, Gold Coast

Queensland College of Art Gold Coast Fine Art Catalogue 2011

Dr Ashley Whamond Lecturer in Art Theory / Fine art Queensland College of Art Griffith University

It is a common experience, agonising over which frock, shirt or shoes to wear on an important occasion, be it a first date, job interview or night on the town. This experience is not dissimilar to that facing this year’s graduating fine art students from Queensland College of Art, Gold Coast. Stepping out into the art world for the first time is a daunting experience, full of the same kind of self-conscious apprehension. Their artworks are their brand new frocks and they all want to look their best.

As humorous as this analogy is, this is an element of truth in the idea that the work of art could be, for the artist, something like the clothes we wear. It is an outward expression of our inner experiences and thoughts about the world we live in.

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Does My Art Look Big in This?

Similarly, in the same way that clothes are visual statements about ourselves evolving from both conscious and unconscious decisions, works of art too, communicate in a nonverbal manner. The nature of this communication is also the result of a combination of deliberate and intuitive impulses.

Because of the personal and intuitive nature of this kind of work, it takes some level of bravery to allow it to be seen

in a public space, especially for graduating students. But it is the experiences that works of art provide that are so important in contemporary society, as visual media has become our main source of information and also communication. The ability of art to intersect this visual field with creative expressions and interpretations is essential to our capacity for maintaining our sense of agency in a visually mediated world.

This is the responsibility that these graduating students now acquire as they move into the world of professional arts practice. And with the opportunity provided by the Gold Coast City Art Gallery to show their work in a professional context, they also gain the perspective that what they are presenting has a much wider reach and deeper resonance than any special frock or pair of shoes.

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Academic Staff

Megan Harrison

Professional Staff

Richard Blundell

Kylie Hicks

Anne-Maree Garcia

Earle Bridger

Denica Layton

Lyn Hockey

Daniel Della-Bosca

Aaron Lutze

Trudy Jensen

Dominique Falla

Virgina Miller

Tasha Kershaw

Heather Falkner

Amanda O'Sullivan

Vince McKillop

Donal Fitzpatrick

Nasan Pather

Brad Nunn

Jon Harris

Sonya Peters

Sharon Searle

Donna Marcus

Tim Rankin

Kade Sproule

Dale Patterson

Kelly Tierney

Casey Stewart

Robyn Peacock-Smith

James Ugarte

Jason Urech

Jack Picone

Margaret Waller

Bruce Reynolds

Lani Weedon

Ashley Whamond

Carol Whittaker Tamara Whyte

Sessional Staff Hadieh Afshani Michael Barr Kaya Barry Bruce Blundell

Francis Wild

QCA Gold Coast Bachelor of Visual Media Fine Art Graduates

Ashleigh Brennan Sean Costain Chris Croll

Catalogue Design Ashlyn McEldowney

Graduating Students

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Caitlyn Coupe e caitlyncoupe@gmail.com w www.caitlyncoupe.com In conventional artistic imagery, animals are traditionally portrayed as majestic or regal.

However, farm animals are rarely represented as anything other than a docile product. ‘Living Room’ recontextualises farm animals into the human family context in an attempt to suggest that animals may also engage in meaningful relationships similar to humans.

I have used everyday domestic objects to form a familiar household space in order to subvert common hierarchical understandings of the difference between humans and animals in regard to the concept of family.

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'Living Room' 2011

Sebastian Florido e sflorido@me.com w www.thosevaguedays.com We all live in a consumerist culture, whether you are in a small town or big city. For me surfing is more than just a sport or a way to sell, is about you and the ocean, being a soul surfer.

It might sound cheesy but that is a term that has been lost over the last ten years. My work has evolved around this dilemma. While my images show my passion and reasons for surfing, by playing my own music I further display the idea of doing things just for yourself and for the love of it.

The mix of non-professional surf footage and the amateur music that I play is a connection that connotes my desire for a non-consumerist surf and music culture.

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'Guess it’s ok because you’re taken away by whatever you think is true' 2011

Yolanda Grace e yolandagrace15@gmail.com w www.yolandagrace.com My work is centred around decay and aging, which is a reflection of my own mortality and healing my issues with the aging process.

I chose to work with faces, as they are usually the first things we look at when we see each other. I started with a pure white, unmarked face, which then led to the fragmented and deteriorated face. The decayed and broken face, looking dirty and discarded, is highly textured, and perfect for a material like fibreglass. There is much media and social pressure nowadays which implies that to look good, you must look young, fresh and fit. I wanted to show the aging skull with a sensuous, touchable material like marble, as it creates quite a juxtaposition.

The colours, white and tones of white, project purity, cleanliness, and neutrality. White also evokes purification of thoughts or actions
 and enables fresh beginnings.

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'Sadness In Venus' 2011

Larisa Lategan e larisalategan@gmail.com w www.larisalategan.com My work and images reflect on the drawing activities I enjoyed as a child and psychological aspects associated with trying to understand myself. I’m highly influenced by the drawing techniques and exercises I learnt growing up and how that has translated into the work I now create.

The basis of all these works is in the way I was taught to draw fireworks. But instead of using the colour crayons of my childhood, the stitched and drawn lines, repeated on an obsessive scale, create new works of highly laborious mark making.

By exploring the act of creating pattern through repeating a simple mark like the humble line, these resulting works on paper deal with my sensitive and obsessive approach to making art. I am obsessed with the repetition of this material and this process, a compulsion that has become a meditative means of comprehending why I do what I do.

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'Thinking About Why I Think The Way I Do' Series 2011

Sylvia Luciani e luci.sylvia@gmail.com w www.sylvialuciani.tumblr.com The video is personified in a character named The Collector. He is the one and only, convenient and accessible creature feeling delighted to keep possession of my belongings. As an antithesis to lucidness, collecting makes thoughts colourfully black instead of brightly white.

The Collector compiles objects, emotions, people and places, which when left, contribute to emotional sensitivity. It gathers all these things and compresses them in a way that all you will be able to see is black. More than that, it will give you a sense of being released from captivity by preserving the absence of duality and the net that drags behind picking up feelings.

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'The Collector' 2011 Duration: 6:18

Ashlyn McEldowney e ashlynmceldowney@hotmail.com w www.ashlynmceldowney.com I am a New Zealand born Australian, and I have lived on the Gold Coast for 14 years. I primarily work in 2d with acrylic paint, charcoal and watercolour pencil.

My work often speaks about societal norms and convention which frustrate me, commenting in a playful way in order to guide the audience to rethink the norm.

Using technical skill as bait, I aim to split the audience's reaction between repulsion and sympathy.

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'Holybirds' 2011

Amber Papenfus e amber.p@live.com.au w www.amberpapenfus.com My work explores and questions one’s idea of place and memory and the vitality of past experiences. Inspired by memories and experiences from my childhood as a young girl living in South Africa. The subsequent happening of living in a third world country has allowed me to engage more narrowly with social and political concerns generally and on a deeper personal level.

These works stand as tangible reconstructions of myself, shaped through a personal evaluation of the past from a present perspective As an evolving body of work, objects of memory and infancy are continually woven into a structure, home, history and transformation.

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'Playhouse' 2011

Deb Robinson e debra.hummingbird@gmail.com w www.debrarobinson.com.au The Kunstschranke of the 17th century was a device that evolved as a smaller, more personal version of Wunderkammer - a cabinet of curiosities. Designed as items of furniture, rather than whole room settings (as true Wunderkammer usually were), these cabinets reflected the collector's entire experience of the world in miniature. All manner of the exotic and the marvellous would be collected together in an eclectic mix that functioned as an early model archive in a rapidly expanding world.

In the 21st century, this device enables me to draw my focus back in again. At a time when our collective knowledge of the world is wider and deeper than ever before, it is easy to find our gaze reaching so far away that we can miss the marvellous in what is literal. I wonder at the exotic nature of my new environment.

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'At Your Feet: (Kunstschranke)' 2011

Jodie Wallace e jodestar1980@hotmail.com w www.insubordinart.blogspot.com p 0414653061 I would describe myself as a fine artist with designer sensibilities. My real passion is for 3 dimensional design, which I use in installation, sculpture, public art and to compliment performance art.

I work with domestic interior objects such as walls, doors, and windows exploring the boundaries that these objects provide and pushing the limits as to how they are, and can be used.

Having just concluded my domestic abuse series inspired by my childhood, I am now heading into a new phase which has evolved from my initial studies of ‘Tensegrity’, a structural principle based on the use of isolated components in compression inside a net of continuous tension.

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Although this work has developed beyond tensegrity alone, it also draws on aspects of cubism and surrealism.

This work is full of analogies and analytic meaning that comes with the use of doors, but it also stands alone as a purely aesthetic piece.

'Same Day Different Shit 2' 2011

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Steven Twyford e wickhamspride@gmail.com My project is an engagement with the following - appropriation, relationships between the true and false copies, abstraction, systems of representation, and explorations of painting at the point at which representation breaks down.

My art practice as an open and extended field or space where the traditional individuated mediums are dissolved and reconstitute as hybridity.

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'Untitled' 2011

Catharina Van der Walt

e catharina.vanderwalt@gmail.com

My project "The Master and the Puppets" aims to investigate the manifestation of an identity of a master: an ideology, governance or religion, that at the most basic level is created and condemned by its slaves, worshippers and followers. Every society, family, nation and religion has been divided to some degree into those who govern and those who are governed: the Ruler and the Servants; the Master and the Puppets.

In the contemporary world, we are continually confronted with these characters. Dictators impose military rule over nations. Religious leaders command believers. The media directs the thinking of society, and ultimately individuals are governed by their own perceptions of the media.

These notions leave us to question our role in the powerplay that is the modern world.

Are we the masters of our own identity? Or are we mere puppets, governed and directed by our governments, media narratives, societal leaders and our peers? My sculptural work utilizes found objects, painting and multimedia to challenge the essence of these biases and twisted narratives.

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‘Master And The Puppets’ 2011

Thank you QCA Many thanks to our Academic staff Daniel Della-Bosca, Kylie Hicks, Donna Marcus, Sonya Peters, Bruce Reynolds and Ashley Whamond.

An extra thank you to Jon Harris for your assistance.

Many thanks to our Technical support staff Anne-Maree Garcia, Vince McKillop, Brad Nunn, Kade Sproule, Jason Urech.

Special thanks to Stephen Baxter, Pip Lean, Virginia Rigney, John Welsh and the Arts Centre Gold Coast Staff.