Selected works from RMIT Culture collections and International Collections

Sidney Nolan, First Class Marksman, 1978-79

It’s the eyes that always get me with this one—like goggly eyes you get from the craft store, suspended in mid-air in his Ned Kelly headgear. I love the feeling of the bushland behind Ned, the chaos and beauty of its shapes and colours, it takes me home to the red dirt driveway on our farm, and the feeling of living in the bush and being surrounded by its mysteries every day.

Sidney Nolan

First Class Marksman, 1978-79

Screenprint on velin arches 300 gsm paper

18/75

48 x 63.5 cm (image)

Purchased by the Preston Institute of Technology, 1980 Phillip Institute Collection: RMIT University Art Collection

Sue Robey, Splay, 2010

Every time I look at this creature, I want to know more about it. I love trying to imagine how it might move; scampering with the uncoordinated energy of a puppy, or maybe the easy confidence of a centipede. Sometimes it reminds me of an old bonnet style pram that escaped it’s children, other times I see a garbage truck dressed up for a cocktail party. I love art that inspires its audience to go home and make art for themselves, and this makes me want to gather all the nick-nacks in my house and test out their strange creature potential.

Sue Robey

Splay, 2010

Ceramic and paperclay

15 x 20 x 13 cm

Donated by the Bluestone Collection, 2019 Bluestone Collection: RMIT University Art Collection

Janina Green, Untitled, 1989

The gentleness in the way Janina Green thinks about art, and how she makes her work, inspires me. There’s a darkness and dreaminess in this image that’s hard to pinpoint. Sometimes it’s the shapes and curves that I find fascinating; how they bounce back and forth between the bodies and the buildings. Other times it makes me think about different kinds of daily grinds, different pressures on our time and our bodies, and about women’s bodies as human factories (to serve other humans, to make new humans). I love that I can find a different story in this image every time I look at it.

Janina Green Untitled, 1989 Silver gelatin photograph 75.7 x 213.2 cm (Image)

Purchased by the Phillip Institute of Technology, 1992 Phillip Institute Collection: RMIT University Art Collection

Works by Jean Baulch

01

Untitled

I’ve become closely acquainted with the streets around my house this year, exploring the alleyways and their creatures, and finding they are as surreal as the feeling of our lockdown. The grainy texture of black and white film leads us to read photographs in certain ways; they take on a timeless feeling, and a feeling of the distant past, and I like playing with that as an undercurrent in my images.

The Rivers

This is part of an ongoing series, where I find old disposable cameras in op shops that have been used but discarded without developing the film. I take out the films and reshoot them with images from my own life, without knowing what memories are already there. Unconnected timelines get entangled on the emulsion, ghosts appearing in each other’s lives. In this image there is girl canoeing on a river, while my kayak glides along another river, different waters from different moments in time overlapping, the odds of it feel to strange to be real.

03

Orbit

A celestial event in an ordinary place—shadows of moons on the prowl, a solar eclipse, an orbit. I’d never observed my backyard as closely as I have this year, and never been more grateful to have one. It can feel like a space where only the ordinary and the everyday can happen, but tinker with time, and dig up that childhood thrill of dress-ups, and the trees and leaves can be a cosmos, and the light in the backyard more curious.

Andrew Briganti

Andrew Briganti (b. Australia 1988), currently lives and works in Australia. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts at Central European University, (Budapest 2006) and Bachelor of Science at Bocconi University, (Milan 2009), Briganti undertook Post–graduate studies at the Copenhagen Business School (Copenhagen 2010 – 2012). He currently studies a Certificate IV in Design in via remote learning at RMIT (Melbourne 2020).