Year 12 Visual Art

As part of the Year 12 creative journey ends, their works remind us of the power of art to give students a meaningful voice to communicate meaning and interrogate a myriad of issues, both private and public.

Sarah McArthur

You Are What You Eat twists the commonly known saying into a reality, conveying that today’s fast-paced capitalism is consuming us itself. Thus posing the question; is the consumer or the consumed in control? Widely known as a symbol for addictive sweetness, chocolate was utilised. Using this edible material to replicate my hand, the medium used to act upon our impulses, conveys that in our gluttony we can lose our identities and become our addiction. This also reveals that despite what we choose to think, humans are slaves to our own greed.

Estella Sherlock

Teach Me How to Fly is inspired by the notion of emotional baggage and generational trauma. It is represented through layers of transparent fabrics that I encase myself in. Trauma can be hidden or seen visually through behaviour. The healing process that I metaphorically allude to as flight is essential to human wellbeing and growth. These events and the emotional links to them can be passed on through generational trauma that is inherited genetically from parent to child. I chose to display the emotional baggage as clothing. In this image I am encased in ethereal fabrics seeking freedom.

Poppy Roberts Star Gazer

My work explores how both the spatial and temporal world are inextricably linked. I draw comparisons between humanity’s perception of ‘time’ and its evolution through millennia. From when time was measured in the movements of celestial bodies, the blow of a breeze or dappled rays of light, to the metronomic, synthetic beat of contemporary life. Otherworldly time exists in constellations, such as The Pleiades, shining through the dark and into the light. In the end, deep, intimate communions are delivered between the viewer, the primordial land, and the Cosmos – in time both measurable and immeasurable.

Valentina Kostiono Chemical Trees

Chemical Trees is a series of seven images depicting a futuristic world where human and natural worlds have fused together. I explore a probable future where the two binaries have merged due to humankind’s inherent control over nature as part of the flawed human condition. The circular photographs capture small fragments of this fragmented world, leaving the audience to ponder on what else lies beyond the frame. The relationship with humans and nature has historically been one of imbalance where many human activities result in environmental degradation.

Paige Edwards

Mourning Jewellery relates to the loss of my grandmother, and my companions of many years - my horse and dog. As a homage to them I used objects and parts associated with and of them: jewellery, my horse’s hair, and flowers I dried that were given to me on the death of my dog. Inspired by Victorian mourning jewellery I assembled elements of them together into boxes I lined with flesh-coloured fabrics as new jewellery mementos. I combined more flesh-coloured fabric and horsehair into a surface they could be displayed on in a symbolic circle evoking forever remembered.