Ambitious installations and unique artistic pieces from ten of La Trobe’s hardworking Visual Arts and Education (Secondary) students were unveiled on Friday 17 November 2023 at the launch of the In a Tangle exhibition at the Phyllis Palmer Gallery on our Bendigo campus.
The works investigate pertinent contemporary political and social issues related to identity, ecology, climate crisis, escapist fantasy, precarity, belonging and home.
Dr Kylie Banyard, Senior Lecturer of Visual Arts, said this is an annual highlight for the La Trobe Visual Arts community.
“In a Tangle represents the culmination of years of study and studio time for this group of hardworking students across Bachelor of Creative Arts (Visual Arts major), Honours, and the Bachelor of Education (Secondary),” Dr Banyard said.
Exhibition Highlights
The students’ works demonstrate a range of creative approaches based on independent projects that reflect a diversity of media spanning drawing, photography, painting, video, sculpture, textiles, and ceramics.
Saskia van Pagee Anderson, third-year Bachelor of Creative Arts (Visual Arts) student, has handmade and dyed her textile and ceramic installation titled 'Shimmer'.
“My practice aims to highlight distinctions of informed and uninformed choice, and the grey areas of knowing or not knowing,” Saskia said.
Hannah Harris' work is called Baby Blue and it tries to grapple with the way when babies come into the family home they take up so much space (emotional and physical), hence the gigantic scale.
Katherine Jenkins is an Art Education (Secondary) student who is training to be an art teacher. Her works titled I Can't Draw are animations based on blind contour drawings (when you look at the subject but not down at the page). They depict her sons. She wanted to challenge the idea that not everyone can draw. She hears kids say, "I can’t draw" all the time, but the fact is everyone can draw.
Melody Knight’s work, The Inhabited Dive on View, was awarded the Bendigo Art Gallery outstanding achievement award. Her work address the precarity of being a solo renter in today's cost of living crisis. She addresses the idea of home and security and safety and shines a light on how seemingly unattainable this is for some of us.
Step into Fog by Callum Grierson responds to the immersive spaces we traverse virtually when gaming and questions what might happen if you try to recreate the same atmosphere through analogue techniques such as painting and sculpture.
Acknowledgements
Exhibitions like this require a ton of organisation and energy, especially in the pulling together of all of the ‘stuff’ that goes on behind the scenes. We would like to congratulate all the participating student artists for their dedication to working collectively on all aspects of the exhibition.
Our amazing visual arts technical staff, Justin Andrews and Dr Sarah Newall, have each contributed an incredible amount of support and expertise - thank you both.
To mark this special occasion, Justin Andrews has worked with the students to design and produce a wonderful completely in-house publication (with a hand printed cover) and an additional very special, limited edition, three-colour screen printed poster.
Thank you also to all the visual arts academic staff, whose ongoing support has played its part in enabling these students get to where they are today.
