SITE EIGHT / 4 to 14 August 2009
Crème is a selection of work from undergraduates enrolled in the School of Art painting and media-arts programs.
It aims to reinforce links between the two institutions and to give students an opportunity to communicate with each other about what it means to be a Fine Art student in very different locations.
CRÈME
Drawn from the painting and media-arts disciplines, Crème showcases a taste of the talent that can be found within the School of Art undergraduate program.
Comprised of moving image and installation, painting students Raphael Buttonshaw, Karri Cameron, Jade Piltz and media-artist Gerard Russo explore the spatial relations between objects while media-artist Tanya Ungeri explores social anxieties.
Thanks to the artists, Helen Walpole, Ceri Hann, School of Art Galleries interns; Anna Willoughby and Grace Herbert, Steven Godden, Dominic Redfern and Rhett D'Costa.
Stephen Gallagher, 2009
Curator
KARRI CAMERON
My practice explores painting extending into sculpture and installation whilst investigating forms that suggest social unrest.
I make reference to particular forms and materials found in camping grounds, community gardens, protests, ancient ruin sites juxtaposed with urban street culture such as hoodies and shoelaces. Debris of future activities is an installation of sculptures that suggest wrapped up tents, flags and banners. I'm interested in these materials and forms as they relate to such activities as protest and also as a way to identify social groups throughout history and contemporary society. The work is a reflection on the idea of social unrest and urban hostility in the form of sculptures that are assembled by using both manufactured and recycled material.
RAPHAEL BUTTONSHAW
Flable supports my current investigation into what we conceive as 'Painting' and how its conception can be extended through different mediums other than paint. My concern is to explore a paradox where the work reveals itself but questions its value at the same time. The work also invests its foundation in the using or borrowing from the traditions in 'Painting', particularly the canon of abstraction. I am also interested in connecting a relationship between the space of the object and the wall. This results in the object becoming less of a precious idea and more of an event that can be experienced by the viewer.
JADE PILTZ
My installations explore the relationship between space and the viewer. I examine the sculptural relationships of materiality, shape and colour the use of discarded objects from my environment. I am interested in these objects for their formal qualities, familiarity and their place in everyday life. Whilst maintaining a strong reference to painting, by exploring formal elements such as colour and line I take these objects out of their original context and examine their physicality in space as sculptural forms.
The works presented here were made in 2008 and form part of a body of work in which I investigate the ornamental quality of domestic objects. Introducing modern materials such as plasticine and faux fur, I present these objects in a new aesthetic context, obscuring their original purpose.
GERARD RUSSO
Power Lines is the most recent of a series of works that is intended to explore the passing of events within a particular environment. The effort to achieve this is by capturing the 360° view of the desired space and performing the chosen actions within it. With each work of the series computer manipulation is limited to a bare minimum and all imagery is created in-camera.
TANYA UNGERI
The fear that we may never achieve what we want or what others expect of us, or that we may lose what we struggle to hold on to, is often a relentless reminder that we are exposed and vulnerable. No matter how much we barricade ourselves in with implacable charades and counterfeit truths, the walls eventually fall down. My work incorporates a wide range of contemporary, cross-genre media arts practices to examine these personal and collective anxieties within the social, commercial and political environments that we inherit, create, expose and impose on one another.
Experimenting with appropriated video footage, performance and dynamic rapid-cut video editing techniques, Michael Jackson's 1982 music video Thriller (and several amateur imitations of it) provide the backdrop for my latest video art project. Infused with a sense of humour and make-believe, Thrillah is a hypnotic yet dislocated observation of our media-saturated obsession with the pop star 'phenomenon', distorting and interrupting our individual transmissions and personal narratives.
Does it Hurt Yet? employs performance and post production technologies to examine the internalised threat within. The uncompromising standards we set for and against ourselves: all in the name of self-perfection.