Middle Row: Amanda, Caragh, Zainab, Simon, Sarah, Cici, Pearl
Standing Back Row: Lilach, Cathy, Ralf, Judy, Rahaf, Martin, Steven, Dom, Nigel, ShangDa, Shaun-Liew
Absent: Jan, Lee, Senye, Rahima, Nicole, Pearl
Caragh Brooks
Martin George
Simon Crosbie
Nicole Evans
Pearl Fearn-Wannan
Rahaf Ghoneim
Lee Goller
Peizhi (Pearl) Han
Zainab Hikmet
Katia Honour
Rahima Jackson
Amanda Laming
Shaun-Joel Liew
Raphaela Mazzone
Chenglin Miao
Lilach Mileikowski
Cathy Muhling
Sarah Randall
Judith Roberts
Ralf Rehak
Xiao (Senye) Shen
Nigel Tan
Jingyi (Cici) Wang
Shangda Ye
Caragh Brooks, 2014
Copic marker on paper
210 x 297mm (A4)
Caragh Brooks
My practice explores self-representation within contemporary western youth culture through autobiographical caricature and acerbic cartoons.
caragh_brooks@hotmail.com
Martin George 2015
Painted steel and pommel horse
3 x 1.5 x 1.3m
Martin George
Martin George is an Australian born artist who investigates the tension between sincerity and irony, often inviting his audience to participate. Martin brings a playful narrative to sculpture in all metals and stone.
info@iammartingeorge.com
Simon Crosbie
My practice uses knitted sculpture and sound performance to explore themes of childhood trauma and memory. These include: victims and perpetrators, institutional environments, authority and powerlessness, care and neglect, affect, disclosure and non-disclosure. Through creating exaggerated and incongruous garments my intention is to invoke powerful symbols and a sense of horror that plays on the idea of abuse as a violation of nurture.
Simon Crosbie 2015
Wool, cotton and polyester
The institutional environments of these transgressions are explored through scored performance and sound works. Using many participants, they are designed to create tension through playing with audience expectation, and stretching compositional elements that are seen and unseen.
At the core of my work is an individual experience of trauma. However the constituent parts and approaches that go into it are equally individual. My use of the recurrent motif of the distorted jumper/sweater, my recourse to specific techniques of machine knitting, and my engagement with processes that cross over into sound and performance are effectively a personal statement of my way of attempting to deal with the past. The end result is a body of work that conveys the horror of abuse and maps a tortuous journey of affect.
isoetes@internode.on.net
Nicole Evans 2015
Oil on board
Two panels, each 80cm x 60cm
Nicole Evans
The idea that feminine identity is constructed or controlled via visual culture is the central concept of this project. Feminist theory as well as psychoanalytic theory informs much of this questioning of feminine identity and the space we inhabit in contemporary society. The resulting art work from this enquiry is a series of portraits appropriated from contemporary popular, Western visual culture.
The images I appropriate exemplify what the media constantly presents as the perfect woman and I find myself paradoxically drawn to these unattainable beauties yet loathing them simultaneously. This tension or bind creates a kind of dichotomy within the psyche and it is this tension that my work aims to highlight.
n_evans@bigpond.com
www.facebook.com/nicoleevansart
Pearl Fearn-Wannan 2015
Ballistic face mask, soft plastic fishing lures and 23 carat yellow gold
43 x 26cm
Pearl Fearn-Wannan
My work is investigating protection from a feminine viewpoint. In its entirety the work is an army of warriors. Each piece functions as a unit designed to guard one element of the individual. There are ten warriors. Each fighter is wearing protective body armour as well as gear specific to the body part they are responsible for. They are deliberately aggressive as their purpose is to stave off attack; only taking action if compelled to.
thepearlofnutfield@hotmail.com
Rahaf Ghoniem 2015
Print 260 x 220cm
Rahaf Ghoneim
This Project explores the effects of war on the children of Syria, specifically those who are fighting on the front lines and are labelled as child soldiers. The project symbolises the mass recruitment, deindividuation and loss of innocence through print, photo manipulation and installation.
Ghoneim.rahaf@gmail.com
Lee Goller 2015
Assemblage: Polystyrene, collaged fabric, paper, wire, laser prints, drawing and objects
100cm x 85cm
Lee Goller
In my work – a series of mixed collage and assemblage – there is a non-literal visual narrative exploring the chaotic and multi-layered richness and confusion of post-modern reality. I have attempted to show the magic and poetry, and the intensity of experience inherent in the awareness that there is no single perspective, but many. These make up a composite narrative which is obscure but fascinating.
Peizhi (Pearl) Han 2015
Watercolour
38 x 38cm
Peizhi (Pearl) Han
This studio based project will focus on feminine identity in contemporary Chinese culture and will explore such issues as censorship, the popularity of the selfie and plastic surgery. All the works will be created using the form of realistic watercolour painting on paper.
tigerpearl0818@gmail.com
Facebook: Pearl Han
Instagram: pearlpearltiger
Zainab Hikmet, 2014
photographic b/w liquid emulsion, primed raw linen, pine.
40cm x 40cm
Zainab Hikmet
Zainab’s practice aims to articulate the fluidity of time through the use of temporal materials. Sculptural art objects are produced using materials undergoing physical transformation – tracing moments in time. She intends to evoke notions such as presence and absence, and a blurring of borders between past and present, in order to expose certain melancholic undertones within her works.
Katia Honour 2015
Oil on Canvas
180 x 112cm
Katia Honour
Katia Honour’s paintings speak of spirituality within contemporary psychedelic counter-culture.
Her use of light, colour and shifting forms express the confused and beautiful hunt for Utopia through spiritual practices involving altered states of consciousness. Each work is an offering of her disorienting, sensorial and sincere experiences obtained through altered states of consciousness during the art making processes.
Katia’s methods and mediums have evolved by abstraction and fusion of past painting styles and their depictions of transcendence and the unseen worlds. Her innovative language speaks to festival counter-culture sensibility through the painterly styles of psychedelia, fantastic realism, romanticism and abstraction. To respectfully receive the influences of Fantastic Realism and Surrealism, Katia supplemented her MFA with an apprenticeship under the esteemed ‘abstract-realist’, Wolfgang Widmoser, who himself was past assistant of Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dali.
Authenticity and respect for traditions is important in her work. To imbibe her work with trance and altered states of consciousness, she created works while residing and following the cultural practices within a Balinese ashram, an indigenous shamanic community and on-site at counter-culture art & music festivals in UK, Austria, Indonesia and Australia.
The depth of her sincere commitment to content and devotional art practices, has lead to Katia being recognised as one of Australia’s foremost “visionary” artists. Her work features at counter-culture festivals and psychedelic symposiums internationally.
katiahonour.com.au
www.facebook.com/KatiaHonourPainter
www.redbubble.com/people/katiahonour
Rahima Jackson 2015
Porcelain 35 x 40 x 25cm
Rahima Jackson
Rahima Jackson’s artwork investigates imagined conscious and subconscious psychological spaces, exploring individual perception in relation to ourselves, others and the external world. She explores these themes through the construction of sculptural ceramic forms. Miniature figures positioned within, activate the spaces inviting contemplation of subjective narratives.
A fictitious separation of ‘mind’ and ‘body’ within the artwork facilitates characterisation of imagined internal conscious states. These manifestations exist as entities contained within unique individual environments; spaces of safety and familiarity, which also inhibit and restrict a contained force. This inhabitation investigates the human desire to be understood and to understand outside of the individual ‘self’, and contemplates the role of perception in the decoding of individual realities.
A sense of ‘whimsy’ removes an overt seriousness from the artwork; narratives utilise objects and actions which resonate with the ‘everyday’, formulating scenes –often light-hearted– which employ a form of metaphorical story telling.
rahimajackson.art@gmail.com
Amanda Laming 2013-15
Jute thread, ink, gesso, MDF board, liquid graphite, shellac, brushwood, wire, PVA and polaroid frames
Amanda Laming
Witnessing Silence is presented as an installation comprising three parts. These include crochet hanging sacks, a wall of handwritten text and a mass of diaristic drawings. This project reflects upon and becomes a process for the collection and manifestation of stories of transference, vulnerability, obsession, and trauma. This project is conceptually located within psychoanalytic thought and contemporary art practice.
Shaun-Joel Liew 2015
Untreated pine, zinc hinges, branches, thread, plywood, synthetic polymer paint, steel wool and vinegar
Shaun-Joel Liew
This project explores both the visual and sensory language of ethereality and notions surrounding energy, and multidimensionalism.
Departing from ancient practices of meditation, mainly from Buddhist, Taoist and Hindu philosophies, I investigate my own spiritual process of (re)connecting with the perceived and conceived Universe. I have adopted a pragmatic coalition of eastern and western spiritual beliefs that have been the grounds of the mathematical and analytical processes of uncovering the universality of nature, cosmos, and the consciousness of being.
The utilisation of geometry points to a unified symbolic language between fundamental structures of nature and the universe, of micro and macrocosmos, acting as an esoteric mediator between dimensional realms. This has further developed into platonic structures to further enact the iconography of creation, expansion and destruction cycles.
The inclusion of natural materials within the body of work seeks to encourage a breakdown of mental boundaries between subject and object, by allowing the materials to ‘purely exist’ in space; postulating thought, consciousness and existence as interconnected and undifferentiated to the internal and external nature of the human experience.
www.facebook.com/shaunjoelliew
Raphaela Mazzone 2015
Copic marker on wall
Raphaela Mazzone
My work uses extended hand-written ‘wordscapes’ created through collaborative Happenings to examine the possibilities, limits and power of language in its role as a mediator between internal and external worlds.
raphaela@themazzone.com
Instagram: raphaelamazzone
Chenglin Miao 2015
photographic print
Chenglin Miao
This project explores ideas of stillness, contemplation and mindfulness. Inspired by Zen aesthetic principles, it utilises light and composition in photographs and video. I approach the process of making art as a kind of meditation which challenges rational thinking as a path to knowing, and engages in a secular search for wholeness and calmness.
ermiao105-6@qq.com
Facebook: Lin Miao
Lilach Mileikowski 2015
Layered ceramic glaze, wire, screen-print application
100 x 124 x 45cm
Lilach Mileikowski
This studio-based project explores protection and fragility as symbolic metaphors for cultural place and belonging. This is facilitated through the use of translucent clay objects reminiscent of protective structures such as shelter and body armour. My practice investigates the spiritual and political concerns of identity through my attachment to the land of Israel by using Hebrew text, fabric texture, and the manipulation of ceramic forms.
www.facebook.com/LilachMileikowskiCeramicArt?ref=hl
Cathy Muhling 2015
Oil on linen
Cathy Muhling
Remembering ……through veils of light and time.
Muhling explores human emotion and the elusiveness of memory using landscape as a metaphor for the psyche. Exploring the atmospheric, and the dissolution of the scape creates beguiling beauty and joy, the pleasure of just being.
Muhling’s relationship to the natural environment precipitates a personal space in the picture plane of sublime and temporaneous connections. Parred back subtle hues of colour glow, amorphous shapes suggest inner presence. Soft transposing spaces and dark velvet glazes tell of the power of reminiscence.
cathy.muhling@optusnet.com.au
Oil on Wood
40cm x 40cm each
Sarah Randall
My body of work acts as a metaphor for the family and speaks collectively to the notion of communion. When the individual plates are brought together, the family comes together; and so these paintings facilitate the integration of both object and person. The unremarkable may secretly harbour the extraordinary, as humble everyday objects provide a way through which we can understand one another… and remember the ones we have lost.
Judith Roberts 2015
video
Judith Roberts
My project centres on process, performative action, repetition and the materiality of clay. Through video documentation I examine the potential of repetitive action to reference labour and continuity.
To create this work I used the framework of ceramics production practice which I disrupted by repeatedly dropping clay forms to the floor. In presenting the project as a video I aim to amplify the moment of deformation thereby foregrounding the material quality of clay. The video form allows for the inclusion of incidental sounds which underscore the action while simultaneously highlighting the time and labour invested. Duplicating the video across a number of monitors, each playing out of phase, further emphasises the persistence of labour and action.
Ralf Rehak 2015
Reclaimed timber, electrical light fittings and recycled plastic strips
137cm x 137cm x 198cm
Ralf Rehak
This studio-based project aims to investigate the relationships between home and impermanence, both in a psychological sense and in relation to discarded building materials.
The works are reconfigurations of scaled architectural forms constructed with minimal or no fixings using recycled wood, straw, doors, fly screens and discarded building materials.
My interest in home has among its sources my real-life loss of home in a fire. This history contributes to my need to explore the concept of home, particularly in relation to memory and impermanence. My experience as an architect has deepened an interest in the relationship between form, materials and space, and developed an acute appreciation and ongoing interest in the value of materials.
Within this project I seek to create imagined spaces within architectural objects to examine how the relationship between form and materials can evoke memory and meaning associated with the house and home.
ralfrehak@gmail.com
Tissue paper printed from plywood
Xiao (Senye) Shen
My current projects involve printmaking as installation and my work explores the invisible forces and energies in nature to create a sense of reverberation. Through invoking motion within stillness and by seizing the rhythm of existence my aim is to create a heightened awareness of visual sensation as a portal to a molecular world that is beyond what is visible, and to open up and reconnect to the notion of the world, of being and of becoming.
Nigel Tan 2015
Sound, video, sculpture
Nigel Tan
My work primarily revolves around a theme that evokes curiosity through a multi sensory environment with the use of various mediums, blending form and texture to build layers within a chaotic structure. I use sound as a basis for my work, creating diverse sonic spectrums through experimentation, intuition and self-discovery.
I am inspired by daily life. From thought and unanswered questions to the simple use of our senses, evaluating and understanding that which is around us. My main body of work delves into experimental and abstract form that explores everyday life through contrasting cultures, space and environments. These sonic spatial structures bring about a holistic awareness that is necessary to provoke thought that in turn brings about a change.
I feel a connection between sound and visuals in an organic way that formulates into a reality that we are all familiar with. This creates an experience that challenges and opposes comfort by discovering something new through the unique process of interpretation. Coming from a film background, I am always seeking new ways to interconnect my ideas through audiovisual experimentation, taking away the usual approach to filmmaking. I want the simplicity of silence and a blank frame to speak the same as a piece of music paired with a narrative.
I feel the importance of creating works that are interactive, though static in appearance, by allowing audiences to participate through simple gestures and create their own unique experience.
Jingyi (Cici) Wang
Mixed media
18cm x 6cm x 10cm
Jingyi (Cici) Wang
The project explores questions of consumption, waste and class(status), by creating collections of photographs and sculptural installations. The work illustrates how consumption and waste are complex issues, involving desire and degrees of happiness. The project also investigates marketing and the influence of advertising, packaging and presentation.
ceciliawang_china@hotmail.com
Instagram ID: cciiiiiiii
Shangda Ye 2015
mixed media
Shangda Ye
In this project I explore ideas of the materiality and movement. Each work represents the relationship of dynamic performance to static installation. My work concentrates on collecting materials from the street and restructuring them in studio space, my intention is to resonate the audience’s experience through visually, auditory and the context.
zeits0219@gmail.com