30th Oct – 6th Dec 2020
Online
In a year beset by challenges, students from North East Victoria have continued to produce high quality works representative of a range of media and topics. While Benalla Art Gallery has been unable to stage the annual exhibition planned for the Bennett Gallery, we have moved online to celebrate the abilities and diverse concerns of our region’s final year, VCE Studio Arts students.
This annual exhibition recognises the creativity and diverse talents of young and emerging artists within our community, and we invite you to explore the work of our latest creative generation below:
Artists
Grace ARNEY
Galen Catholic College Wangaratta
Hills of Growth
acrylic and embroidery floss
61.0 x 50.5 cm
Artist Statement: “My piece represents growth. The figure is the most prominent aspect of this artwork as for me she symbolises our personal growth as humans and how each person is growing to their own personal standards. In society today, many people face the issue of not being ‘good enough’; constantly comparing themselves to one another. As someone who sees peers go through this on a daily basis, this saddened me. I wanted to create awareness of this issue. For me the hills represent layers/levels of growth. The top one being super confident in yourself. I placed the figure where I thought I would fit. Somewhere in the middle but closer to the bottom as it is a constant everyday struggle for me. I know I have grown and become more confident in the last few years and I needed to acknowledge that. Being relatable to an audience was my objective for this work and I think that was definitely achievable with this artwork.”
Sampson
acrylic, wire, soil, embroidery floss, leaves
61.0 x 50.5 cm
Artist Statement: “This piece is a personal artwork to me as it is a capture of time of my horse Sampson. I used a photograph that a photographer took of him and I at the start of the year. I enlarged it and used the whole photograph as a reference for the colors and the materials that I incorporated. As a personal artwork I wanted to capture the emotion as much as possible for anyone to understand the partnership and bond between horse and rider. Sampson being the emphasis of the artwork creates that happy and motivating feeling. With the trees, wire fence and dirt I wanted to incorporate those materials to make it natural to capture that raw emotion that I desired to capture.”
Leyla BEHRENDT
Galen Catholic College Wangaratta
Untitled
digital artwork
Artist Statement: “I focused on creativity and the imagination, originally starting off with the more general concept of the mind. Because I use my imagination often I thought that it would be fitting to use it as a theme but also more interesting. Creativity doesn’t really involve thinking but rather doing. Once you start doing something the rest comes after which is what I did for this theme. I just drew and eventually I worked out the designs, colour and composition in the final piece. The process was essentially a stream of thought that came out as an artwork.”
Zoe BURKE
FCJ College
Dreams
acrylic on board
70 x 120 cm
Artist Statement: “Since [I was] a young child, I have immersed myself in drawing and painting. This has allowed me to feel a sense of calm and peace when I am overwhelmed; drawing and painting is my distraction. This year I explored the mind and my dreams. The subject matter of my acrylic painting is a manipulated version of a dream I have experienced. The masks were placed on the seats to give them a human-like figure.”
Sara COPE
Galen Catholic College Wangaratta
Layered Landscape 1
reduction linoprint
53 x 88 cm
Layered Landscape 2
collagraph print
67.5 x 88 cm
Artist Statement: “My concept of Layers represents the layering of materials, colours, and different shapes in my art. Layers also represent our identity and I think that the layers of my artworks are made up of my art style, experience of growing up on a farm and my personality. Conceptually, the natural environment around me was crucial to the development of my final artworks. Personally, I gathered inspiration and subject matter from landscapes on my farm and the surrounding roads.”
“My artwork Layered Landscape 1 highlights the layers through the reduction printmaking process by layering simple, well-defined colours and shapes of a fluid panoramic landscape. This landscape was inspired by the subject matter of the dam and surrounding tree line on my farm.”
“My second artwork Layered landscape 2 also highlights layers through the construction of the collagraph block that was used to print a set of three colourful prints in a triptych. All three prints demonstrate different variations of the triangular shapes through different layers, different orientations and variations in the amount of detail. This artwork was inspired by the texture and shapes seen in the corrugations of a gravel road.”
Lukas EVANS
Galen Catholic College Wangaratta
Iso Table
timber
Artist Statement: “The end user is moving into a new home and requires a coffee table for his living room. The coffee table will be surrounded by couches and sofas so the end user and his friends can have a good time. He also has a lot of clutter and requires a place to store items.”
Makayla MURPHY
FCJ College
Through the Eyes of a Person with a Human Indifference
oil pastels, charcoal on paper
Three sheets, 59.4 x 84.1 cm each
Artist Statement: “The focus and subject matter of my artwork is my brother; through portraiture and a figurative piece, I explored facial expressions and perceptions of how my younger brother may be feeling. The positions of the artworks were placed in a way that would make the viewers relate to the figure’s feelings. My work conveys a feeling of being overwhelmed by something and trying to hide it. I resolved these artworks by focusing on my brother’s dyslexia, emotional wellbeing and effects of mental illness.”
“Further refinements made to final artwork were through a change in background and the colour scheme so that the works could work together as a series, and by changing the subject matter to one person for the series of work, making it more personal by getting the influence of that person’s ideas of the works.”
Hannah NISH
Galen Catholic College Wangaratta
Emotion
oil on canvas
61.0 x 51.0 cm
Artist Statement: “Emotion expresses the concepts of emotion and identity, through the use of multiple colours to represent different feelings that compose us as human beings. I have used my own figure in the piece to represent personal struggles with self-identity experienced in my life. The work has been created by layered thick oil paint and using brushes and a palette knife. The face of the figure looks calm and friendly, however, this is like a mask that hides the confusion and hardship that is being faced. I want my piece to evoke the personal experiences of my viewer with their own identity through the use of colour.”
Reflection
mounted digital photograph
61.0 x 51.0 cm
Artist Statement: “Reflection depicts the mirror image of myself through the use of an old mirror. The meaning behind this work is the issue based on the social expectations of women in society, creating pressure and the need for conformity, representing my personal struggle. The white clothing represents the innocence of the figure, having limited control of society’s ideals that she is expected to conform to. The imperfections of the mirror represent beauty without the need for perfection. In the piece, I wanted my viewer to feel strongly impacted by the gaze of the figure, and how they have been personally affected by social expectations.”
Maggie POWELL
FCJ College
Contained Creatures
wire, foil, sculpey, acrylic paint, posca markers
3 sculptures – shoe box size
Artist Statement: “The focus of my final artwork was fantasy – imaginative creatures with links to childhood. The final artwork focuses on the uninhibited imagination that we all possess and tries to present these in creature form. The subject matter consists of fantastical animals, creatures, animal inspired creatures and childhood monsters.”
“I used super scupley to create a study sculpture. The surface was finished with acrylic paint and posca markers and fabric to add colour and texture to the creatures.”
“You might notice these creatures are presented in cardboard boxes, which symbolises the childhood infatuation of capturing these creatures as if they are magical possessions. I sanded down the surface of the painted cardboard boxes to give a distressed look and make them look like a child had handled them.”
Pia SALVADORI
FCJ College
Over a Drink
oil on board
70 x 100 cm
Artist Statement: “The intention behind my artwork was to highlight the otherwise overlooked physical aspects of communication that we utilise in our everyday lives. My artwork Over a Drink portrays two people actively conversing over wine at a restaurant. However, the ways in which they are communicating via gestures are isolated against a contrasting white background, suspended at the height of communication.”
“I took the idea of subtracting specific components (that proved to be powerful at communicating) from the sitters and isolating them and applied it to that of a reference containing several expressions of communication. A refinement that was made was depicting methods of communication extracted from an entire scene and arranging them in a composition that allows for each to stand out, becoming the focus of the painting.”
“The intended aesthetic quality I wanted to create as outlined in my exploration proposal was a sense of mutual joy. I believe through the vibrancy of the colour within the faces I have been able to portray a lightness and sense of mutual joy. The warmer colours present also give the painting a sense of warm ambiance and atmosphere, ultimately conveying a lovely interaction between two people, highlighting the positive emotions that come with something as domestic and mundane as chatting over a drink.”
“There are also areas deliberately left unblended where you can see the distinct mark making. These unblended areas in turn create a sense of liveliness, giving an energy to the painting, further adding to the ambience of the scene.”
Taryn SCHULZ
FCJ College
Untitled
digital film clips, sound, plant and wire cage sculpture
Size variable
Artist Statement: “The final artwork focuses on the theme of environmental crisis and the subject matter resolved within my final artwork are native plants, pollution, devastation of environment and protests. I recorded my own film but incorporated stock videos sourced online. I refined my artwork by sourcing stronger materials such as reused weed mat. I also chose to use native plants to help me to better realise my concept as they are from our country and this helps relate my theme back to our community. I also chose not to incorporate separate pieces of plastic as I decided the film with a pristine cube of plants created my desired effect of contrast. I refined the film by doing a number of things in the editing process such as changing the speed of the clips, changing the colour, incorporating sourced sounds and films from online and clipping and lengthening the separate clips.”
“For the film I compiled both original and stock film clips and free audio tracks from online sources and adding them into an iMovie project. Editing the project was done using clipping, changing speeds, duplicating tracks, adjusting film colour, overlaying audio to achieve the desired aesthetic quality of ‘chaos’ and ‘questioning’.”
“Part of my final artwork was a sculpture piece made from live plants that had been planted into cube shaped cages. This helped me to portray my feeling of anxiety for nature and the way it is controlled and contained in the face of development. The plant in the cage can grow and extend beyond the cage through the gaps, however, they are not free and cannot reach their full potential. They are resilient however seem tortured by the introduced landscape that controls them.”
“The contained plant sculpture represents the idea of natural life being contained or held back. The form shows a fighting contrast between the natural and unnatural objects in the piece. The materials used for the sculpture includes reused weed mat and frost cloth, found zip ties, native plants, found wire squares and a soil mix.”
Julia VIDLER
FCJ College
Travelling Spirits
scraperboard
100 x 100 cm
Artist Statement: “The artwork depicts spirits of the dead traveling into the next stage of life/afterlife. This year in Studio Art I explored my belief in spirits of the dead. I developed the composition to create a vortex. I made the ghosts different sizes to create perspective and movement.”
“Rather than having many of the same ghost I individualised their shapes and personalised them throughout the work. The scraperboard medium allowed me to improvise my drawing making the line work clean, crisp and intentional. This gives the work a fun and playful aesthetic rather than a dark foreboding one we would normally associate with afterlife.”
