HSC Visual Arts Exhibition

The conversations that commence at the beginning of Term IV with HSC visual artists are protracted, often convoluted, challenging for both speaker and listener, and rarely result in resolution. These same conversations continue right up to their submission date, some 39 weeks later – a gestation, if you will. There is, of course, a vulnerability associated with setting out on an unclear trajectory with one’s Body of Work with ever-present masters providing critical feedback and judgement. It takes courage to make tough choices that may place one in a position of potential failure, and then continue to move forward overcoming self-doubt, self-trust and fear, to try again, and again and again. As teachers, we understand that discomfort is part of the process, but we appreciate that for our young pupils this is difficult to recognise. We strive to foster an environment within our studios that allows for diverse thinking and differences of opinion; where young voices are heard and affirmed. This can sometimes result in tightwire negotiations, carried out with acute awareness of what happens if our balance is lost.

I am delighted with the success achieved by our 19 HSC candidates this year, who have produced a diverse range of works, all driven by them. As teachers it is perennially fulfilling to help instigate an idea, introduce artists who may be influential to said idea, and for the pupil to then use it as a starting point to completely make it ‘his own’. I know I speak on behalf of all my colleagues when I cite the joy associated with this; it is genuinely remarkable to witness.

With that said, the journey to the completion of a Body of Work is never easy when juggling all other Grammar commitments. To cheekily make an epigram attributed to American jazz trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong my own, I can best summarise the pinch points of the course as follows: “If you don’t practice for one day, you know it; if you don’t practice for two days, we know it; for three days, the whole studio knows it!”. In no particular order, allow me to present the fabulous Class of 2023:

Vincent Bui

Vincent Bui worked with graphite on paper to honour his recently deceased grandfather. It was touching to watch him carefully reveal two portraits that gently and carefully grew out of his mark-making, clearly imbued with love for a cherished man. Vincent’s A Tribute to Phan allowed him to work quietly in his studio, processing mortality and loss, all the while adhering respectfully to the author Janet Frame’s advice that summarising the lives of those who are no longer with us is different, because ‘the dead have surrendered their story’.

Dylan Burgess

Dylan Burgess created a short film, titled BEAUTIFUL, and kept his audience engaged with a mesmerising narrative and expert film-editing skills; it is seamless. From the opening scene with stand-to-attention musical overlay we easily step into a believable and plausible world, inhabited by characters Dylan brings to life. He leads us, naturally, into each section of a story that could, so easily, have been confusing but for his skilful writing, resulting in us journeying alongside the protagonist. It is soft worldbuilding at its best.

Heath Clarke

Heath Clarke had us all feeling the Australian heat with his series of paintings titled Under a Southern Sun in Megalong. Clearly influenced by Arthur Streeton who famously wrote “I sit here in the upper circle surrounded by copper and gold, and smile with joy… all the light, glory and quivering brightness passes slowly and freely before my eyes. Nothing happier than this”. And this sums up Heath’s paintings. They are happy and joyous and evoke a longing to step inside them and walk beneath the majestic gum, turpentine, and wattle he has gloriously depicted.

Lachlan Creswick

Lachlan Creswick was inspired by the vicinity of Bronte, a place that plays a large part in his life. As the title of his work indicates, Bronte Dwellings: 2023 on 42 Acres: 1836, the paintings demonstrate how the occupants of Bronte have domiciled themselves in the years since 12 acres was purchased by NSW Colonial Architect, Mortimer Lewis, for £144. He eventually increased his purchase to 42 acres, including the beachfront up to the present-day Bronte Road and Murray Street junction. The detail and warmth of the houses Lachlan has painted are charming, detailed, and convincing.

Sasha Danko

Sasha Danko is the second of our short film makers with his evocative film titled Lost & Found. He pulls us into a story predicated on the death of a sibling, the impact this has on a family and the imagined reunion between the living and the deceased brothers. The film, both haunting and beautiful, is also cleverly relatable, due not insignificantly to a compelling lead performance. Sasha’s cinematography skill is evident throughout the film, as is his ability to turn a potentially traumatic plot line into a satisfying plot twist.

Nicholas Hansen Weeks

Nicholas Hansen Weeks title Seascapes and the Sublime is utterly apt, as his paintings are exactly that. Works of art have the capacity to transport us into other worlds. The French philosopher and art critic Diderot defined these immersive experiences as ‘art at its most magical’. Nick’s paintings are brimming with a sense of freedom and adventure. There is such a strong evocation of the changing tides, bringing with them the possibility of new beginnings, serenity, and tranquillity. His use of impasto was inspired and adds a unique element to Nick’s paintings.

Hunter Hyde

Hunter Hyde managed this rigorous course while being a prominent member of the rowing squad. He knows only too well the feeling of being Spent at the end of a race and has captured this in delicate colour, by way of four drawings. Inspired by one of the pioneers of modern Australian painting, Roy de Maistre, Hunter has upended and inverted his famous quote that ‘In one’s life one ought to be gentle and forbearing, but in one’s art one should conduct oneself quite differently’. The gentleness of Hunter’s completed drawings is profound.

Timothy Iliffe

Timothy Iliffe’s large self-portrait, and two smaller canvases share the title The Inward Gaze: An Artistic Metamorphosis and reference a long history of artists depicting themselves at work. We can see Tim’s fascination with the portrait of the Spanish artist Velázquez within the painting Las Meninas, a work that Michel Foucault analysed in the opening chapter of his 1966 book The Order of Things, and from which I quote: ‘Now he (the painter) can be seen, caught in a moment of stillness, at the neutral centre of his oscillations’. I chose this quote because it not only sums up Tim’s painting, but also captures our image of Tim as we walked past the open studio door each day, as he honed his craft.

Sebastian Kim

Sebastian Kim’s investigation into derealisation and the associated phenomenon in which things appear strange and unfamiliar, and therefore disorientating, was meaningful and nuanced. Many artists have worked successfully with expressing their ‘depersonalisation disorders’, most notably the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, and there is a school of thought that Giacometti’s derealisation underpinned his aesthetic choices. Watching Sebastian articulate his own interpretation of what it must be like to live with derealisation has been fascinating and abundant with reward.

Douglas Krieger

Douglas Krieger’s wheel-thrown ceramic forms prove that negative space is equally as important as positive space, and often cited as bringing balance to a composition. However, in this case the negative space Doug has created is also full of symbolism in its hidden surprise. The result is stunning and as with any ‘yin and yang’, both forces (the ceramic form and the negative space) need to be present. None of this could be achieved without enormous technical ability, and the willingness to feel the fear and embrace the intrepid.

Jock MacCallum

Jock MacCallum achieved remarkable things on the potter’s wheel, and certainly speaks to my previous comment about ‘taking an idea and making it one’s work’. His completed series of softly melting glaciers speak to the oxymoronic refrain from WB Yeats’ poem Easter 1916 and the line ‘a terrible beauty is born’. Jock’s title Once, there was Antarctica further speaks to the prescient third stanza of the aforementioned poem, ‘minute by minute they change’.

Finlay McDonald

Finlay McDonald took a relatively simple idea, one mold of a ‘Gatorade’ bottle, and created something extraordinary. Handpressing each bottle to make it unique he superbly references Andy Warhol’s 1962 painting Green Coca-Cola Bottles. As Warhol stated, “My fascination with letting images repeat and repeat manifests my belief that we spend much of our lives seeing, without observing”. Fin’s work makes us observe.

Alexander Mudri

Alexander Mudri’s working process reminded me constantly (and sometimes sustained me) of a statement by Matisse: “At each stage, I reach a balance, a conclusion. At the next sitting, if I find a weakness in the whole, I find my way back into the picture by means of the weakness, I re-enter through the breach and reconceive the whole”. Alex’s methodical approach to working with clay has proved to be exceptional, and his ceramic sculptures do exactly as he intended, bringing together his wonderful migrant past and conflating it, beautifully, with his bright future.

Ruark Newitt

Ruark Newitt’s work develops the connections between the lives of strangers that may or may not happen within bus shelters. There are suggestions of dark places, hidden out of view; with questions raised regarding what has happened, or what might happen. We can travel back in history to read about artists working in the Fourth Dimension, and it is critical to Ruark’s gripping series of paintings. In Paris in 1936, Charles Tamkȯ Siratȯ published his Manifeste Dimensioniste, in which he made two points that speak to Ruark’s Limits of Representation, and they are: 1. Painting leaving the plane and entering space and 2. Sculpture stepping out of closed, immobile forms. I wrote earlier of the courage of artists, and you will find it, writ large, in Ruark’s work.

Fletcher Platt

Fletcher Platt worked with our specialist welding teacher, David Horton, who is established as one of Australia’s leading steel sculptors. From the get-go, Fletch clearly found a natural home in the Welding Studio, and the portrait he has produced bears testimony to the trust he placed in his teacher’s guidance, as well as the technical skills he mastered. The title Timeless speaks brilliantly to a work that traverses centuries and remains freshly relevant today.

Harvey Radford

Harvey Radford kept his idea firmly Over in the Garden as he explored a place that is clearly special to him in the Southern Highlands. His three oil paintings allow us a glimpse into (and an easy understanding of) why he finds the gardens a place of solace. As with Monet, who painted his magnificent gardens at Giverny, Harvey’s works are “a pleasure to the eye, a soothing contemplation of nature and reveal the source of his inspiration”.

Benjamin Stubbs-Goulston

Benjamin Stubbs-Goulston springboarded from the influence of the American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth, producing an outstanding series of photographs under the title Somewhere, Nowhere. Asking similar questions of his audience as Kosuth “Is the ladder a visual code? A verbal code? A code in the language of objects? Or a code in the language of ladders?” and most importantly “Does the inclusion of the ladder in his photograph change it?” Ben successfully prodded us with the same questions demanded by every conceptual artist, leaving the audience to dwell on their own answers.

Mike Wong

Mike Wong has scrupulously delved into the world of ageing in his work titled Patient 23151407, keying into the reductive anonymity that care for the elderly imposes, and the many ways illness leaves its mark on the human body. He also illuminates the nuanced and complex process of dependency. Because we will all face ageing and will need to cope with the failure of our own bodies, Mike’s work is poignantly fascinating. He reflects on something society chooses to ignore or obscure, but as his work proved in exhibition, it has been able to resonate with all ages.

Oscar Zhou

Oscar Zhou’s title Colony keys into the notion of compressed living in a city. Using traditional printmaking methods, his work is laden with metaphors regarding manmade environments, placing the audience in the position of almost tangible monumentality. Oscar has brought his own experience of city life to his prints, and strongly implied Plato’s assertion that ‘the city is what it is because our citizens are what they are’.

To the 19 visual artists, each with your own individual stories and your own unique way of telling them, the sincere hope of all those who have been involved in your art education at College Street is that you continue to make art – and continue your interest in Art History. Remember: art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.

I send my warmest and sincerest good wishes to each of you and look forward to hearing of your successes in the years to come. You have been a delight to teach.

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