STATE OF PLAY

With the nation once again focused on creativity and innovation, it's
timely to see what our art school students are doing, Ted Snell writes

May 03, 2008



Inside the nation's art schools students go about the important work
of critiquing and subverting presumptions and preconceptions about
art and life. Significantly they are also generating ideas and images
that have commercial potential, at a time when the federal Government
is pursuing an agenda of innovation and growth of the creative
industries.

Although there is a great deal of discussion about the concept of
creativity, and about intellectual property as an exploitable
resource, surprisingly the role of the visual arts in advancing this
has been marginalised during the past decade.

While other disciplines and professions have adopted the concepts of
creativity and innovation, and used those words with tedious
frequency, the visual arts sector has stepped back from the plate
with the result that others have taken guardianship of these concepts.

So, with the Review of the National Innovation System in full swing,
a survey of what is happening in the nation's art schools is timely,
to judge the veracity of the sector's claims to innovation.

The Hatched National Graduate Show at the Perth Institute of
Contemporary Arts presents the results of three to five years of
focused work by 61 graduates from 20 schools. All show the
flexibility, adaptability and boundary-hopping that is at the core of
innovation and many are generating exciting content for the new
distribution networks.

As Christopher Frayling from London's Royal College of Art has
written, "it is the established practices of painting, sculpture,
photography and crafts together with those of the moving image, new
media and live art that drives the creative industries". With the
need for more and more creative content to feed these delivery
platforms, and with the requirement that all employees in every
profession must now be creative and innovative thinkers, it is time
for the contemporary visual arts to claim a leadership role.

The art school as a place of licence is well established in the
public imagination. Just think of the vast numbers of rock groups,
film directors, fashion designers, and collaborations in design and
architecture, that have emerged from them: all are evidence of
vibrant tertiary arts education.

Indeed, visual arts is the engine that drives the creative industries
because without it there is no significant content, no quality and no
excitement.

As well as giving an overview, surveys such as Hatched set up the
expectation of new trends and ideas, or at least an indication of who
could be the next Shaun Gladwell, Patricia Piccinini or Brook Andrew.
Visitors will be looking for insights into the mysteries of
creativity, and a revealing glimpse of what tomorrow's world might
look like. There is the hope that we will be entertained and
stimulated by the most exciting minds in the county.

In some years, the storm of emotions is unleashed, making for rather
heavy going; other years, the student offerings are more formally
esoteric. This year, the exhibition is an altogether lighter affair.
As a result, it is hard to identify any viral ideas that have mutated
and spread throughout the nation's art schools and that will soon
have an effect on our lives; although there is evidence of an
interest in beauty and a wicked sense of humour in much of the work.
That in itself may be an indication of a shift in thinking.

Sally Stewart's floating lotus flowers in the main gallery and Rose
Skinner's playful The Bubblegum Factory next to it are indeed
beautiful. Both artists have relished the opportunity to play, and to
share their obvious enjoyment of colour and materials.

Stewart, from the School of Communications and Contemporary Arts,
Edith Cowan University, in Western Australia, has filled a large
swimming pool with plastic flowers. It is a joyous work, best seen
from the balcony above where the slow movement of the large flower
forms can be traced as they bob gently along. The work is about
Eastern and Western cultural symbols, and "exploring the continual,
multidirectional flow of cultural traffic and the exchange of symbols
and icons whose meanings blur or are lost when translated and fused
within new cultural dimensions". Whether the concept is successfully
translated into art is a moot point. But the result is very pretty.

On the other hand, Skinner (School of Art, Design and Media, Central
TAFE, WA) is happy for us just to enjoy the sensory and visual
pleasures of engaging with her plastic found objects reconfigured
into a sanctuary of light, colour, sound and taste.

Visual art is an agent of change and so it's not unexpected that
graduates have a sense of urgency and high expectation about their
work.

Jonathan McBurnie (Queensland College of Art, Griffith University)
obviously loves comic books and he is also drawn to the angst and
passion of romanticism. He has brilliantly synthesised his interests
into a series of comic book covers made from ink and correction
fluid.Pain Comics, Printmaking Armageddon! -- My Painting was Cheap
and (my personal favourite) Faith -- I loved a Dadaist are wonderful
works that, in his words, "create a strange friction between
traditional high and low cultural forms". Whatever McBurnie does
next, it is likely he will exacerbate that friction and will find an
outlet in some of the new distribution networks.

In a world where the distinctions between the real and the virtual
are becoming increasingly blurred it's reassuring to see that art
schools are also places where the act of making is given value and
meaning.

To enter into the presence of the extraordinary glass forms by
Kristel Britcher (South Australian School of Art, University of SA)
is a profound experience that demands a considered response. Their
dark misty colours, the relationship of the components to each other
and the resonances of place they evoke are so beautifully nuanced it
is impossible not to pause, ponder and contemplate. It's so
refreshing when the artist's comments offer insight and extrapolation
instead of obfuscation. Britcher's works have a physical presence
like sacred monuments.

That love of making, leading to new meaning, is also evident in the
work of Douglas Haslem (School of Art, RMIT University, Victoria),
another young artist with a fine turn of phrase. "These two pieces
are about my grandparents, Jack and Francie Dell," he writes. "The
dancer is Gran, pirouetting in a Savlon tube that represents her
talent for soothing my grazed knee -- with a dab of ointment
magically appearing on the end of her finger. Jack is the cat playing
the music for Gran to dance to." The two rings Haslem has made
accurately illustrate his story but the craftsmanship and attention
to detail, the juxtaposition of made and found objects, and the
whimsy and deep affection with which he imbues them, sets them apart
as very special objects.

Three artists are making a strong claim for prominence at Hatched 08:
Elise/Jurgen (actually a pair of artists from the Department of Art,
Curtin University of Technology, WA), Jack Robins (Tasmanian School
of Art), and Lucy Quinn (School of Art, Australian National
University, ACT). I have to state here that the John Curtin Gallery,
where I work, purchased Elise/Jurgen's work from their degree
exhibition last year: an indication of my assessment of it as an
outstanding work.

Although a simple idea, the video of the two artists blowing puffs of
white powder back and forth between them is a haunting image when
projected on thin cloth hovering in a darkened room. In the video the
artists emerge from the eddying clouds of powder, sometimes
supportively, sometimes in competition, to create a highly charged
and deeply moving work that continues to resonate long after you
leave the gallery.

In the studio next door, Robins has fabricated an intimidating space
that effectively engages each participant in the wider discourse that
surrounds George Bush's climate of fear. Like Elise/Jurgen he uses
very simple means to examine how this mechanism of control has so
profoundly changed our world and modified the ways in which we
operate communally. Within the room Robins has constructed
cantilevered partitions that project into the space and physically
and metaphorically weigh down and disrupt movement. At once elegant
and threatening, the work evokes a tangible sense of uncertainty and
alienation.

At first sight Quinn's installation -- a video of what appears to be
a CAT scan of the internal organs of a human body, and a shelf of
intriguing glass objects -- seems oblique and rather esoteric. Dark
forms, often barely legible from the inky darkness of the screen,
eventually open into an absorbing field of swirling patterns that
hint at human organs, the movement of blood through veins or fluids
through the stomach. These organic forms are replicated in the glass
objects lined up in front of the screen and together they create a
rather eerie and elusive sense of humanness.

Not all the work in Hatched 08 is likely to rivet you to the floor
but there is enough to ensure plenty of enjoyment and entertainment.
It's impossible not to be entranced by Heidi Kenyon's Everything you
Can Think of is True, a series of carved leaves. In an extraordinary
feat of value-adding, Kenyon (South Australian School of Art,
University of SA), has transformed the leaves of an avocado tree into
exquisite small sculptures suspended just out from the wall to
sharpen their cast shadows. With poetic titles that spark personal
narratives and evoke a sense of place, each small leaf acts as a
catalyst for private reverie.

Equally engaging are the photographs by Sofi Basseghi (School of Art,
RMIT) from her Soldiers in a Bathhouse series, taken in Iran. The
intrusion of the uniformed men moving through the tiled interiors,
past graceful columns and arches in this once grand historical site
brings the social and political disruption of contemporary Iran into
sharp focus.

When Hatched lost its main sponsor, Healthways, there was a fear that
this important annual survey of tertiary art education would
disappear. Fortunately Charles Morgan has stepped forward to sponsor
the event this year and for at least another two. So we will continue
to see what comes out of these incubators of new ideas where students
explore possibilities, question orthodoxies and propose new
solutions, with a passionate belief in the power of art to change the
world. Hatched 08 is a preview of the ideas and images that will soon
reverberate through the culture.

Pics http://www.pica.org.au/hatched/


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