Showing from Friday 29 December to Saturday 7 December at the Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) Gallery and adjoining spaces, SCA New Contemporaries is a culmination of graduating artists' collective research and practice-based outcomes. More than 30 works will be on display including screen arts, photography, jewellery and object, painting, print media, sculpture, ceramics, and glass.
Professor Julie Rrap , Co-Director of Sydney College of the Arts, said the exhibition celebrates the outstanding work of students across diverse disciplines in the visual arts.
"These innovative projects reflect years of dedication and creative exploration, showcasing the exciting potential of emerging artists to shape the future of the arts," she said.
"I am so impressed with this cohort, and I can't wait to see what they do next."
SCA New Contemporaries highlights
Teeya Ryan (Jerome De Costa Memorial Undergraduate Degree Show Bursary)
Teeya Ryan received the Jerome De Costa Memorial Undergraduate Degree Show Bursary prize of $5,000 for To Whom it May Concern , a linocut print. Ryan is an emerging Australian artist slowly exploring the possibilities and intersections between print media and performance art. She believes that the body is both a means and an end to the creation of a work and seeks to understand how and why we make art through her practice.
Olive Burgess (Megalo Graduate Artist Residency)
Olive Burgess won the Megalo Graduate Artist Residency award for her installation For the Living as we Die , a work in two parts: Skyscape, featuring 30 images of the sky captured this year; and Memory Skies, a video of drawings made out of weather information from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and accompanied by a soundscape. The Megalo Graduate Artist Residency gives artists at all stages of their career access to facilities and equipment to make new work or experiment with ideas in the Megalo studios in Canberra.
Carol Arpas and Kate Leckie (Jean de Ghee Award)
Carol Arpas was awarded for her kinetic sculpture a model minority home . The piece navigates the Filipino diasporic experience with broader themes of identity, colonial legacies, and the seemingly inescapable cycles of capitalism. Central to the work is a reference to the 'bahay kubo', the humble Filipino nipa hut or 'stilted house' - the unconventional stilts hold the promise of stability and progress in distant and often exploitative systems, and the climbing tower and endless spinning underscores the disconnection and alienation that can result from the pursuit of upward mobility within a capitalist framework.
Kate Leckie's work 31 Heads features six unique methods of painting to creatively reflect each subject's 3D form. Some of the heads were painted around their 3D forms before being flattened into 2D nets, or were painted onto uniform mannequin heads to emphasise the impact of form on likeness. Some were both sculpted and painted, while others merged multiple faces into one. Despite their many differences, the heads are all intrinsically linked - they represent a shift away from portraiture into a more individually considered approach to the head form.
Lile Khajavi and Chloe Burton (Director's Award: Third Year)
Lile Khajavi explored the concept of repetitive ideas in The Functionality of an Orgasm , including a short film and manifesto. Khajavi is an interdisciplinary artist from Georgia who experiments with finding different ways of meaning within the frameworks of absurdism and existentialism.
A Ring a Day by Chloe Burton is a chronological series of rings inspired by a 2009 study from Dr Phillippa Lally, which found the average time to form a habit is 66 days. Through the work, Burton commits to redefining her artistic practice by using a variety of materials to repeatedly remake a variation of the ring, the first object she ever learnt to design in the jewellery studio.
Maelyse Xinh Leculier (Director's Award: Honours)
Maelyse Xinh Leculier won the Director's Award: Honours for A Piece of the Sky in Strings . Made from rosewood, plywood and guitar strings, the sculpture pulls music out of the atmosphere - just for a moment - and circulates it back into the air by creating sound as it encounters wind.
Ella van Dort-Gilmore (CR Kennedy Photography Award)
The new CR Kennedy Photography Award celebrates the growth of SCA facilities in the analogue photography medium and is awarded to a student engaged with analogue photographic processes. Ella van Dort-Gilmore received the one-off prize for Tomorrow is a Long Time , a body of work with Lake Ainsworth in Lennox Head as the subject. Dort-Gilmore uses the poetics of the camera to chronicle the traces of the past that can be felt in the present.
Exhibition dates
WHAT: SCA New Contemporaries exhibition
WHEN: Friday 29 November - Saturday 7 December 2024
VIEWING HOURS
- Monday to Friday: 11am-5pm
- Saturday: 12pm-4pm
WHERE: SCA Gallery and adjoining spaces , Old Teachers' College, Manning Road, University of Sydney
In parallel with the exhibition, an online catalogue of SCA New Contemporaries has launched to showcase graduates' achievements. Built in consultation with students, the website design for this year's digital showcase is based on a sundial, reflecting shared moments of connection amid the varying daily rhythms of making art.
