Greetings Earthlings

Hey there, I'm Jess and shocked to have been chosen for ArtExpress.

(I'm just going through the suggested questions here - so feel free to skim read)

I cannot describe to you how I felt upon finding out that I was:

a) shortlisted for ArtExpress

b) accepted into AGNSW and Bathurst Regional Gallery exhibitions.

I had never actually made it a goal to get into ArtExpress - I was more focused on doing well in the HSC with two major works (I did Design & Tech too) and enjoying my last year of high school. I think that made getting into the exhibition even better, because it was so unexpected.

At the beginning of 2008, I went to see ArtExpress with trepidation as part of a Visual Arts excursion. The works were of such a high standard, both in terms of visual presentation and the ideas and concepts put forward. I read every single artist's statement in search of inspiration for my BOW. At this point I thought I had it all figured out - a picture in my head of how I wanted my work to look come September. To all you HSC art students - do not set your mind on one final outcome! As the year progressed, I was confronted by events, ways of seeing, people, emotions, conversations, revelations and relationships which not only changed the perfect little BOW picture in my mind, but also what I wanted to convey and share with audiences who would view my work.

The conceptual nature of my work is quite personal and relates very closely to a relationship that I share with someone close to me. I did not realise this until the final stages before the printing of my photographs when words sprang to mind, describing feelings and personality traits that individually, meant little, but in a set of 11 - created a 'non-linear narrative' of the relationship and its many facets. The idea to use clothing to create a 'still-life portrait' came from my art teacher. From there I pretty much experimented with every bit of clothing I could find until I came across the tailored white button-down shirt that appears in my final photos. I continued working with this shirt because it draped well and created a nice contrast against the black backdrop. 

As for the physical part of the work - I shot my photos in a tiny room at school with the school's camera and black fabric as a back drop - the only object that belonged to me was the white shirt. We shared some interesting conversations during our time together - he now hangs at the back of my wardrobe dotted with pin holes and a rip around the collar.

In terms of inspiration - Tracey Emin's 'My Bed' played a huge part in taking an item of clothing and giving it life and personality with its crinkles and the crazy positions I put it in. I also played around with photograms - Anne Ferran style - in the school dark room. I was going to include some of them in the final work, but came to the conclusion that less is more. 

Text was something that I had always wanted to include in my work - I just had trouble trying to figure out what I could say without being too literal - so I turned to Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger for their innovative use of text and was able to find a starting point for my own text. My biggest inspiration, was definitely my best friend who plays the 'you' character in my work - the relationship that we share was so beyond anything I had shared with someone before and supplied me with endless ideas for photographs and accompanying text. I didn't realise that he played such a huge role in my work until I started writing 'tag-lines' for my photographs as I was preparing them to go to the printers.

The art-making process was long, hard and emotionally draining. Creating an artwork requires much more than physical and mental effort - especially if you are choosing to work from the subjective frame (like I did). The best advice I can give is to listen to advice from your art teachers (even when you might not want to) and look at your artwork from different perspectives ie. art audience, non-art audience, student, teacher, art critic. Most importantly!!! Don't make it too literal. Someone who has never seen your work should be able to look at it (perhaps read an artist's statement) and have a general idea or their own interpretation of your work - don't spell it out for people, let them do the thinking.

I don't know if this means much - but I have always been interested in art. Some people collect stamps, my mother collects Australian artwork. We have works by Carlos Barrios, Suzanne Chick, Kveta Daniels and Picasso prints all over the house. If someone asked me whether I was an artist, I'd say no. My interest in the visual arts is better described as appreciative. 

Now that I'm in ArtExpress, I'm really worried about how they will be hanging my work and I pray that it is set-up according to the plan I handed in with my work. It's meant to read across so people walk along the wall, look at it each photo and then read the matching tag. Even though the story is just bits and pieces of mental dialogue, I still want it to be read in a certain order.

This year, I'll be studying design in visual communications at UTS. As for the future beyond university, I would like to create more works and explore different concepts and mediums - but for now, I'm happy to look-on and admire the works of others.

By the by - my work is called II (Two) - keep an eye out for it.

Well that's all from me!

ArtEXP blogmonster

i may aswell introduce myself, im thom and my work 'Jigsaw Falling into Place' (Digital Media) [the images iv put up is my major work... there pretty bad quality image compared to the original works it starts with the orange one and so on and so forth] @ the NSW Art Gallery for ArtExpress. 

I'm extremelly proud of my work and what its brought, to get to ArtExpress i reckon is a pretty big achievement (for me anyway). It recognizes the effort and countless hours clicking and dragging away on my mac during school and the hours after on monday and friday afternoons, the midnight hours of (supposive) brilliance and then the complete and utter frustration and loathing of my macbook in the light of day wanting to throw and smash my beloved computer into little pieces because of my mind blockage or computer error (most of the time both)

For this year im doing Fine Arts/Arts degree at COFA & UNSW... its a combined corse where i have to commuete between the two campuses, my ARTs degree btw is Politics (oooo pretentious?) where im begrudling sort of wanting to avoid but still excited... see when your stuck in my routine its very difficult to break (for example going to bed at 5 o'clock this morning after watching the soccer and then getting up around 12ish to watch Bruce Springsteen on the tele... but i spose enjoy it while it lasts until i have to get in a routine for Uni). iv also been given the nickname "The Goffer from COFA" yeah im not going to live that one down quickly

De Sanguinis (Of Blood)

Hey there, my name is Nina and I went to high school at St Vincent's College in the friendly neighbourhood of Kings Cross! This post has since been edited because my previous one was pretty minimal and only answered one of the questions. I'll try and get to the point without rambling too much but bare with me - I'm still finding it difficult to digest the fact that I have the privilege of being in such an exhibition.
Being chosen for ArtExpress was pretty surreal. I went back to school after my exams to pick up my body of work only to find that it had taken an extended vacation. Being nominated was definitely very exciting but in no way had I expected to make it through to the final selection. I was overseas when I found out that I made it into the AGNSW as well as the Port Macquarie regional gallery later this year and for a couple of days following that I kind of thought I'd just imagined it. For me, being selected was a huge achievement and a big deal - visual arts was my best subject and it's a world I want to continue to explore.
I chose the method of printmaking for my body of work and it was quite an adventure coming up with the final product. I found printmaking to be a very experimental medium to work with and at times extremely challenging. You need to have the right amount of ink for the print to look good and the registration involved in making sure the print isnt crooked can be very frustrating! Every print turns out different and I quickly learnt not to get fixated on a certain image because the final product never turned out how I would have imagined. Because printmaking is such an experimental medium, I really had no idea what my body of work was going to look like in the end. So with that in mind, I didn't really "plan" what I was going to do, it just happened. That is probably the best advice I can offer a current HSC visual arts student - just go with the flow. Choose to go a direction that seems to be working and the beautiful work will flourish. My work doesn't really have a particular order, although I'm anxious to find out whether they included the entire body of work. I submitted 8 pieces all together, some of which are fairly large. The work also includes a triptych so I'm hoping the AGNSW gets it in the right order! Apart from that, I dont have a particular preference for how it's displayed. I'm excited to see what they've done with it. I am however a little nervous to see what the audience think of it, primarily because my prints are so abstract but I'm also keen to see and hear the different responses to it because aside from offering criticism, outside opinions can teach and enlighten you about aspects of your work you weren't aware of. Thus the work in a sense, continues to evolve.
For the past 4 years I have seen the art express exhibitions at the AGNSW and every year I left dumbstruck; so you can see why the experience of being selected for such an exhibition was indeed surreal. The quality of work at previous AGNSW exhibitions is so outstanding and I often felt intimidated by the level of excellence. I don't see my work in the same light, possibly because I had to look at it for nine months and by the time I submitted it I was sick of looking at it. I didn't aspire to get into art express, my goal was to get a band 6 in Visual Arts. Art Express is the cherry on top. The response from my school was great. I got a personal phone call from the principal, so I felt pretty special that day. My teacher of course, was thrilled because he knew how much time I devoted to getting it finished and he was really supportive. My parents and my friends were also ecstatic because they know how much I love art and how gruelling at times the process was.
The title of my work is "De Sanguinis (Of Blood)". The work first developed while I was on holiday in Fiji with my family on a remote island we visit every year. I had originally intended to base my work on the island because it has a special connection to me. However, the work soon developed other concepts and in the end meant so much more than simply a personal tribute to an island. While I was on holiday I did A LOT of drawing and took lots of photographs of plants, birds, shells, water, clouds, fish and coral. I originally thought my work would incorporate the different aspects of the island's natural landscape but when I got down to printing and experimenting with images, I found that the images of coral were working really well and made fantastic subjects for abstract prints. I tried and tested a lot of different printing methods but took a liking to monoprinting and solar plate etchings. Solar plates are particularly unusual and involve exposing an image onto the light sensitive plate using a UV lamp, producing a very detailed etching. They're similar to silk screen prints as they have a photographic element and pick up a lot of detail. However I steered clear of making my prints look too photographic and focussed on a more impressionistic style.
While I was working on my prints, I noticed that the images of coral appeared otherwordly and could easily be mistaken for something as minute as cellular structures in the body or something as vast as a celestial body in space. This was when my work began to evolve to become something more than a documentation of my teenage holidays in the Pacific. I suppose the conceptual aspect of my work explores the strangely similar patterns woven through the natural world that act as a universal blueprint linking all natural matter together; like a web or a jigsaw puzzle. De Sanguinis (Of Blood) essentially expresses my facination with the complexities of the natural universe. I think I was heavily influenced by my simultaneous study of Romanticism in year 12 as well as American abstract artist Ross Bleckner whose paintings consist of microscopic subjects such as red blood cells and viruses and diseases such as AIDS and cancer. While Bleckner's conceptual practice is in no way linked to mine, his interest in microscopic subject matter and his technical skill has certainly impinged on my own artmaking.
Throughout 2008, I didnt get many opportunities to expose myself to the world of contemporary art - I can thank the Board of Studies for depriving me of such a necessity! However I have certainly enjoyed my experience of contemporary art so far. A particular highlight for me was the 2008 Bienalle at Cockatoo Island. I enjoyed all the works on exhibit in particular Jannis Counellis' large scale installation of sails. It was unbelievably beautiful and reminded me of walking through a sacred space like a cathedral or a temple. I have always expressed an interest in the visual arts - both viewing art and making it. It is certainly an important vehicle of communication that has an incredible strength to change the way we see and understand the world. Art is of particular importance to me because it's my way of expressing ideas. Others write plays, poetry or music as a means of expression; I find understanding and passion in art. This year I hope to drown myself in visual arts and see anything that takes my fancy. I am about to commence a Bachelor of Visual Arts at SCA (Sydney Uni) and am thoroughly looking forward to it!

Welcome to the ARTEXPRESS 09 blog

A exciting new feature of ARTEXPRESS 09 at the Art Gallery of NSW this year is a blog, in which we ask exhibiting students to write about their experiences and answer questions from others.

The aim is for the students to document their experiences of being in the exhibition and discuss creating their body of work, and art and galleries in general, with each other, students studying art this year and the wider general public.

Suggested topics for discussion include:
· What is it like being chosen for ARTEXPRESS?
· What are your hopes for how it is displayed at the Art Gallery of NSW?
· Are you nervous about how people might respond to it?
· What do you hope people will get out of it?
· Have you seen past ARTEXPRESS exhibitions?
· Did you aspire to get into it or just do well in the HSC?
· What has been the response to your success from your – school, teacher, parents, family, local community?
· Where did the idea for you body of work come from?
· What artists have inspired your body of work or you in general?
· Do you visit Galleries often in person / online? What do these experiences add to your connection with art?
· Have you always been interested in art?
· Why is art important to you / to society?
· What was the process of making your body of work a reality?
· What are your plans for the future? Is it in art or something else?
· Are you studying this year, working or taking a year off?

This blog is a first for ARTEXPRESS and the first youth blog in any major Gallery in Australia. It is part of a wider strategy to develop youth focussed programs and resources here at the Art Gallery of NSW, giving voice to young people’s thoughts and ideas about art.

Happy blogging.

Tristan Sharp
Senior Coordinator of Education Programs,
Curator of ARTEXPRESS 09 AGNSW