RMIT Grad Show - Bec’s Edit
I’d be lying if I said attending the RMIT Grad Show opening was an enjoyable experience. It would’ve been an awesome party for the graduates whose work was on show, surrounded by their friends, family and fellow students. But as a punter it was not- it was hot, we were shoulder to shoulder packed like sardines in some rooms, and there was so much art on display that it became overwhelming. Charlotte and I had to leave after seeing about half the work and come back the next day to be able to actually take anything in. Although the amount of graduating student work was overwhelming, the sheer number of pieces on display allowed lots of it to fade into the background and that allowed my favourites to stand out to me.
Matthew Mifsud
Favourites such as Matthew Mifsud’s installation, which strikes me much like the fighters in the imagery do. Mifsud uses the bodies of fighters to play commentary on the degradation of meaning due to the proliferation of screens in our lives. He plays with the line between physical and virtual in Untitled (How Does It Feel?) which sees mismatched A4 pieces of paper glued to a perspex sheet hanging in front of LED panel lights, bringing a pop up spam ad into glaring reality. It’s hard to describe the way Mifsud’s work makes me feel when standing in the space, and I really can’t place what draws me to this installation. I think it’s the combination of the god-like white light that bathes the dark space, and the texture of the paper atop it. Displayed with the pair of paintings, Yōkai I and Yōkai II, whose pixelated blocky, blurred forms feel like snippets from low quality footage, and the staticky CRT TVs stacked on the floor. To me, this installation is the star of the grad show.
Sean Holt’s large scale charcoal drawings are equally as captivating. Featuring disembodied hands, all reaching over one another to grab plates and pour sauces and serve food. They feel like the embodiment of a long and loud and lovely meal shared with friends. These drawings are beautiful, especially in dialogue with one another, and with the hand written text that’s been scrawled onto the walls and floor around them. These written words feel like diary entries centred around food and those Holt shares meals with. Thoughts are bared on the hatred of doing dishes, about his Dad having tinnitus and not sitting at the table to share conversation after a meal, about his sister’s pregnancy cravings. This installation feels intimate despite the scale of the drawings, and feels like such an insight into the artist.
I am similarly obsessed with Sophie Mcdarra’s colossal paintings. I love the choice to display these massive, overwhelming, larger than life paintings in the hallway; it forces you to be close to them and have them fill your whole field of vision, which is what makes them feel even bigger than they are. I found that so many artists had chosen to go big with their paintings, many of them painted on canvases that filled whole walls and were taller than everyone in the room, yet it was the tiny, intimate paintings of telephone wires by Georgina Repo that caught me. Their scattered display added to the feeling that these are snapshots, captured from evening walks, or out of the car windows a quick trip to the shops. I think it’s not only the incredibly technical ability on display in these works that draws me to them but the feeling that they’re a slice from someone’s life. They’re scenes I’ve always seen and not always paid attention to.
I think a large majority of my favourite works in the show were paintings, and of those there were many painterly works, fluid and imperfect that caught my eye. One theme I could catch were neon underpaintings that shone through their top layers. Like Ella McKanny’s seascape of her native Aotearoa, where a luminous orange glows through the ocean. Or Were by Poppy Clarke of a figure smoking, the neon pink of their cigarette shining through their face and hands too. I also love the neon edges of these paintings, which reflect the colourful light back onto the walls that surround them, adding to their glow. Sally Barlow’s paintings atop cyanotype prints had a similar glow to them. The blue photographs balance the paintings that expand or contract from their source, the work explores memory and our relationship with documentation rather than experience.
There were a few other themes prevalent throughout the showcase. Maybe I was looking for them though, as I often find myself drawn to textural works over and over again. There was lots of fabric hanging from the ceiling; pooling, flowing, folding, draping. Zara Bell’s thin screen printed sheets float gently on natural air currents, illuminated from the inside. While Sara Jajou’s sheer and shimmery sheets are spun in circles by a ceiling mounted fan, whose soft hum joins the ambient sounds of the room full of installations. Dionne Ogilvie’s long cyanotype banners drape to the floor, creating little blue grey pools that visitors have to dance around. Ambrose de Lima has panels of great sheets of latex and hair hung in a fleshy circle, reminding me of Halle Brown’s installation which is reminiscent of a shower. Coco L hangs shiny satin sheets draped with flowing folds that allows for the projection atop it to take the shape of that drapery.
These fabric pieces often interact with the light to create beautiful soft shadows, such as Sienna Pavlovski Within Comfort where the light shone through the muslin creates textured shadows that flow with the fabric. In fact many works on display play with the shadows cast on walls, on floors. Like Zoe W’s hanging masks, their shadows multiplied, making them into a crowd. Davin Ivatts TO/FROM SMITHEREENS illuminated in a way that makes the metal figure more humanoid in its shadow. Yet no work plays with light more than Zosia Slifirski Duckett’s pond of water, the ripples reflected and dancing on the wall behind.
RMIT is the first of the grad show season and it excites me for what we have yet to see. You can catch the RMIT Grad Show on display until Sunday the 23rd of November, with the Photography and Post-Grad Show opening at RMIT on December 2nd.