ART CATEGORY

ANNA BETTS
MAYBE SHE SHOULD FEEL LONELY

ARTIST STATEMENT

The work is created by projecting a moving image onto UV sensitive dye, resulting in monochromatic prints that reflect a mere afterimage quality of the image. The blurry, un-kept visions of details derive a buffered interaction and illustrate the disconnected emotion between the physical state of being alone and the psychological scope of loneliness.

BIO

Anna Betts is an emerging artist from the Yass Valley Region currently studying Visual Arts.

With a fondness towards rich and luscious colour palettes, design and details to capture the experiences of life.

ASHLEY CAGAUAN
AN ODE TO OUR CALAMANSI TREE

ARTIST STATEMENT

An ode to our calamansi tree explores the Calamansi, a native Filipino citrus, planted in the artist’s family’s garden as a poignant reminder of the motherland. Using its leaves and fruit as both subject and medium, this work creates a multi-sensory space to engage with memory, cultural narratives, and belonging.

BIO

Ashley Cagauan is a Filipino-Australian emerging artist living and working on Dharug Land. Her practice experiments with botanical printing processes and olfactory experiences as representations that engage with Filipino diasporic communities.

CONNOR CHEN
AITAGODIJUSTKILLEDAMAN

Connor Chen, AITAGODIJUSTKILLEDAMAN, 2023, Toddler camera, fabric, children's toys and other found objects. 4:52 min.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I created life out of toys and blankets, and god, I just killed a man.

BIO

Connor Chen is a first year SCA student whose approaches to artmaking dabble in an antithesis of playfulness and morbidity through an ever expanding digital lens. Extending on the medium of the screen, performance and assemblage to explore death, existence, creation and smaller inconsequential things.

IVY CHEN
PORTRAIT OF UNSEEN

ARTIST STATEMENT

Inspired by Roland Barthes' discourse on intimacy, this black and white photo series explores the strength of vulnerability in queer relationships. Distorted and reconstructed, the images intertwine domestic spaces, which serves as a container of intimacy, with the allure of altered self-perception in relationships—an intriguing juxtaposition of fear and irresistible attraction.

BIO

As an interdisciplinary artist, Ivy interweaves images with various mediums to critically perceive subtle social phenomena and communicate underlying issues. Photography serves as the primary medium in my practice due to its inclusiveness and flexibility, enabling her to experiment with expressions that offer a dialectical, independent, and critical perspective in her artworks.

EMMA COCKS
CANDLELIGHT

ARTIST STATEMENT

This piece explores the notion of personal development and growth, where each candle and candle holder is representative of the stages we go through in our lives. Several of the pieces exist with imperfections - tilts and marks - an intentional attribute that speaks to the natural messiness and imperfections found in personal development.

BIO

Emma Cocks is a Sydney-based emerging artist whose practice is primarily in painting, ceramics, and glassblowing. She currently majors in visual arts at the University of Sydney, and her works often explore ideas of self-expression and femininity.

ALANNAH DAIR
NAVIGATING INTERNAL LANDSCAPES - ITERATION III

ARTIST STATEMENT

This work exists as a manifestation of my experience living with endometriosis (a chronic inflammatory condition). Existing as both internal body and external skin, medicalised hardware and material ‘skins’ literally stretch, contract and are held in tension within themselves, as the work negotiates a state of being between health and illness. 

BIO

Alannah Dair is an interdisciplinary artist who uses contemporary art practice to explore issues regarding health and chronic illness, in order to challenge the societal and cultural systems that govern our bodies. Dair is currently completing a Master of Fine Arts at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney.

CLAIRE DE CARTERET
GARDEN MONSTER

ARTIST STATEMENT

Garden Monster is a mythological creature to take care and watch over the vegetable garden.

BIO

Claire de Carteret lives and works on unceded Gadigal land. She is an emerging ceramicist interested in technology and listening. She is inspired by craftyness and science-fiction and is currently completing her honours at Sydney College of the Arts.

YANMING DENG
MELTING CNY

ARTIST STATEMENT

The artwork draws inspiration from my childhood memories and the special significance of the Chinese New Year. I decided to transform these emotions and recollections into digital sculptures because digital art provides me with limitless creative possibilities. I reconstructed the memorable corners of my home from the Chinese New Year, presenting them in a unique artistic form while preserving their harmonious and solemn atmosphere.

BIO

Yanming Deng is passionate about product design and electronic art exploration. She is wholeheartedly committed to reconciling aesthetics and functionality, optimising the user experience while maintaining the pursuit of sustainability. In her perspective, product design may not solve challenges, but changing human minds can.

HUAN HU
MONOLOGUE OF NATURE

ARTIST STATEMENT

Monologue of Nature was captured in the mountains of Chiang Mai, Thailand. In the forest, we explored a dialogue with tree and my own body.

BIO

Huan Hu is an emerging Chinese artist based in Sydney, passionate about representing diverse experiences and curiosity for examining relationships between humans and nature.

BONNIE HUANG
UNTITLED (turning into you is the only way I know how to let go, perched on my rock, where is my god? the sun rises and all I can think about is you.)

ARTIST STATEMENT

Referring to the Guanyin (Bodhisattva of Compassion) and the cycle of five elements (wuxing), this work interrogates desire and devotion—the interchangeability of the two and how they both manifest in the communities we form. Historically a gender ambiguous figure, the monument becomes a manifestation of queer and religious transcendence as it sits perched upon a semen-covered rock—contrasting reckless sexuality with stoic piety.

BIO

Bonnie Huang is an artist that makes works exploring the transcendence of desire/devotion and how people form their identities and communities of belonging. They reference symbols and images of both personal and collective spheres to interrogate memory and intimacy— demonstrating how collective experiences and history bring people together.

MOHAMMAD ADIL HUSSAIN
ALLEGORY OF THE BLACK TAJ

ARTIST STATEMENT

In 1658, as Emperor Shah Jahan fell ill, Aurangzeb declared himself ruler. In an alternative history, envision Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb constructing a black marble tomb, mirroring the Taj Mahal, symbolizing power and authority. Unlike the Taj Mahal's image of love and bereavement, the Black Taj represents Aurangzeb's ambition for an enduring legacy, showcasing his might over Shah Jahan.

BIO

From my ancestral roots in a quaint village in Odisha (a state on the eastern coast of India), to my formal training as an architect in the metropolitan city of New Delhi I have become a keen observer of people, and their diverse cultural histories.

Immersed in this beauty of cultural diversity are the multitude of stories that people carry with them. And within this very essence of India's cultural tapestry lies the art of storytelling - a legacy passed down through ages in the form of mythology, folklore and legends.

As our actual lives become increasingly surreal, I try to find solace in the world of the imaginary and relive/re tell these stories through the medium of digital drawings; moving back and forth between between the past and the present, the real and the hypothetical, and in the process offering tantalizing peeks into histories that ‘may have been’.

RAYMOND HUYNH
MYCOPHILIA/ MYCOPHOBIA: BIOLUMINESCENT (URANIUM) FUNGI

ARTIST STATEMENT

Mycophilia/Mycophobia: Bioluminescent (Uranium) Fungi engages in a dialogue of decentering Anthropocentric views on ‘Nature’ by appreciating and recognising the Fungi Kingdom. This is suggested through the use of raw materials being transformed through alchemical processes to emulate the kingdom's ecological niche, whilst imparting the ‘elemental’, and evoking the Anthropocene’s fear/interest of these organisms through the distinct materiality of Uranium glass.

BIO

Raymond Huynh is an emerging Sydney based artist who is currently studying at Sydney College of the Arts for a Bachelor of Visual Arts. He keeps a broad practice, having worked with Ceramics, Glass and Photo media, with investigations surrounding botanicals, ‘the elemental’ and theories of craft or the handmade. Emphasising materiality, and harnessing the sensorial, transformational, and distinct processes and properties of materials, in particular ceramics through research and conceptual driven works.

EVAN JAMES
ATAVISM

Evan James, Atavism, 2023, Mixed media digital video, 2:28min.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Atavism is composed of shifting, unstable forms which might be enormous or microscopic in nature. Discrete compositional gestures emerge, transmute between each other and decay into chromatic streams of matter like erosion-sculpted landscapes. Physical media and digital manipulation blend real-world materiality with pixelated hyperreality.

BIO

I have a Bachelor of Visual Arts through Sydney College of the Arts (2014) and am currently undertaking USYD's Master of Interaction Design and Electronic Arts. My creative practice is informed by various interests including interactive media and technology, video art, photography and sound design.

ABIGAIL JARVIS
UNTITLED (WE ALL NEED SOMETHING WATCHING OVER US)

ARTIST STATEMENT

untitled (we all need something watching over us) utilises the material qualities of canvas to adapt to its surrounding architecture, depending on how it’s installed. Inspired by Koji Enokura, audiences are encouraged to consider the work beyond the limits of traditional art, considering gallery spaces and the implications of institutions.

BIO

Abigail Jarvis is a Sydney-based Australian artist from the North-West, living and making on Dharug Land. Abigail utilises various mediums, primarily glass, ceramics and jewellery to explore the domestic space, gender identity and memory.

SONAL KAMBLE
ICE CRAWLER

Sonal Kamble, ice crawler, 2023, Animation. 1:09min.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Made using a recreation of Microsoft Paint, ice crawler is an offering to the monsters under my bed. They were ugly, they weren't real, they treated me gently, and kept me warm. Childhood was a moment of temporary symbiosis: they couldn’t exist without me, and I wouldn’t exist without them.

BIO

Sonal Kamble is a cbbgo3.

ASHRAY KUMAR
IMAGINING CHILDHOOD IN LEBAK SILIWANGI

ARTIST STATEMENT

Shot in a Kampung (village) untouched by modernity, called Lebak Siliwangi in rural Indonesia, this photo series explores the ephemeral fragility of childhood memories. An ode to the mundane, yet joyful, and strangely fleeting moments that shape how we reminisce about our childhood.

BIO

Ashray Kumar is an Indian-born, second-year design student, and photographer based in Sydney. He is interested in replicating high-contrast analog textures of yore, in the digital sphere. By photographing spontaneous moments of urban life; often featuring strangers, he hopes to document the human condition, emotions, and stories that often go unnoticed.

JINGRU MAI
LAUREL

ARTIST STATEMENT

The laurels of chaos and order. Victory is often achieved from a mixture of different contents and characteristics of various colours, not only unity, but also richness and layers. These sculptures, each different, yet equally spiked, form a graceful union with their differences. Their colourful lines give the work a low poetic quality.

BIO

Currently an international student in the third year of her undergraduate degree in Visual Arts at the University of Sydney, Mai is a young female artist from China. Focusing on the use of glass and ceramics, and sometimes adding other materials and elements, she likes to create more poetic and colourful creations.

WILL NAUFAHU
VIDEOS FOR A HOME

Will Naufahu, Videos for a Home, 2022-23, Video and audio, 7:16.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Videos for a Home responds to the often jarring and impersonal short-form content of social media through a series of minimalist static-infatuated gazes. Mapping a personal recent history, the series was filmed in seven singular home locations, each highlighting an interaction between the physical light of place and the digital noise of technology.

BIO

Will Naufahu is a first year student at Sydney College of the Arts whose practice is interested in time-based media and its assessment in both high art and the everyday mundane. Thematically, his work draws largely from the relationships between synesthesia, film spectatorship and technological artmaking.

KIM ÁNH NGO BUI
UNTITLED (LOOK)

ARTIST STATEMENT

Untitled (Look) pays homage to Annegret Soltau's 1970s photomontages, delving into the female body. I diverge using acrylics on canvas, overlaying stitching for a contemporary approach. While Soltau faced societal backlash, today's context allows a more nuanced response to female nudity as I challenge traditional views of female nudity, reimagining Soltau's concepts provocatively.

BIO

My name is Kim Ánh, I am currently a 2nd year student pursuing a double major in visual arts and education studies in the Bachelor of Visual Arts. As a visual arts student, I specialise in painting, drawing, collage and screen-printing but I am also interested in graphic design and have become a self-taught designer.

BEATRICE PORCELLATO
UnEXPIRED

ARTIST STATEMENT

Like expired milk, for the longest time she had perceived herself to be over the age range of experiencing a full to the brim, teen life. She had been convinced that her momentary time of having fun and experiencing heartfelt relationships were long overdue but soon realised how wrong that idea had been. The series of oil on canvas snapshots are referenced from a few of her own pictures, details upon the unnoticed or quickly to lose if you blink, details. Huddled family parties, a date at the bar, the moon peering behind the clouds, a cigarette fallen upon a Paramore sticker, a crowd of people and so on. Life goes on, unlike expired milk. Unexpired.

BIO

I’m currently a student at USYD and I study a double degree being a Bachelor of Visual Arts and a Bachelor of Advanced Studies. Art has always been a general focus for me, as well as studying languages, playing instruments and all the like, generally most of the creative focuses in life.

KRISTEN RHODES-HASLER
KONA ANGANAI BAIM

Kristen Rhodes-Hasler, Kona Anganai Baim, 2022, Video. 1:44min

ARTIST STATEMENT

The audio and video projected onto the glass in Kona Anganai Baim depicts the moment my grandmother’s deceased body was removed from her home. The video itself looks out towards the driveway and the car awaiting her body. The audio truly encapsulates the aftermath of her death; her favourite song Kona Anganai Baim, a Kiribati church hymn, is sung by her extended Kiribati family and now surrounds the glass and projection. The projection of this video onto the glass, which has been slumped to evoke a sense of suspended movement – a moment in time - refracts the light and causes colour and light to splay over the room, changing with the movement within the video. This quality in the glass obscures the memory and allows the viewer to experience the ephemerality of the moment.

BIO

Kristen Rhodes-Hasler is a New Zealand born artist currently living, working and studying on Gadigal Land in Sydney, Australia. Her interdisciplinary practice often focuses on exploring ideas of memory, and time, and many of her artworks have an element of viewer participation. Kristen works across multiple media such as fabric, glass, food and meals, video projections and alternative photographic processes.

JORJA RYNNE
3113

ARTIST STATEMENT

The work is a site of offering, inviting those who encounter it to charge the site through the sacrificial exchange of personal artefacts. To make an offering, you must also choose to take a previous offering from the site with you.

BIO

Jorja Rynne is a Sydney-based artist and student at the Sydney College of the Arts, who in working across digital mediums and sculpture, explores intertextual knowings of panpsychic becoming and processes of alchemical transmutation. The metaxic structures; autonomous yet instrumental, are willed into form through their essential purpose to fulfil their function as the conduit for the destabilisation of the self.

REMI SICILIANO
GROWING FUNGUS

ARTIST STATEMENT

This photo visualises my unexpected encounter with fungus growing through a roll of expired film. Networks of the sprawling fungus consume, augment, and obscure my image. Instead of discarding the film as a ruined material, I chose to celebrate this contamination and begin pursuing an ecological practice of image-making.

BIO

Remi Siciliano is a photomedia artist exploring the potential to collaborate with other organisms and landscape processes to make images. Siciliano’s methodology Ecological Image-Making celebrates all the different organisms, materials and forces at play within her practice, where collaborative interactions entangle the divisions between artist, creatures, subject, object and landscape.

LILY THOMAS-McKNIGHT
NGADHI BIYAL BALANHAL? (IS IT MINE?)

ARTIST STATEMENT

Ngadhi Biyal Balanhal? comments on the past presentation of First Nations peoples. The prints mimic ethnographic photographs of Aboriginal peoples that have created harmful and dehumanising perceptions. The screenprint features an Acknowledgement of Country in Wiradjuri thus reinforcing the importance of cultural knowledge and practice for Aboriginal peoples. The work is an attempt of reclaiming cultural ownership.

BIO

I am a proud Wiradjuri and Gomeroi woman studying a Bachelor of Visual Arts / Bachelor of Advanced Studies. My artworks draw from my heritage, celebrating my culture but also critiquing colonisation and its effects.

LILY TSURUKO TUCKER
NORMAL FEMALE

ARTIST STATEMENT

This digitally-edited photographic piece breaks down the human form into its most fundamental aspect: chromosomes. Modelled after a ‘normal female’ karyotype, Tucker takes the place of chromosomes in this print to question how we rationalise our gender identities, particularly when strict gender binaries force us to simplify our complex existences.

BIO

Working across multiple disciplines including installation, digital media, and performance, Tucker hopes to cultivate intimate relationships of honesty and vulnerability with their audience through their art. Tucker’s practice is largely influenced by their experiences in navigating the tumultuous venture we call ‘being alive’—reflected in their confronting yet often wry style.

JENNY JIA LI VAN RATINGEN
HOW TO LIVE A LONG LIFE

ARTIST STATEMENT

How to live a long life serves as an homage to the complexities of my family dynamics and how Chinese traditions have continued to shape these interactions. Familiar to many Chinese households, conflicts and difficult topics are often resolved through actions and food instead of words. By documenting these exchanges by laboriously scrubbing away paint and layering dialogue, I hope to reference the way meaning and intimacy is often found in-between seemingly unimportant interactions.

BIO

As a Chinese-Australian artist working across woodworking, painting and ceramics, my practice delves into intergenerational conflict through invisible dynamics and transformative labour. While personal, my art aims to resonate with wider audiences, evoking universal experiences and emotions. I strive to make the invisible visible, infusing works with emotional resonance to foster understanding and connection.

WENMIAO XIN
拆 (chai)

ARTIST STATEMENT

This group of photographs was taken in Shandong Province, China in January 2020, before Wenmiao returned to Australia. As a photographer born in China but living in Australia, her works contain many memories of her mother tongue and her childhood.

The “拆 (demolition)” in the photo means that these old houses are about to be demolished, and with the rapid development of urbanisation, the old things are quickly replaced by new ones.

BIO

Wenmiao Xin is a photographer and multimedia artist who lives and works in Gadigal Land (Sydney) / Naarm (Melbourne). She uses visual art and digital media to explore contemporary gender and social issues, and to express herself.

ESTELLE YOON
쎄쎄쎄 (sse-sse-sse)

Estelle Yoon, 쎄쎄쎄 (sse-sse-sse), 2023, 16mm film, 3:19min.

ARTIST STATEMENT

'쎄쎄쎄 (sse-sse-sse)' is an homage to the intergenerational love that weaves a cultural tapestry, harmonising the South Korean traditional lullaby '반달 (Bandal)' and its hand gestures to nurture deep familial bonds in its simplest form.

BIO

Estelle Yoon is a queer, Korean-Australian visual artist currently practising on Gadigal land. Yoon explores notions of family, time, memory and nostalgia through her core mediums of analogue photography and filmmaking, in pursuit of the philosophy of wabi-sabi which expresses simplicity, beauty in imperfection, and transience.

ILLUMI-MATE (CLEO ZHONG, DILA ACIL & KESNAVI PARAMMANANDHAN)
ILLUSIONARY SPACE

ARTIST STATEMENT

Illusionary Space, an interactive lighting installation is designed as an immersive experience conjuring a mesmerising illusion of dynamic depth and perpetual motion. Simple acrylic plates with 2D patterns become mesmerising when you engage with the light, giving you a glimpse of the universe's enigmatic forces in a humble and immersive way.

BIO

Illumi-mate, a versatile lighting design team, seamlessly weaves together diverse backgrounds in illuminating design, interaction design, and electrical art. Their work is deeply rooted in a passion for exploring the simple yet profound connection between humans and light.

SOPHIE XIAO YUE ZHOU
8888 BONE DROPPING BEATS TO GET BOOGIE WITH IT

ARTIST STATEMENT

[12:888 AM]

you stumble upon a sprout.

feed it.

legs...eyes, skin?!!

INSTRUCTIONS

Open this link. 

Click on ‘12:37 AM’  to begin.

BIO

Sophie Xiao Yue Zhou is an Australian-born Chinese-Manchurian artist. They are in their final year of Secondary Education and have exhibited at Goodspace Gallery and Pari.