2024 “USU CREATIVE AWARDS”
CURATED BY BEATRICE WALLER
14 OCTOBER - 15 NOVEMBER, 2024
Shelley Watters, Transforming Matter VI - part a (detail), 2024, unique lumen print of compost material, fixed. Image courtesy of the artist.
Open to all students of the University of Sydney (USyd), the annual University of Sydney Union (USU) Creative Awards is Australia's largest university student union creative prize, highlighting the very best of on-campus creativity from our student community.
The USU Creative Awards are divided into the categories Art, Music, Word and Short Film, with each category awarding the following prize amounts:
1st Prize: $1250
2nd Prize: $800
USU Member’s Choice Prize: $500
Winners from all categories will be announced on 31 October 2024.
USU Member’s Choice voting is exclusively available to USU Members in the gallery and online from 14 October, and closes at 12pm on Wednesday 30 October.
Whether you’re a student, USYD staff member or part of the community, sign up to become a member of USU here to place your vote.
By entering the Member’s Choice voting you'll go in the draw to WIN an all-access Art Gallery of New South Wales membership!
ONLINE EXHIBITION
Ira Friedberg, the hottest day on planet earth (film still), 2023, 6.22 min. Image courtesy of the artist.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
BY BEATRICE WALLER
As a first-time curator, I was honoured to be presented with the opportunity to contribute to this year’s USU Creative Awards. As a current Masters of Museum & Heritage Studies and former Sydney College of the Arts student, I felt excited at the prospect of promoting the creativity of my peers. As a fellow emerging artist, I also care deeply about providing opportunities for exhibiting the work of others who are also finding their footing. However, I was also daunted. It is hard to synthesise such a diverse show as the USU Creative Awards into a clear, single thread. This is the key challenge I have found both in curating this show and putting this essay together.
Ella Thompson, Creatures On Hills From Places In The Tunnels Up There, 2024. Expanding foam, spray paint, ceramics, 400 x 841 x 594mm.
Past curators have described this show as a sort of assemblage, mosaic, a collection of visual languages and expression that, when combined and viewed from a distance, shows us something of the mood of student creatives.
Alongside celebrating and awarding creative skill, I see this as key to the purpose of a show like this one. The works are a selection of the best examples of creative expression at The University of Sydney this year, and the resulting show is a snapshot of the current tide of themes, media and thought in contemporary art from a student’s perspective.
And so, what is that tide?
The experience of the last few years has been a tumultuous one. Our world is politically charged, and it feels as though we are watching history unfolding in front of us. The phrase ‘cost of living crisis’ has practically become a slang term at this point. It is against this backdrop that I found myself surprised by the direction I have seen our artists take this year.
Our finalists have approached their work with a sort of softness, or, at the very least a lack of sharpness that I would expect young people to react with in a time where they are battling against a myriad of struggles. Broadly, the themes of our selected works have a sense of sentimentality, nostalgia, yearning, escape, spiritual sereneness or introspection.
What then, do we take from this?
Left: Shelley Watters, Transforming Matter VI, 2024. Unique lumen prints of compost material on Ilford Ilfobrom Galerie FB (one fixed, one unfixed), 508 x 830mm.
Right: Sophie Dohnt, Adorning Sovereignty of Ourselves, 2023. Stainless steel, human hair displayed on plaster boards, 700 x 500 x 200mm.
I believe our artists are showing a quiet strength and true resilience against pressure from all sides. When reflecting on this, I was reminded of something Australian Potter Joan Campbell once said that struck me while studying her work and practice. She is primarily known for her sculptures that were made using the Japanese Raku technique, a process where ceramic wares are heated to 1000 degrees, then pulled from the kiln and submerged in combustible materials like sawdust, hair or paper. This is incredibly stressful for the piece, withstanding the pressures of heat shock, flames and smoke. The piece is stained and marked by these stresses, cracking and blackening with the smoke, but notably remains porous, unsealed and open to change.
Campbell was so drawn to this process because of the way it mimics the human condition. She said:
“The attempt is to bring one’s work through these extremes and in the end have it retain its essential fragility and softness…Basic to the understanding of why I choose to work this way is my wish to acknowledge that the people I admire most in the world…are those who have endured huge pressures, tensions and tragedies in their lives and instead of becoming embittered or strongly aggressive have had the strength to remain soft, gentle, warm people.”
Runa Vasile, Untitled. (Doughnutland), 2023. stoneware, turf, 800 x 750mm.
She was struck, as I am, by the way that people have the ability to undergo stress and pain and come out unjaded by the cruel things they experience. There is something to admire in strength that expresses itself with gentleness.
Returning to the work of this year’s students, there is a distinct absence of blame, sharp jabs or loud shouting (which, of course, have their place). Instead, gentleness is manifested through a few overarching threads.
The first is one of connection, explored with delicacy and nuance. We have works celebrating the spaces of safety for the queer community, expressing a desire to connect an estranged mother and seeking to reconnect to lost cultural memory. Letters to loved ones are cremated, leaving old grievances behind and a grandmother’s orchids are memorialised in paint. Each example explores a nuanced, and deeply personal experience of relationships.
Spirituality and our synergy with the natural world is the second key thread. Our artists have sought to draw out this harmony using materiality, turning natural materials into ceramic glaze, composting prints in front of eyes and leaving living grass to wither in the gallery space. Photographic work takes us into sacred spaces, capturing tranquillity and dialogue between spiritual and natural places.
Finally, the act of escape is embraced through a variety of approaches. The absurd is played on through vintage chairs turned into the stars of online porn. Dreams are manifested onto a painted surface, creating a sense of magic and time is collapsed, expressing a yearning for a past or future where things are easier.
As I expressed above, there is so much strength and grace in not allowing your pain and struggle to harden you, but I think its power goes beyond that. In exploring these ideas that cut so close to what we are as human beings, the artists are working to clean up the cultural muck that we are all swimming in. By taking a leaf from their book, perhaps we too can achieve the same strength, resilience and follow them in finding some clean water to swim in.