After all the hard slog preparing, the Graduate Exhibition was a great success. We had a great opening night, standing room only in many areas of the buildings. Approx. 750 people responded with an RSVP and that seems about right. We also had a great many through during the rest of the exhibition.
Thanks to my fellow artists, RMIT staff and all who contributed and made it a great opening and great exhibition. And thanks to friends and family for coming to see the show.
A quick catch up post about preparing for my Graduate Exhibition.
It was an incredibly enhausting time. We emptied our studios of all furniture, painted endless walls and floors and began setting out work across many rooms and booths. There were lots of challenges to hang a cohesive show, combining the work of over 50 artists into the one show was an incredible undertaking and not without it’s stressors. I was alotted a space to install my work quite late, which was a huge challenge for me. Normally I have days to prepare, to sketch and do colour experiements, but I almost had to enter the space dry. I found this so hard.
This work was born out of a series of drawings and paintings on paper and I wanted to see them in large scale. Often when working on paper or sketching, the works don’t feel complete until I can walk into them at large scale. So I was keen to get this one on a wall.
Sometimes things just don’t work. Many times I have painting things in small scale and then tried them on a large scale and it just flopped. That happened again recently.
It was the first time I attempted those random and deliberate brush marks in a large scale. I had plans of linking the shape together and unfolding an installation across the room, in a similar way to these works on plywood, but the upscaling did nothing for the shape. To me it just looked like the beginnings of a graffiti mural, which is not the content I want to bring to my work at this point (if ever). As with before, it seems the problem was the size of my brush in relation to the size of the shape. It may have worked if the shape had been half the size. Or if it was filled in, which I have since started to do.
This still is from my latest painting experiment, this time with red, yellow and blue. Are you seeing a theme with primary colours recently?
This is the most successful yet. I was able to get the lighting right, a good camera and edit properly. I’m learning a lot about the video process. However, as you learn more about making video, you find there is so much more to know. I enjoy making videos, but for the moment, that’s not where I want my focus to go. So, they might just appear in my work now and then.
This work will form part of my assessment this semester and may turn up in some exhibitions in the future.