Join us on a trip to the ANU School of Art & Design Graduating Exhibition

Every year at The Australian National University, the School of Art & Design Graduating Exhibition is accompanied by a crazy weather event. One year, there were fires and days of 40-degree weather, and another saw torrential rain and flooding.

As I walk through the gallery space before the opening, grey clouds cover the sky after an usually dry and hot spring.

“We are prepared for anything” says Irina Agaronyan, Gallery and Communications Officer at the School of Art & Design (SOAD).

It’s almost as though the weather is trying to create a legacy as memorable and meaningful as the graduating exhibition.

A celebration and a showcase, the exhibition fosters the talents of emerging artists, painting bright brushstrokes for future success.

“The school has a really rich history, both with Canberra locals, nationally and also internationally,” explains Dr Ella Barclay, Senior Lecturer and Convenor of the Bachelor of Visual Art (honours) and acting Convenor of the Master of Contemporary Practices.

“A lot of our alumni are represented by some of the largest international galleries overseas and in Canberra, so there is that consistent reputation for excellence.”

This becomes clear as I’m guided throughout each space. Diverse, rich and refreshingly uncompromised, each body of work takes viewers on an intimate journey that reflects students’ yearlong efforts across a wide range of visual arts and design practices.

Starting at the SOAD exhibition entry, the work of Litia Roko embodies the gallery’s trailblazing nature. Displayed across three different screens, with accompanying audio, Roko’s work grapples with images and photography within network culture, with over-exposure and surrealist aesthetics used to capture the diminishing value of pictures.

“Images are everywhere. There are billions of images produced and circulated on the internet every day, but they aren’t closed, revered documents or photographic objects anymore, and I don’t think it’s productive to continue thinking of them in this way,” Roko says. 

“My work tries to find new ways into images as financialised datapoints, sites of extraction, sites of surveillance—all of which of course is deeply political…it requires politics.” 

Roko is one of a select few whose work has been recognised by the Emerging Artist Support Scheme. Founded in 1988 by the then director, David Willams, the scheme catapults recipients’ careers by offering additional support through awards, and commissioning and acquiring new artworks.

Roko took home the Canberra Contemporary Art Space Mentoring and Exhibition Award, along with the M16 Artspace Artist in Residence & Exhibition Award and the Peter and Lena Karmel Anniversary Prize in Art.

Part of this success can be attributed to the gentle guidance of Barclay, who supports students in turning complex ideas into compelling work.

“It’s really about giving students the space and letting them kind of test weird and challenging ideas and helping them bring those into fruition,” says Barclay.

“I think the very best art is about kind of making complexity accessible, and all of these students have really been grappling with complex and interesting ideas about our time, and then coalescing them into physical form, which is what we can see in the gallery spaces.”

Moving upstairs now, Isobel Waters’s multi-media body of work is centred on whether she should have children. The expression of her conflicting ideas, as conveyed through hot-sculpted glass, wood and silicone, earned her the Art Monthly Australasia Subscription Award and the Craft + Design Canberra Emerging Contemporaries Exhibition award.

“I worked with glass and mixed media. I’ve used a particular technique throughout the piece called ‘pate de verre’, which is multiple processes of taking the glass out of a furnace, turning it back into a powder, fusing it together and taking it through different firings,” says Waters.

“When talking to people about this work, there is this sense of grief because the furniture has been burnt and damaged, but I think it just reflects on this idea of no matter whether you decide to have children or not, there’s a sacrifice involved.

“Whatever you’ve chosen, there’s a loss in that.”

With the storm outside slowly taking form, the humidity follows us to the final exhibition space, where student Sophie Kihara-Murer talks through their repurposed textile onion bag tapestry, which brings ideas of exploitation, race, environment, and gender to life through its woven design, earning them the Strathnairn Arts Association Exhibition Award.

The approach is inspired by Kihara-Murer’s grandmother, who will see the work in person at the exhibition opening.

“Different types of tapestry and embroidery techniques have a little shout-out moment for my grandmother, who has taught me a lot of these skills,” says Kihara-Murer.

Will she be coming to see the exhibition? I ask.

“She sure will be! I’m very excited to show her. I’ve shown her some of my works already and she’s like, ‘oh, onion bags are so interesting.'”

The graduating exhibition is now open for both the ANU and Canberra community to explore – rain, hail or shine.