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We are practicing students of the Victorian College of the Arts, Southbank on Kulin nation.
Our individual practices incorporate the land on which we are situated.
My practise incooperates were I live. Williamstown is a heritage listed suburb with lots of history and colonial roots. Constructed of blue stone the enviroment is an constant reminder of the Australian story of colonialisation and also the empty bluestone buildings reminds me of inhospitability and the everchanging concept of wealth and need. This comes into my work as I use old found fabric materials of mine and others, I embroid lines on the found fabrics that mimic water streams, skin markings and surburbian lines. I use natural dyes like red wine, coffee and vegetables from my garden as the soil changes the colours of the dye. I am fascinated with the idea of changing beauty and ornate and in the context of the colonial, catholic surburb I live in the architecture is gothic and cottage like with stained glass. The found fabrics that circulate are doilies and decorative bedding which I decorate and connect them to nature.
I am an artist from the West Gippsland area. Living in rural Victoria influences my practice and identity - where I have grown up in a small community surrounded by a range of ecologies and the threat of natural disasters, such as drought and bushfires. My upbringing provided me a deep admiration for nature and an awareness of change in environments. This has been magnified through my studies and commute to the urban city. Where I constantly shift between two diverse worlds. Through vertical iPhone photographs I source material from multiple locations, ranging from home, to Melbourne and in between. My paintings are less about one specific place, and instead, a celebration of the flora I find and the emotional response I have to them. To depict a flower is to be in touch, compelled by a more than human energy. I am appreciating something that could be gone tomorrow.
Informed by my mother's bonsai garden, my practice reflects on our relationship with the natural world through an instinct to control. Growing up in Tien Giang, Vietnam, I witnessed my mother’s ideal forms growing years after years, under the tips of her favourite bonsai tools - pruners, wires, garden stakes. Utilising very similar tools and techniques, here in my studio at Southbank in Naarm/Melbourne, I make my own version of potted plants, but fabricated entirely from plastic. Seeking to reimagine gardening in sculptural forms through recurring use of coat racks, floor lamps, and PVC pipes, I playfully subvert traditional bonsai ideal forms through embracing the commodification and artificiality of these practices. They are trees that organically grew out of their architectural neighbourhood, from the city’s noise, rhythm, and visual systems. Through unending cycles of pulling things apart and re-juxtaposing them together to unearth new logics and meanings, my work invites tension and paradox; ambivalently stands between the geometric and the organic, the familiar and the alien, the playful and the satirical; all while facilitating a middleground for intergenerational gardening.
I am currently invested in the idea of ‘play’ as a result of having an interactive kinetic based practise. The idea of parks and playgrounds as constructed sites of interaction has led me to test such venues. I have taken inspiration from council land design processes, to the actual forms of playground equipment, and have created site-specific installations as well as unusual play equipment forms that disrupt the established archetype. Following my interest in the park and site of playground being specifically designated for recreation and joy, I began to wonder about the original land these sites were created upon. I live two streets down from the large Surrey Park area in Box Hill, and I have known it for my whole life, but as I delved further, researching more into the previous mining business, brickworks factory and former-quarry-turned-swimming hole; alongside installation material tests, I began to think more broadly about these specific sites in every neighbourhood. Just as these foreign materials - the plastic playground, the abandoned factory, the barbed wire enclosing the old landfill - have been installed there, my kinetic artworks mirror this as they often rely on electricity or batteries to initiate movement. I try to express this feeling of being the foreign object wedging itself onto this colonised land through my latest artistic explorations.
My art practice focuses on the juncture between the bodily human experience and the impacts on the environment when humankind neglects their innate connection to it. I am interested in divulging the issues surrounding the way we as humans discuss the natural ecosystem as though we are separate from it. My work explores my own colonial history and identity and seeks to travel between issues of excessive resource gathering and overhunting of native animal populations. I also examine my own place within the world and the ways in which my own body responds to the world around it. My practice in recent years has revolved around my ancestral heritage and its direct links to colonialism and mass-whaling. Warrnambool and the Portland Bay Area is where whaling and mass-fishing began in Victoria, as far back as the 1820s. Through my work I wish to engage with issues surrounding the immense damages caused by colonialism and industrialization on the natural environment, and Indigenous people.
Based on stolen Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Land, I am a visual artist whose practice revolves around the realms of video art and audio. In our world, signage is a fundamental tool for conveying information, guiding individuals, and facilitating seamless navigation within our world. In an era where information overload is a constant - well designed signage serves as a vital filter, offering clear and concise messages which transcend language barriers. In my practice I want to throw this idea on it’s head and question the ways in which we interpret this constant overload of information.
Lời tri ân đất nước (Lan Anh’s Acknowledgment of Country in Vietnamese)
Tôi tri ân và ghi nhận Người Thổ dân và Cư dân đảo, quần đảo eo biển Torres là những chủ nhân truyền thống của đất nước này. Họ chưa bao giờ nhường lại vùng đất, vùng trời, vùng sông nước và biển cả mà tổ tiên họ để lại. Tôi xin bày tỏ lòng kính trọng và biết ơn của mình đối với trưởng lão trong quá khứ và hiện tại của vùng đất Wurundjeri của người Woi-wurrung và Boon wurrung. Tôi xin tri ân những thực hành văn hóa lâu đời của họ và ghi nhận chính họ đã khai mào và nuôi dưỡng nguồn sống tinh thần và sáng tạo nghệ thuật dồi dào cho mảnh đất này. Tại đây, là một du học sinh người Việt, tôi đến để sống, học tập, làm việc, và sáng tác.