image: Judy Kong, Floating (installation view), 2023, video projection.
2023 Awards
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Alexandra Cairney
Drawing Studio Award for excellence in drawing-based practices. BETWEEN YARN AND A HARD PLACE is an ongoing exploration of mother-daughter relationships and, by extension, the complex interaction between the maker and the made. In my semi-autobiographical practice, I explore the more …
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Alice Gaywood
Sculpture Workshop Prize. THE RABBITS is an assemblage of found materials transformed and altered, arranged to echo an imagined agricultural or domestic garden exterior landscape and at the same time an interior domestic setting, similar to a sitting room. As the more …
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Amy Grover
Firestation Print Studio Exhibition Prize for high academic achievement. Sunshine Print Artspace Graduate Award for high academic achievement in Third Year. MEDIEVAL AND THE MODERN Through a practice of print and illustration my work engages with the ways history and more …
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Angela Mezzatesta
Chapman & Bailey Award. A WALK AMONGST NATURE. My practice relates to New Materialism, a philosophy that allows me to open up to an intimate, reciprocal engagement with my materials and immediate surroundings. My current work sits between painting and more …
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Angelina Innocent
The Moat Bar Awards for excellence in Video and Drawing. DRESS YOU UP IN YOUR LOVE explores the body, identity, and sexuality through a queer feminist lens. Viewers will enter a boudoir-like space to experience an immersive installation comprising more …
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Belinda Field
The Wayne Conduit Memorial Prize. My main area of interest is in contemporary still life painting. My works are observational, using traditional painting methods and working from life. The works often begin by moving, organising and arranging objects before building more …
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Bo-dene Stieler
Dean’s Award for Excellence Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art). YELLOW CORRIDOR ‘Look into yellow, feel immersed in colour, anchored when close. The plane of the wall intersecting through my bodily matter to secure, tether me to site.’ My practice involves more …
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Ciara Steggerda
Koodak Award for the Highest Academic Achievement in Third Year Gold & Silversmithing. CONTEMPORARY TALISMANS is a body of work exploring the involvement of jewellery and objects in everyday rituals. Ciara’s practice explores the idea of the talisman, informed by more …
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Coco Jones
BDS Sculpture Prize for outstanding portfolio. TETHERED By temporalities, I am always tethered, but forced to move forward despite it; these opposing internal conflicts causes loss of presentness, how am I to exist? Tethered is a multimedia artwork that investigates more …
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Curtis Costa
44 Frame Factory Graduate Award. AM I ENOUGH? is a personal expression of emotion, identity, and societal reflection. The portrayal of athletic body ideals as symbols of masculine health is often amplified by social media and Hollywood stars resorting to more …
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Declan Monaghan
EXILE, is a series of print-based works that explores my experiences and feelings towards masculinity. The works are framed from my own perspective, drawing attention to characteristics in our society that remain patriarchal, exclusionary and/or ‘toxic’. more …
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Gemma Seymour
Troppo Print Studio Graduate Award for high academic achievement in third year. RMIT MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. RMIT partners with weapons companies.Elbit systems, BAE systems, Thales and Boeing Defence (the list goes on) fund research and scholarships, provide internships and work more …
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Jane Cocks
Northcote Pottery Supplies Award: “LISTEN TO THE WILD BEASTS OF THE ISLAND, NIGHT BIRDS AND WITCHES.” These are all terms that have been applied to women who did not conform to a male dominated society. There is a present and historical more …
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Jessica Guo
ACAE Gallery Emerging Artist Award. TOTAL RECALL: IN UNDERSTANDING THE SELF FROM ONEIRIC FRAGMENTS I used to have this recurring dream when I was younger. I would be lying on a conveyor belt in a warehouse by myself, in more …
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Judy Hiu Lam Kong
ACAE Gallery Emerging Artist Award. FLOATING I am obsessed with excavating my inner self. My art practice and my life experiences cannot be separated. I am experiencing the ongoing reposition of my cultural identity and collective unconsciousness between my home more …
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Juli Nyeste
Velling Award. My multidisciplinary practice deals with the surreality of the everyday and endeavours to celebrate the beauty of the mundane through my personal lens as a Hungarian-Australian artist living in Naarm/Melbourne. My paintings and objects eschew the making of more …
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Ka Yan SO (Kelly)
Mejia Group Exhibition Award for excellence in drawing-based practices: ON MY WAY HOME Is our home irreplaceable? Could our ‘home’ be a specific color, language, people, scent, or a sense of nostalgia rooted in childhood memories? This project undertakes an more …
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Lauren Cameron
RMIT Ceramic Student Association Award: Working predominately in ceramics, Lauren uses ideas and experiences around trauma, beauty, and men in her ceramic forms to explore and challenge ideas about these topics within society. Using wheel thrown, sculpting, and glaze techniques, more …
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Levi Warren
The Moat Bar Awards for excellence in Video and Drawing. THE BEAUTY & THE TERROR My practice marries cinematic and illustrative elements in the pursuit of elevating both, as I explore communication, storytelling and an interrogation of modern romanticism. I more …
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Lillian Ophelia Deacon
Dean’s Award for creative accomplishment Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art). EMBRACING YOUR VANISHED SHADE is an exploration of memory, nostalgia, and the intricate interplay of emotions through an interdisciplinary lens. My project blends photographic prints on fabric, poetry, sound, and more …
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Lucas Jennings
Firestation Print Studio Access Prize. AUTOCRYOSTHESIA From the Greek: auto (referring to the self), kryos (frost, cold, ice), esthesia (sensation, the capacity for feeling). My project, Autocryosthesia, began as an exploration of FOMO (the fear of missing out, as exacerbated more …
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Meeyoung Lee
Print Residency award for high academic achievement in Third Year. WOMAN, WAR AND BEYOND is based on the Japanese military’s forced sexual enslavement of adolescent females during World War II, known as ‘Comfort Women’. This term refers to the Imperial more …
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Molly Morris-McGinty
Highly commended – Wayne Conduit Prize. NOCTURNAL FLUX – A DIARY OF THE NIGHT My work explores the vitality of the space of night through the influence its atmosphere has upon perception. The work is a dive into the complexity more …
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Moon Ramone
Highly commended for Chapman & Bailey Award. Through painting I aim to capture the essence of consciousness by exploring the delicate balance between mind, body, thoughts and feelings. By utilising the juxtaposition of haptic and meticulous paint and drawing techniques, more …
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Odin Strbac Low
Australian Print Workshop Award. CORRODED PERCEPTIONS is a response to pressing ecological concerns. Embracing corrosion as an artistic motif and a symbol of change, the series addresses a glaring void within traditional and contemporary landscape photography, where the harsh realities more …
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Rachael Goy
Mejia Group Exhibition Award excellence in drawing-based practices. THE RECURRENCE OF ACTION – EVENT. My practice, my artworks, my studio, and myself all exist as registrations of time—the limitations of it, the flattening of the past and the constant more …
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Ruby Tirekidis
Highly commended – Wayne Conduit Prize: Narrative is what drives my art practice. My most recent body of work explores the notion of visual storytelling and has been inspired by a personal mythology I have been writing. My paintings tend more …
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Sam Meekan
Drawing Studio Award for excellence in drawing-based practices. SPIKE THE CANON – This body of painting re-enacts hyper-masculine forms of ‘play violence’ drawn from niche hobbies such as 90s table top and video games. It investigates the vying solipsisms of more …
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Sharon Xin Xu
ACAE Gallery Emerging Artist Award. SAFETY WITHIN DIVERSE BODIES Sharon Xin Xu (b.2000), 徐欣, is an emerging Cantonese-Australian artist working on unceded lands of the Eastern Kulin nation, Naarm (Melbourne), and the Eora nation, Warrane (Sydney). Her work predominantly examines more …
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Tatts
RMIT Ceramic Student Association Award, Stockroom Ceramic Award, & R.L Foote Design Studio Award: VITAL MATERIALITY Tatt’s interest in New Materialist theories informs the technique of assembling multiple porcelain tesserae or cut and refined ceramic tiles. The physicality of individual more …
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Victoria Lynagh
Walkers Ceramic Award & Stockroom Ceramic Award: FACETS OF A CHANGING LANDSCAPE This body of work reflects the different facets of the changing Australian landscape. Drawing inspiration from controlled burns and wildfires, I blend and contrast the devastation they cause more …
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Vittoria Cugno
Tolarno Hotel Painting Prize. CANDID: AN APPRECIATION OF MOMENTS THAT ARE OFTEN OVERLOOKED Vittoria Cugno (b.2001) is an emerging Melbourne based artist who specialises in oil portrait paintings. In the past year, Vittoria has focused on capturing candid moments in more …
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Woo Hyun Kang
I Squared Gallery Exhibition Award for excellence in drawing-based practices: ADORATION: DROWNING INTO THE PAST. This practice involves a process of a gradual transition from affection to an attachment, ultimately an obsession. The symbolic space, objects, and colour repeat and more …
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Zach Edwards
RMIT University Library Art Prize. Joseph Beuys Cafe Drawing Award for excellence in expanded approach to drawing. MY LAWYER THE BUS STOP: a discussion of the unseen, exploring contextualisation through spaces and realms. Currently, in my practice, I have been more …
2023 Graduates
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Alex Danay
PAST LIVING: Memory is a Monster/KUTIS I work fluidly in my studio, constantly experimenting and researching materials and methods to find the best ways in which to express two main ideas. The first being the exploration of mental
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Alexander ‘Pug’ Williams
instagram: @notawizard_yet www.alexanderpugwilliams.com GLYPH OF NON-ATTACHMENT My 2023 capstone project is the Glyph of Non-attachment (GON-A). GON-A is a non-static assemblage composed from sculptural objects I have created over the course of my degree. These sculptures are made from industrial
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Alexandra Cairney
Drawing Studio Award for excellence in drawing-based practices. BETWEEN YARN AND A HARD PLACE is an ongoing exploration of mother-daughter relationships and, by extension, the complex interaction between the maker and the made. In my semi-autobiographical practice, I explore the
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Alice Gaywood
Sculpture Workshop Prize. THE RABBITS is an assemblage of found materials transformed and altered, arranged to echo an imagined agricultural or domestic garden exterior landscape and at the same time an interior domestic setting, similar to a sitting room. As the
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Amelia Gill
WEATHER PAINTINGS These works are about the sensibilities of past upper classes, and the cyclical growth of vegetation. I am a painter and draughtsman based in Melbourne and was born on a farm in New Zealand. In my work, through
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Amy Grover
Firestation Print Studio Exhibition Prize for high academic achievement. Sunshine Print Artspace Graduate Award for high academic achievement in Third Year. MEDIEVAL AND THE MODERN Through a practice of print and illustration my work engages with the ways history and
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Angela Mezzatesta
Chapman & Bailey Award. A WALK AMONGST NATURE. My practice relates to New Materialism, a philosophy that allows me to open up to an intimate, reciprocal engagement with my materials and immediate surroundings. My current work sits between painting and
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Angelica Zumpo
THE SYMPHONY OF JOCULARITY: UNVEILING THE JOURNEY FROM CHILDHOOD TO ADULTHOOD is a project that explores the harmonious interplay between craft and childhood by weaving together found objects and metals in an effort to explore connections between past and present
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Angelina Innocent
The Moat Bar Awards for excellence in Video and Drawing. DRESS YOU UP IN YOUR LOVE explores the body, identity, and sexuality through a queer feminist lens. Viewers will enter a boudoir-like space to experience an immersive installation comprising
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Angelique Fry
ETERNAL LOOP~REIMAGINING THE BUCKLE In this project I explored contemporary buckle making through the lens of intuitive making. This work seeks to create discussion on the functionality of different buckles by abstracting their form, scale and function. I’m interested
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Angelo Ooi
COMMUNITY is an installation of eighty-eight wheel thrown vases. I view each vessel that I make as a person – individual and unique. In physical form a pot is like a person with a neck, shoulders, belly, hip and foot. When
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Anjali Hunter
GOOD VS EVIL I am an artist with a practice that focuses on sculpture and installation. My practice is a constant exploration of history, religion and the vast realm of the human condition. As a sculpture student at RMIT, I am
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Anna Sanders
Based in Naarm/Melbourne, Sanders’ work addresses the body as material, meaning and muse. Her origins begin with self, yet through analogue manipulation the familiar becomes augmented and re-assembled. Her work spans a multitude of disciplines including, but not limited
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Anthea Cleary
CUT FROM THE SAME CLOTH. The Currawong bird call repeats as dusk approaches and a warm spring air is present. The sun sets over the top paddock as the kangaroos graze on the grass below. My fingernail beds are coated
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Arkady Gollings
Reds, Greens, and White. They remind me of Christmas, an American one. A clown mask. The colours on a Liverpool Football Club scarf, a big bushel of Red poppies or a traffic light if White replaced the orange light. Red,
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Ash Worthington
CHERCHEZ LA FEMME! My work is concerned with how women are viewed both in an art world setting and in other narrative forms. We see images of women covering the walls of galleries, so we assume they are present. We
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Aurea Palmer
OUR REGRETTABLE PROPHECY A sculptural installation that calls into question our future under current social condition. It questions society’s cause of climate change and its radical effects on everything, reinforced through the showcase of mundane elements. A portrayal of a
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Ayla Stewart
GIRLHOOD, WOMANHOOD AND THE SPACE BETWEEN This body of works investigates stages of girlhood through to womanhood, and what each of these moments of rebirth might look like from a personal perspective. Each of these moments are driven by periods
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Belinda Field
The Wayne Conduit Memorial Prize. My main area of interest is in contemporary still life painting. My works are observational, using traditional painting methods and working from life. The works often begin by moving, organising and arranging objects before building
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Bo-dene Stieler
Dean’s Award for Excellence Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art). YELLOW CORRIDOR ‘Look into yellow, feel immersed in colour, anchored when close. The plane of the wall intersecting through my bodily matter to secure, tether me to site.’ My practice involves
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Cheng Peng Long
As an artist who loves nature and walking, nature is often the subject of my work. I am accustomed to observing the details of things and depicting them in my works, which is reflected in the sculptural paintings of various
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Ciara Steggerda
Koodak Award for the Highest Academic Achievement in Third Year Gold & Silversmithing. CONTEMPORARY TALISMANS is a body of work exploring the involvement of jewellery and objects in everyday rituals. Ciara’s practice explores the idea of the talisman, informed by
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Coco Jones
BDS Sculpture Prize for outstanding portfolio. TETHERED By temporalities, I am always tethered, but forced to move forward despite it; these opposing internal conflicts causes loss of presentness, how am I to exist? Tethered is a multimedia artwork that investigates
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Curtis Costa
44 Frame Factory Graduate Award. AM I ENOUGH? is a personal expression of emotion, identity, and societal reflection. The portrayal of athletic body ideals as symbols of masculine health is often amplified by social media and Hollywood stars resorting to
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Damien Tune
CENOZOICA is a physical record of a conceptual self. A sculptural work dedicated to the changing and shifting idea of what makes us who we are, and the experiences that change us. Immortalised in 60-million-year-old igneous basalt mined in Victoria,
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David Bilusic
Perry Summers Sculpture Book Prize for excellent in Sculpture Studio: FORGED is a collection of narrative works that seamlessly intertwine two distinct stories. The first story narrates the tale of The Blacksmith and the Devil, while the second story follows The
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Declan Monaghan
EXILE, is a series of print-based works that explores my experiences and feelings towards masculinity. The works are framed from my own perspective, drawing attention to characteristics in our society that remain patriarchal, exclusionary and/or ‘toxic’.
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Dee Robinson
FLOTILLA OF BOATS In my creative practice I have explored theories of flow, play, and the relationship between making with memory and place. I combine these concepts by fabricating a fleet of vessels, using traditional gold and silversmithing
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Dougal Campion
LEARNING HOW TO BUILD THE ULTIMATE MECHANICAL ORGANISM Hello I’m Dougal. I came to uni, made some friends and built some more. \I’ve been learning how to build robots so they can speak for themselves. Being alive
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Elle Goudis
Elle Goudis is a female artist who is based in Melbourne/Naarm. She is currently studying in her final year (2023) of a Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT University with a specialisation in Painting. She explores the concept of portraiture
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Emily Gaule
BUTCH FEMME NATAL I am not obsessed with weddings. Nor am I obsessed with men. My art practice is the opposite. I am interested in sexuality, performance and failure. I do this for myself and for other women in my
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Emma Lynes
I LOOK AT YOU, AND YOU LOOK AT ME: RECOGNISING THE SELF IN THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT. My work explores the inherent power of the natural environment and its ability to be used as a mirror with which to explore the
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Emmica Lore
I WANTED TO BE CLEVER BUT DECIDED TO JUST GO BIG is a large-scale sculpture engaging in witty institutional critique. Crafted from household materials, the work pokes friendly fun at the art world (whilst not being above it). [Note: The
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Erica Fraser
遷移 (SEN – I) This project encapsulates multidisciplinary works that document and embrace transitory and oppositional forces through a combination of scale, medium and colour. This collection of works walks a fine line between abstraction and representation of the artist’s
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Essay – All my love, Alex
Essay By Alex Cairney for Contextualising Practice The final product will never be as satisfying, as filled with power and potential, as the process of its making. (Grant 2017) Dear Mum, Thank you for clothing, feeding, and nurturing me into
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Essay – Ethical Considerations for Artists Depicting Subjects: Suggestions and Self-Reflection
Essay by Lucas Jennings for Contextualising Practice When artists depict other people in their work, there is an imbalanced power dynamic, and critical ethical considerations arise. As my practice demonstrates, the need for ethical consideration becomes imperative when the depicted
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Essay – How a spider helped me to understand the world: Symbiosis, the Anthropocene and new materialism
Essay by Sophia Liddy for Contextualising Practice Acknowledgment I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which I make, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to Elders past,
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Essay – How can practice create an asexually and aromantically queer space in an archive of allonormativity?
Essay by Alex Pretyman for Contextualising Practice Introduction Within western archives, be that art-historical, social, queer, other archives, there is a distinct – or to many, not-so-distinct – absence of the asexual and aromantic. Asexuality can be defined as experiencing
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Essay – In Defence of Fumbling: embracing improvisation in art-making
Essay by Yvonne Rambeau for Contextualising Practice Introduction The process of art-making can vary greatly from artist to artist. Though many feel the need to exert control over uncertainty through an ordered and planned process, American art educator Erica
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Essay – Intuition and the Creative Act
Essay written by Alexander ‘Pug’ Williams for Contextualising Practice My mother is an artist and a natural dyer. My grandfather was a naturalist, and an engineer. Their passion and curiosity for the world flows through my blood and was
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Essay – Liminal Spaces: how can a mixed-media practice play a role in disrupting binary oppositions?
Essay by Ivy Rose for Contextualising Practice So, don’t give me your tenets and your laws. Don’t give me your lukewarm gods. I want the freedom to carve and chisel my own face, to staunch the bleeding with
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Essay – Memory, Phenomenology and Mono-Ha: Working with the Earth
Essay by Rose Whitlock-Whyte for Contextualising Practice I grew up in a part of semi-rural Victoria outside of a small town, where the bush was my playground. At the age of eight, my family experienced the Black Saturday (2009) bushfires,
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Essay – Phenomenology and the landscape of being
Essay by Odin Strbac Low for Contextualising Practice Acknowledgment I pay my respects to the Traditional Custodians of the land in Naarm (Melbourne), including the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, as well as the Taungurung and Yorta Yorta
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Essay – Pink Impressions: exploring the affective power of pink
Essay by Jade Armstrong for Contextualising Practice Introduction As Fingerhut and Prinz have articulated, the value of art traditionally depended on aesthetic beauty, though over the last decade, notions of value have shifted towards sensory engagement (2018). According to
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Essay – The Modern Teenager: the impacts of film and television on the construction of identity
Essay by Ekaterina (Katya) Ryzhikh for Contextualising Practice The rise in the availability of technology and media as entertainment has had a profound impact on the experiences of growing up. While technology, in particular mobile phones and tablets, were
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Essay – Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana: the ethical non-monogamy of humour and surrealism
Essay by Emmica Lore for Contextualising Practice Introduction Welcome to my essay, where humour takes a tumble into the realm of the surreal. It’s hard to shake the feeling that analysing why something is funny is just, uncool. I find
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Essay – Transforming Trauma: The Role of Immersive Installations as Transitional Objects in Exploring Personal History
Essay by Ka Yan So (Kelly) for Contextualising Practice The artist transforms the personal into the universal, creating an object that can be experienced and felt by others, that has the power to move and inspire. (Townsend 2019) Creating installation
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Essay – Uncertain Identity
Essay by Luna Yang for Contextualising Practice According to Stets and Bourke, structured society imparts values that individuals identify themselves with, which form the basis of one’s identity (2000). As a young adult, when it come to the topic of
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Essay – 你吃了吗? (Have you eaten yet?): recreating gustatory memories to process diasporic experience and identity
Essay by Jessica Guo (郭悦娜) for Contextualising Practice When I was in grade two, I was praised by my white teachers for my English proficiency. But at Saturday Chinese School, I was terrible. I hated learning my language. I found
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Eva Mikelin
FABRIC PANELS: YOU PAY FOR MY MEMORIES These fabric panels and installations are part of an ongoing series of work from 2021 addressing domestic crafts and labour in both concept and process. The arduous practices of hand stitching, darning, and
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Fiona Soeding
TRANQUILO (A VISUAL ODE TO SERENITY) Since the beginning of 2023, my artistic journey has shifted its focus. I originally explored how external influences, such as The Seven Deadly Sins, shape our beliefs and behaviour. This exploration deepened my understanding
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Gemma Seymour
Troppo Print Studio Graduate Award for high academic achievement in third year. RMIT MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. RMIT partners with weapons companies.Elbit systems, BAE systems, Thales and Boeing Defence (the list goes on) fund research and scholarships, provide internships and work
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Georgia Lomax
I AM FEARLESS embarks on the rewriting of self-talk, reconfiguring the internal narrative as a method of post-traumatic recovery. It’s a journey of reclaiming the self through the process of making, reshaping the internal to manifest a better external. The
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Grace Elizabeth Flinn
PURSUIT OF TRANSLATION An exploration of the many transformative processes of casting metal in relation to my automatic drawings. Drawing has always been the cornerstone of my practice. Drawn lines have a magical nature to them, a nature I have
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Greta Ermacora
This project translates the narrative of a person’s intimate life, the moments they find precious by translating casual collections of ephemera and sentimental pictures into permanent formal paintings. Inspired by the seemingly universal way people present their individual collections like
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Guaire McKenna
I SHOT MYSELF WITH A SILLY LITTLE GUN, IT WAS VERY EASY TO TALK ABOUT. My art aims to be ‘ultra accessible’ discussing otherwise serious themes with a silly and childish look to it. The use of common material allows
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Hanieh Khamisi
WOMAN, LIFE, FREEDOM The ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement started as a result of the death of a young Iranian girl named Mahsa Amini who was sentenced to death by the morality police because of not following the dress codes. The
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HAOZHE WANG
REALITY IN THE FANTASY How to convey and present a world in ten seconds? There may be different physical laws, different creatures, different geography in this world – the point is, it’s not the world you’re familiar with.
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Honey Lili Bella Garrett
Traversing Girly ✩ Through the act of painting, I traverse the thematics of ‘girly’, a murky term unto itself, and cultivate a dream-like world that subtly reclaims and elevates traditionally trivialised, overtly feminine symbols. My practice is a playful
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Imke Breayley
WHAT A PRETTY YOUNG GIRL My artwork in the 2023 Graduate Exhibition is about feelings of anger and conflict about being a woman and wanting to embrace femininity but knowing how tightly that is linked to a capitalist and misogynistic
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Ingrid Mascoll
Born in 2002, I am a multidisciplinary artist growing into a woman during the age of social media. I am inspired by the ‘trash’ aesthetic of blogging culture and how unrestricted internet access as a child has affected my growth
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Ivy Rose
KITTEN HEEL FANTASY Ivy Rose is a multidisciplinary artist working between drawing, print, photography, sculpture and costuming, revolving around themes of queer expression and gender performance. Obsessing over camp, kitsch and the excessively extravagant through their diverse practice, and always
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Jane Cocks
Northcote Pottery Supplies Award: “LISTEN TO THE WILD BEASTS OF THE ISLAND, NIGHT BIRDS AND WITCHES.” These are all terms that have been applied to women who did not conform to a male dominated society. There is a present and historical
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Janet Drury
WHAT’S THEIR STORY? The whole thing started with a dusty dilapidated cardboard box at the back of the cupboard under the stairs. It almost went straight into the skip, but B had had dementia and we’d already found a roll
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Jasmine Tiger Babayan
RMIT Ceramic Student Association Award: My practice revolves around material interaction, with a focus on ceramic-based processes. Driven by experimentation, my work is a continuous exploration into the interplay between material, process and space through mutual exchange. Jasmine Tiger
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Jesse Mahoney
TRUSTWORTHY WEBSITE is an online interactive installation. It responds to the user’s actions by presenting satirical content through retro graphics, images, and rhetorical texts. These features contain misinformation to arouse suspicion and existential questions on the nature of internet navigation
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Jessica Elizabeth Beach
NOT SO JELLY This project explores the the existence of jellyfish, specifically Peach Blossoms and their current endangerment, through the form of intaglio prints from copper in order to investigate their form and also processes of preservation. It delves into the
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Jessica Guo
ACAE Gallery Emerging Artist Award. TOTAL RECALL: IN UNDERSTANDING THE SELF FROM ONEIRIC FRAGMENTS I used to have this recurring dream when I was younger. I would be lying on a conveyor belt in a warehouse by myself, in
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Jessica Miranda
YOUR BODY IS NOTHING is an exploration of the abject female body. It is a personal project that began as a way to process my own bodily trauma. I wanted my work to focus on the experience of living
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Joanna Richard
THE FOUNDATIONAL MYTHS OF NATIONHOOD The Foundational Myths of Nationhood is an exploration of the myths and practices involved in nation-building. It investigates the commonplace narratives of national identity and it is constructed and directed through the specific design of
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Joe McIntyre
DUBBININ is an abstract video work that explores the cyclical, interdependent relationship that video has to sound. The piece employs abstraction and psychedelic imagery to capture the spirit of the similarly spacey soundtrack. This inseparable combination culminates in unfamiliar, interplanetary
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Josephine Purtill
EAT YOUR HEART OUT This body of work focuses on the often contradictory and complex nature of the human psyche that manifests in surreal depictions of the human form and anatomy. I view my practice as a means of exploring
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Judy Hiu Lam Kong
ACAE Gallery Emerging Artist Award. FLOATING I am obsessed with excavating my inner self. My art practice and my life experiences cannot be separated. I am experiencing the ongoing reposition of my cultural identity and collective unconsciousness between my home
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Juli Nyeste
Velling Award. My multidisciplinary practice deals with the surreality of the everyday and endeavours to celebrate the beauty of the mundane through my personal lens as a Hungarian-Australian artist living in Naarm/Melbourne. My paintings and objects eschew the making of
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Junke Zhang
SUGAR RESTRICTION This object is made of 9 x 9cm plastic board, interspersed with red and white thread as decoration, capsules containing red and white cotton thread are collaged on the bottom plate. This work is intended to express the
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Ka Yan SO (Kelly)
Mejia Group Exhibition Award for excellence in drawing-based practices: ON MY WAY HOME Is our home irreplaceable? Could our ‘home’ be a specific color, language, people, scent, or a sense of nostalgia rooted in childhood memories? This project undertakes an
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Kaiyan Miao
TRANSCENDING TRADITIONS is an exploration of personal identity, cultural heritage, and reconnections with the bygone. I am inspired by events that happened but were not documented, embarking on a journey through my untold family history. I uncovered many stories, beliefs,
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Kasey Scott
UNTITLED looks at the how our experiences pre-colour our perceptions. Wielding the ceramic medium in a way to deceive the viewer’s perception of material reality, the work explores how one might try to intervene in how they are perceived.
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Kasey Skye Smith
THE LOUNGEROOM AFTERSCHOOL IN 2010 A large installation of personally nostalgic pieces brought together to form an emotional bond for the viewer. The installation consists of several old objects from Kasey’s childhood that connects viewers with their own personal entanglements
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Kawthar Zoubiri
Through painting, I find it is extremely important to be drawn to the piece, as the maker, to learn something new and be a part of the work. Ethnicity is very personal and I’ve drawn aspects of my tradition in
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Lauren Cameron
RMIT Ceramic Student Association Award: Working predominately in ceramics, Lauren uses ideas and experiences around trauma, beauty, and men in her ceramic forms to explore and challenge ideas about these topics within society. Using wheel thrown, sculpting, and glaze techniques,
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Levi Warren
The Moat Bar Awards for excellence in Video and Drawing. THE BEAUTY & THE TERROR My practice marries cinematic and illustrative elements in the pursuit of elevating both, as I explore communication, storytelling and an interrogation of modern romanticism. I
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Lili Smith
A CONSTANT SHIFT is a collection of artworks that simulate movement. Each line is placed one after another in methodical motion – a method that comes to me in the moment, a method that compels me to fill the blank. These
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Lillian Ophelia Deacon
Dean’s Award for creative accomplishment Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art). EMBRACING YOUR VANISHED SHADE is an exploration of memory, nostalgia, and the intricate interplay of emotions through an interdisciplinary lens. My project blends photographic prints on fabric, poetry, sound, and
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Lois Basham
REMEMBER ME I am a multimedia sculptural and installation-based artist living in Naarm. I will soon be graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art in Sculpture from RMIT. I have been a part of many group exhibitions in Melbourne and regional Victoria
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Lucas Jennings
Firestation Print Studio Access Prize. AUTOCRYOSTHESIA From the Greek: auto (referring to the self), kryos (frost, cold, ice), esthesia (sensation, the capacity for feeling). My project, Autocryosthesia, began as an exploration of FOMO (the fear of missing out, as exacerbated
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Lucy Wilde
SELF PORTRAIT WITH OMA (‘Grandma’ in German) is based on an old photograph taken during a visit when I was a young child. For the occasion we got to visit a local waterhole that I would frequent as I got older.
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Luna Yi Jia Yang
RECLAIMING INSECURITY Stemming from my own insecurities caused by unrealistic beauty standards present in modern media, these works directly challenge conventional beauty standards. Women’s bodies are scrutinised, our organs for eating food and birthing life are subject to beauty standards
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Lydia Sant
TALE OF TIME: EXPLORING THE POETIC EROSION OF 35mm CINEMA FILMS My work explores the remnants of cinematic histories, while also considering its connection to today’s digital landscape. I seek to prompt reflection on the enduring significance of analog methods
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Maddison Kershaw
A MOMENT IN NATURE reflects upon the Arts and Crafts movement of late nineteenth century in its response to the industrial revolution. Combining textile art with natural dye and eco print, this piece emphasises the qualities of nature and handcraft
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Matilda Kate Mourant
Matilda Kate Mourant is a multi media artist with a focus in printmaking. Her work examines printmaking, using various types of copperplate etching. Past explorations have involved screen printing, monotype, cyanotype, and frottage, also experimenting with drawing, written word, collage, and painting. Matilda’s work examines grief, love, and belonging through the examination of landscapes that…
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Maya Solomon
HAVEN Colour, pattern, aesthetics, and the home – my oil paintings on canvas capture interior narratives devoid of time but full of nostalgia. My pieces reflect on the human experience and highlight the trivial things in life that mostly go
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Meeyoung Lee
Print Residency award for high academic achievement in Third Year. WOMAN, WAR AND BEYOND is based on the Japanese military’s forced sexual enslavement of adolescent females during World War II, known as ‘Comfort Women’. This term refers to the Imperial
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Milli Windshuttle
GIVING AND RECEIVING AND GIVING AND RECEIVING is a visual exploration of the relationships between people and their societal, interpersonal and internal environments, asking the questions: What do we give to society and what do we receive from it? Can we
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Mol Stamatellis
TIME HEALS OLD WOUNDS is a ceramic installation that comments on the ritual practices found in contemporary Greek culture as a form of belonging. This research stems from family narrative and personal experiences experienced through Greek/Australian transnational identity. The body
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Zoé Pietrzniak
CHAMBER: HEARING THROUGH SILENCE Musical scores document my rhythmic thought processes, with spheres and lines fulfilling the composition. This personal visual language is paired with figures which serve as emotive, or tempo markings. No visual hierarchy is given
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Zina-Lily Carley Rice (zeeen)
FESTERING DESIRE – A LONGING FOR THE MAKE-BELIEVE you are what I drown myself in, a virus, my obsession. This series of work culminates as a result of years of therapeutic abreaction – bringing forth repressed emotions of fear, guilt,
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Zahava Pinson
Project ILLUMINATE Documentation of the ancient Jewish ritual of Candle-Lighting on Friday night before sunset, as well as on the eve of Jewish holidays. The custom is for women over the age of three to light a candle (married women
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Zach Edwards
RMIT University Library Art Prize. Joseph Beuys Cafe Drawing Award for excellence in expanded approach to drawing. MY LAWYER THE BUS STOP: a discussion of the unseen, exploring contextualisation through spaces and realms. Currently, in my practice, I have been
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Yvonne Rambeau
BDS Sculpture Prize for outstanding folio I SAY I HAVE BEEN A STRONG LOVER explores the paradoxical experience of desire and its effects on the lover. Encompassing at once absence and presence, pleasure and pain, desire is described for
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Yiling Ooi
TRANSMUTATION AND INTERTWINING HUMAN – ORGANIC STRUCTURES is an exploration into the themes of home, loss, and regrowth. This project investigates the profound connections that bind humanity’s subconscious thoughts with our intrinsic ties to the natural world. These works are
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Woo Hyun Kang
I Squared Gallery Exhibition Award for excellence in drawing-based practices: ADORATION: DROWNING INTO THE PAST. This practice involves a process of a gradual transition from affection to an attachment, ultimately an obsession. The symbolic space, objects, and colour repeat and
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Will Aronsten-Whytcross
RIBS AND STARS is a series of painting works that bring together abstraction, figurative work and symbolism to explore contemporary ontology, spirituality and existentialism. This body of work considers the questions: ‘What knowledge, intuitions and instincts have outlived all traditions, institutions
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Vivian Qiu
THE LAND YOU STAND ON SHAPES WHO YOU ARE. Vivian has lived and studied across three countries: China, Australia and Sweden. Each culture changes her ways of seeing and making. Vivian interweaves the essence of different cultures, while exploring her
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Vittoria Cugno
Tolarno Hotel Painting Prize. CANDID: AN APPRECIATION OF MOMENTS THAT ARE OFTEN OVERLOOKED Vittoria Cugno (b.2001) is an emerging Melbourne based artist who specialises in oil portrait paintings. In the past year, Vittoria has focused on capturing candid moments in
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Victoria Lynagh
Walkers Ceramic Award & Stockroom Ceramic Award: FACETS OF A CHANGING LANDSCAPE This body of work reflects the different facets of the changing Australian landscape. Drawing inspiration from controlled burns and wildfires, I blend and contrast the devastation they cause
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Vanessa Vun
SUBLIMINAL DREAMSCAPES Subliminal Dreamscapes is a series of works that aim to explore the fragility of mortality, nuanced morality and the essence of life. Through dark aesthetic choices and compelling
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Val Carmody-Stephens
TO GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE A series of multimedia works exploring the tradition of storytelling With a deep passion and love for storytelling, my series of works are the result of my constant rumination on the topic as I ponder on the
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Tyler McMahon Porter
WHAT LURKS IN THE DARK Enforcing the innate fear of the dark and what hides within, Tyler’s painting depict various unappealing andunsettling entities alike. A collection of over thirty different artworks shrouded in darkness in a semi-interactive experience for the
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Tully-Rose Villiers
THE STAIR, AND THE STAIR is a sculptural installation that mimics the shape of an RMIT staircase. The work is a presentation of a section of the stair through the eyes of the artist’s mode of thought. The stair is
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Tarik Abouabdillah
My creations are the machinations of my subconscious, I never know what I’m doing when I do it. I simply start and keep on going, it doesn’t feel like I’m making work, rather that it’s making me. I have been
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Tara Sandie
RETURN INTO THE ARMS OF YOURSELF – A SANCTUARY is a biodegradable instillation intended to create a space of comfort and respite. The work aims to emphasise the need to check in on personal well-being, both physically and mentally. People get
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Sun Wai Wise Yeung
HIDDEN AND CHANGE Yeung was born in China, grew up in Hong Kong and is studying in Melbourne. Yeung is a contemporary artist who combines wheel throwing, carving and the ceramic process to create sculpture and functional pottery. He is
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Sun Hutchinson
ILLUMINATE ME. For this body of work, I am interested in marrying mixed media with ready made domestic objects through a camp lens as a means to materialise introspective philosophies and the queer self. The choice of lamps is a
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Stella Kyriakou
TO CARRY A PIECE OF HAPPINESS Χαρά – the Greek word for Joy, a feeling of delight. I am a second-generation, Greek-Australian artist living in Naarm. My ceramic practice utilises a combination of walking and play to get into creative
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Sophia Liddy
A GESTURE OF GRACIOUSNESS is an exploration of the relationship between fractal formations, symbiosis and our relationship with all other members of the biosphere. I see fractal patterns, including their healing, connective and structural properties as essential to life, underpinning everything
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Sinéad Wheeler
A DELICATE CONFLUENCE. My practice explores the place where polar forces converge, where light and matter meet, the immaterial and material, the ethereal and the structured; where destructive harshness and soft delicacy exist in the same space. My multimedia works
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Sin Tung Liu (Cheryl)
SLEEP METAPHYSICS How is sleeping an unaware pause on our conscious control over our body? The project explores the conceptual framework that shapes our perception of the world through the observation and reinterpretation of everyday human behaviours. By representing sleeping
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Sienna Mensch
LIQUID CHAOS Sienna Mensch (She/They) is a Geelong/Djilang based queer abstract artist, who lives and works on Wadawurrung and Wurundjeri country. Sienna’s work is an exploration of how different colours and forms interact with one another to evoke emotion from
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Sherline A Shen
HER VOICE. This installation artwork concerned with oriental feminism is inspired by the White Paper Movement in China which protested the COVID-zero lockdown. The white paper was blank in the initial development to reflect that anyone can express their voice
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Sharon Xin Xu
ACAE Gallery Emerging Artist Award. SAFETY WITHIN DIVERSE BODIES Sharon Xin Xu (b.2000), 徐欣, is an emerging Cantonese-Australian artist working on unceded lands of the Eastern Kulin nation, Naarm (Melbourne), and the Eora nation, Warrane (Sydney). Her work predominantly examines
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SELENA WENEN XIAO
Selena Xiao is an artist who has drawn inspiration from both China and Australia, capturing the elements of our world through her unique perspective. She not only explores traditional Eastern artistic techniques but also boldly experiments with new media combinations.
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Saud Alsaleh
THE SPONTANEOUS WONDERING In the scope of this project, I conduct an in-depth analysis of human behaviour, juxtaposing it with the behaviours observed in the animal kingdom. This juxtaposition serves to elucidate the distinctions between conscious and unconscious behavioural patterns,
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Sarah Vandepeer
WHAT’S IN MY ARSENAL explores the intertwined narratives of what it is like to be a woman who has given a life of service, in support of her country, within an historically male bastion. The resulting work is multi-layered, delving
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Sam Meekan
Drawing Studio Award for excellence in drawing-based practices. SPIKE THE CANON – This body of painting re-enacts hyper-masculine forms of ‘play violence’ drawn from niche hobbies such as 90s table top and video games. It investigates the vying solipsisms of
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Sade Marat (Marley)
YOU’VE STARTED SOMETHING IMPORTANT, AND NOW IT’S TIME TO COMPLETE IT encapsulates the art experience, and spans multiple mediums and projects. The conventions of structure and reason hold no ground on creativity. Agitation, as one can never truly be safe. Utilising
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Sabrina Xu
BLOCK HEAD MOVING FEET: Natural Solace or Escaping ‘I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees’ –Henry David Thoreau Embracing the traditional with a touch of modernity, I seek to delve into watercolour techniquesthat
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Ruby Tirekidis
Highly commended – Wayne Conduit Prize: Narrative is what drives my art practice. My most recent body of work explores the notion of visual storytelling and has been inspired by a personal mythology I have been writing. My paintings tend
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Rosegennan Whitlock-Whyte
SUBTERRANEAN ARTEFACTS At the core of my artistic practice lies an exploration into trauma, memory, personal, and collective histories, mechanisms of healing and repair, and the relationship between body and space. This exploration is viewed through the intersection of existential
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Rose Gamble
QUIETUDE is an installation work that incorporates and melts into the surrounding exhibition space, the work documenting a play on light (natural and artificial) through an array of pinholes and enamel plique-à-jour windows, across a series of mild steel plates. Quietude
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Rintaro Mieda
I explore the beauty in the patterns created in nature, aiming to reintroduce the often-overlooked sensation that nature brings to our daily lives. Although my jewellery is wearable, I am equally interested in how my jewellery can connect its wearer
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Rini Siahay
TRANSIENT STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS explores the socialisation of beauty ideals, particularly in the context of girlhood, and how those values affect one’s perception of oneself and the world around them. There is a stage where a girl comes to realise
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Rebecca Porter
DRAINS, WALLS. I paint in a subtractive way and flood the gaps with whatever annoying thing persists in previous work that I’ve erased or destroyed. At the same time I was thinking of connections between Wittgenstein’s rejection of a fountain,
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Rania Pappas
A SIREN’S CALL Conceptually, I see my work as framed by current gender power imbalances that exist in our world. My personal experience with sexual assault acted as a catalyst for the themes I now explore. My incentive for selecting
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Rachael Goy
Mejia Group Exhibition Award excellence in drawing-based practices. THE RECURRENCE OF ACTION – EVENT. My practice, my artworks, my studio, and myself all exist as registrations of time—the limitations of it, the flattening of the past and the constant
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Odin Strbac Low
Australian Print Workshop Award. CORRODED PERCEPTIONS is a response to pressing ecological concerns. Embracing corrosion as an artistic motif and a symbol of change, the series addresses a glaring void within traditional and contemporary landscape photography, where the harsh realities
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Natalie de Niese
TRAPPED is a series of three installation works that draw on my own recent and reoccurring situations that make me feel trapped, producing a body of work that emphasise things that I and others struggle with internally and silently, which are
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Moon Ramone
Highly commended for Chapman & Bailey Award. Through painting I aim to capture the essence of consciousness by exploring the delicate balance between mind, body, thoughts and feelings. By utilising the juxtaposition of haptic and meticulous paint and drawing techniques,
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Monique Ramsay
CONFESSING ANIMAL: WATCH ME WRITE BUT NOT WHAT I’M WRITING. A personal exploration in self, extracting as many thoughts from my mind as possible, nothing left unsaid, or unexplored in my conscience. This works takes paper that I have written
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Monica Jeanice Handoko Tio
Using the yielding yet resilient qualities of clay with a playful and intuitive approach, untitled (blue) explores the concept of perception and the way that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Monica is an artist who uses the qualities of
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Molly Morris-McGinty
Highly commended – Wayne Conduit Prize. NOCTURNAL FLUX – A DIARY OF THE NIGHT My work explores the vitality of the space of night through the influence its atmosphere has upon perception. The work is a dive into the complexity
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Mol Stamatellis
TIME HEALS OLD WOUNDS is a ceramic installation that comments on the ritual practices found in contemporary Greek culture as a form of belonging. This research stems from family narrative and personal experiences experienced through Greek/Australian transnational identity. The body
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Milli Windshuttle
GIVING AND RECEIVING AND GIVING AND RECEIVING is a visual exploration of the relationships between people and their societal, interpersonal and internal environments, asking the questions: What do we give to society and what do we receive from it? Can we
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Meeyoung Lee
Print Residency award for high academic achievement in Third Year. WOMAN, WAR AND BEYOND is based on the Japanese military’s forced sexual enslavement of adolescent females during World War II, known as ‘Comfort Women’. This term refers to the Imperial
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Maya Solomon
HAVEN Colour, pattern, aesthetics, and the home – my oil paintings on canvas capture interior narratives devoid of time but full of nostalgia. My pieces reflect on the human experience and highlight the trivial things in life that mostly go
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Matilda Kate Mourant
Matilda Kate Mourant is a multi media artist with a focus in printmaking. Her work examines printmaking, using various types of copperplate etching. Past explorations have involved screen printing, monotype, cyanotype, and frottage, also experimenting with drawing, written word, collage, and painting. Matilda’s work examines grief, love, and belonging through the examination of landscapes that…
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Maddison Kershaw
A MOMENT IN NATURE reflects upon the Arts and Crafts movement of late nineteenth century in its response to the industrial revolution. Combining textile art with natural dye and eco print, this piece emphasises the qualities of nature and handcraft
