Image description: Against a purple and blue background are stitched yellow letter graphics which spell ‘FAM / 2020’. Underneath the letters, a person’s hands and arms reach up.
By Amy Neville
2020 has brought the art world to a grinding halt. Exhibitions were cancelled, workshops stopped, funding and grants for studio artists removed. But the artists didn’t stop.
We continued to make, to construct, to explore this new world around us in creative and inventive ways, saying with our art what we could not express with our words. The loss of support networks and community driven spaces was challenging, so many artworks were made without an audience to view them, and they drifted aimlessly in a vacant space.
The themes of this year are clearly defined – community, perspective, resistance. But these themes have been interpreted differently by all the artists working on campus, sharing small parts of our experiences within our art community.
Semester two brought with it the open doors of shared studio spaces, where we could collaborate and flourish with the support of our peers. It was here that our show this year was born. FAM2020 is the exhibition of graduating art students from UWA, by those of us who made it through the year with sheer determination and strength of will.
Undergrad and postgrad students come together in a display of over twenty-six artworks. Performance art nestles next to stitched textiles; prints meet resin casts; and videoart with sculpture. We invite you to explore, to experience, to discover and be discovered through new ways of seeing what we have been experiencing this year. What we, the artists, have known all along, and now make known to you.
We are the graduating class of 2020:
Chandler Abrahams
Matt Armenti
Sacha Barker
Dale Buckley
Jennifer Duh
Sky Edwards
Elham Eshraghian
Tamyka Farsalas
Stephanie Forsyth
Debbie Gilchrist
Luke Kolbusz
Lee Lee Koo
Ben Nixon
Amy Neville
Mia Page
Jeremy Passmore
Cedar Rankin-Cheek
Harisson Riekie
Alessandra Rodrigo
Isabella Rossaro
Valentina Sartori
Zoe Sydney
Rachael Vieraitis
Joelle Young
Julie Ziegenhardt
Cathy Zhao
Although some of us may have graduated earlier in the year – others already onto their postgraduate degrees – we come together to celebrate the family we have fostered as young, emerging artists.
The exhibition opening for FAM2020 is on Friday, the 6th of November, at 6pm, at Cullity Gallery, UWA. Register your attendance here.
Image courtesy of FAM2020