Caitlin Chan

University of Technology Sydney, Photography

ARTIST STATEMENT

Figure Study is a floating collage consisting of cut out prints of my past self-portraits and broken mirrors.

It is the result of a process through new work and deconstructivism, involving my relationship with my body studied throughout my practice. The installation is designed to investigate and highlight my past work exploring body and identity, my current body present in the reflection and the environment of the artist's studio. As Paul Mpagi Sepuya described, it is to explore ‘productions, revision, destruction and re-production’. 

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Rutika Padhye 

University of Technology Sydney, Interior Architecture

ARTIST STATEMENT

This project focuses on the ritual of celebration, particularly interfaith weddings. The project’s aim is to design a space that is not limited to couples getting married but also individuals including city workers and lunch time crowds passing by to undergo the process of learning and experiencing the diverse rituals of different faiths before getting married or partaking in other rites of passage.

Our space comprises two levels, where Level 7 is a more public and open space accessible from street entrance Martin Place, while Level 6 is a more private space. In Level 7, the education centre consists of individual pods which hold an educational conversation on different religions and faith including Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Muslim and Communal. Level 6 is the rites of passage that every religion or culture must undergo before they proceed to tying the knot. These secular spaces include Baptism, Henna, Turkish Baths and Fire Ritual.

Sabrina Lim

University of Technology Sydney, Photography

ARTIST STATEMENT

 ‘A Girl Made Strong By Other Girls’ is a love letter to my younger sister. It is a testament to the strength of an unwavering and unconditional love and support. In a time as trying as covid lockdowns our friendship has been my saving grace, so much so that I’ve felt our home transform into our own little utopia that lay tucked away from the rest of the world. I’ve always known that my strength lay in those around me, but as I am coming to realise, most of all in her.

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Joslyn Lam

University of Technology Sydney, Photography

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ARTIST STATEMENT

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i ( lo ) you is an intimate portrayal of a couple’s relationship straddling between the feeling of  longing and the universal sense of loneliness during the challenging Lmes of lockdown. Influenced  by the subtleLes of isolation from others, including family and friends, and spending hours on end  together, this project visually explores vulnerability yet comfort and the presence of both  codependency and distance coexisting with one another. Considering the effects of confinement  on intimacy and relationship dynamics, this body of work experiments with a mixture of personal  experiences and performing for the camera, staged by myself and my partner.

Morgan McCormack

University of Technology Sydney, Photography

ARTIST STATEMENT

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Spare Time (Guide) is a body of work exploring the customs that propped up in light of Covid-19 lockdowns. For most, the lockdowns that we found ourselves enduring caused us to slow down as a by-product of staying home. Lockdowns disrupted life where usually we might live juggling work, study, family, and friends. This work is a guide to spare time, a guide to that disrupt, the photographs follow the truth that my family found ourselves living in. A truth where we became intertwined with tasks and settings that are not our regular day to day. 

Grace Carlon

University of Technology Sydney, Photography

ARTIST STATEMENT

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Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, we are looking to our devices to give us updates in real-time. Frequently bombarded with news of human misery and a damaged planet that may be beyond repair. The constant consumption of such heavy content leads me to question everything and contemplate what it is that makes life worth living. During lockdown I tasked myself to find new ways of seeing, the camera provided insight into the liminal space between my life and death through witnessing beautiful moments in the simplest of settings when sometimes you’re encapsulated in a world of suffering.

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Oriana Peralta Marino

University of Technology Sydney, Photography

ARTIST STATEMENT

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YOUR MOM is an exploration of a mother through the eyes of her daughter and is a work that highlights the importance of communication and collaboration within of mother / daughter relationships. The photographs aim to show different facets of my mother, Fabiola, displaying her rawness and glamour. Being together during lockdown enabled us to explore the private vs. public personas we have, something that is particularly difficult for immigrants as they assimilate to a new culture. Ultimately this work is a remembrance of the sacrifices she has made for me, a record of our relationship and an expression of my gratitude. 

Jeyne Wade

University of Technology Sydney, Photography

ARTIST STATEMENT

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My mother spends most days within arms reach and the space between our experience feels great at times. Though impossible to recreate memory firsthand let alone second, it is not futile; the substance of such a task is in the three questions that greet every answer. This work reveals the empty voids in my understanding alongside attempts to fill them. While I can envision pieces of my mother using myself as a vessel I have no way of visualising the company she kept. Therefore, I have performed my mother only in her solitary moments and represented her time with company as blank images.

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Letisya Hedi Djohari

University of Technology Sydney, Fashion and Textile Design

ARTIST STATEMENT

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This project showcases my approach to cater mental health and wellbeing through the sensation of touch in fashion and textile design. Taking a case study from a weighted blanket that is scientifically proven to reduce anxiety, I incorporated weight, pressure and warmth in my design to calm the anxiety of the wearer. These garments are hand made with crochet and weaving techniques with sustainably sourced yarns directly from the mills. These techniques are a zero waste production method that promotes slow fashion and sentimental value of a garment.

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Maeve Mullane

University of Technology Sydney, Interior Architecture

ARTIST STATEMENT

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In Australia, the predominately monolithic Funeral industry has historically constructed death systems and spaces that have a history in western experience.

Current industry rhetoric affirms that the spatial identity of the cemetery is no longer representative of our current demographics, desires, and perceptions. A new cemetery interior and landscape situated within the discourse of space and politics must be proposed.

‘Mnemonic’ reshapes how we deal with the existential ambiguities of death in a collective context – a mnemonic device that sustains the collective memory and identity of Australia’s people, preserving the past, conditioning the present and contributing to new possibilities of sustainable and inclusive death systems in the future.

Aston Ashley

University of Technology Sydney, Visual Communications

ARTIST STATEMENT

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Aston is a graduate from a Bachelor of Visual Communications (Honours) at UTS. Their Honours work, Coding Utopia, explores how creative coding and queer methods can be used to communicate ideas from Queer Studies. The project arose in response to the need for digital practices to supplement queer live performance during lockdown. It comprises of three interactive code poems developed in p5. js that invite non-traditional, generative readings of visual cultures scholar José Esteban Muñoz’ Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. Ultimately, the three pieces explore queer ideas of hope, utopia, failure and queerness-as-becoming. More of Aston’s work can be found on their insta @design.by.aston

Melissa Mazzeo

University of Technology Sydney, Fashion and Textile Design

ARTIST STATEMENT

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Hidden In Plain Sight, implements sensory design to move away from the central sense of sight. The design focus was inclusivity within sustainability, touch and the body, specifically through the sense of proprioception. The aim for this collection was to create a space that is safe, comfortable and inclusive for the wearer, focusing on the relationship people have with their clothing and how this is negatively impacted through societal pressures. This has been conceptualised through voluminous and extravagant garments that have been naturally dyed, hand-printed and manipulated with adjustable and size inclusive elements.

Izaäk Bink

Australia National University, Visual Arts

ARTIST STATEMENT

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‘I want you, because I can’t have you’ is a series exploring the hardship created by the secrecy that defines the queer experience. Violent and promiscuous messages are communicated via ‘glyphs’, coded text that takes ‘Polari phrases’ (the phrases and language of gay subculture), real-life conversation extracts, and historical facts about anti-LGBT brutality in order to highlight the secrecy, hidden callousness, and discretion required as a part of coded communication within the queer experience. The coded text is combined with images from gay male-oriented pornographic publications from the 1970’s and early 2000’s. This contrasts a ‘hero’ image with the violent coded text, creating a toxic caricature of the exaggerated masculinity that gay men are often forced to emulate. The layers of the text and imagery are intended to place emphasis on the relationship between what is ‘in front’ and what is ‘behind’, forcing the viewer to ask the question, “Whose place is it to decode this work?”

Raymond Lam

University of Technology Sydney, Photography

ARTIST STATEMENT

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The indoctrination of the obsession with perfection and the constant occurrence of self-denial is rooted in that dark age of mine, and it has been continuously haunting me ever since. The inner voice that questions my ideas, questions my lack of innovativeness, questions my dumbfoundedness, and to the worst extent, questions the significance of my very existence. I suffocate from it, being trapped in the phenomenon which I call the Air-sufficient Asphyxiation. I stand in front of the dark forest of my past and face the uncertain future that no one would know what worse could come next.

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Vanessa Xu

University of Technology Sydney, Architecture

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ARTIST STATEMENT

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If the goal wasn’t to create the perfect print, a world of opportunities would open. What are all the unpredictable imperfections of the printing process? What kind of chaos does it create? How can we begin to control it? When we have controlled it, how then do we create something out of it? 

In a world that is damaging the environment faster than it is healing, we need to consider alternative processes, technologies, and materials to decrease the damage. Guided by Professor Tim Schork and 3D Printer operators, Gwyn Jones and Tran Dang, we begin to research and find the balance between new materials and design.

Emely Young

University of Technology Sydney, Visual Communications

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ARTIST STATEMENT

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This publication responds to this years ISTD brief 'Putting Things in Order', where Emely has  chosen to design a typographic piece that celebrates women's greatness whilst uncovering  the reality of what we {still} fight for today.   

Placing women’s issues in order by time and category Emely has exposed the confronting  reality of how women throughout history have continuously challenged preconceived  expectations with little change. Using strategic typographic form and illustration this  colourful, creative work guides the reader through an emotional journey that leads to self discovery and empowerment - to ultimately fight for our future as girls, and as women.  

Hyesu Jenny Lee

University of Technology Sydney, Visual Communications

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ARTIST STATEMENT

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This trio of packaging design pays homage to my childhood; one filled with an abundance of Japanese pea snacks. Taking inspiration from traditional Japanese symbols and imagery it aims to encapsulate the country’s peaceful scenery and delicate culture. The subtle illustrative depictions of such environment like the fluid clouds wrapping around the box evoke a sense of peacefulness, and the deep earthy tones represent the richness of each flavour. The experience from the box to your mouth, this design hopes to be the full package.

Harriet Mills

University of Technology Sydney, Fashion and Textile Design‍

ARTIST STATEMENT

The Anatomie project showcases natural and human systems mirroring the growth, decay and changes associated with our external and internal skins as one entity. The digital print is inspired by a still from Louie Schwartzberg’s film Fantastic Fungi, reinterpreted as a digital body becoming reconstructed around the wearer. The pleats symbolise the gills of a mushroom whilst the gloves and digital print overlay embody the Bridal Veil Stinkhorn mushroom and the patterns and textures of our own skin. The butterfly ribcage bralette links nature with the internal body, slowly shedding its golden skin in an act of transformation and regeneration. 

Hannah Meldrum

University of Technology Sydney, Photography

ARTIST STATEMENT

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YOUR MOM is an exploration into who my mother was before she became one. An article by Laney et al. (2014) discusses the identity changes a woman goes through the moment she becomes a mother, often feeling the need to give up her own needs and wants for the sake of being a good mother. This work documents items from my mother’s past that she has either touched, designed or altered. As I asked about each item, she would slowly start to reveal more about her life before, forming an identity outside of the mother role I have only ever known.

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Tammy Wu

University of Technology Sydney, Photography

ARTIST STATEMENT

This photograph series of 15 expresses the connection between human and time through 12 skyscape photographs in the order of daytime, according to ancient Chinese earthy branches and separate 24 hours into 12 sections to express the flow of time, with 3 extra photographs representing the concentration of 3-time frames of a day.

The title ‘Window of soul’ tightly connects personal memories of looking out of the window from the room the artist lived for 12 years, through human vision towards identity and linking oneself to the outside world: the earth, the universe and the unknown. A window not only contains memories and time but also emotions.

Zac Cutcliffe

University of Technology Sydney, Photography

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ARTIST STATEMENT

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This work features a series of paper collages with images sourced from vintage photography handbooks and guides. Each piece attempts an examination of the absurdity of photography guide books and the dated ways of demonstrating a photographic practice. Through the process of developing this series, photo-montage became a means of recontextualizing and challenging standards within the medium of image making. The work is in conversation with Martha Rosler’s from ‘House Beautiful’ series in the way subjects are removed from the pristine stock-image environments and placed within the void of an empty canvas or alongside juxtaposing text.