ACAD Grad show in brief and in half.

I went up to ACAD this morning and spent a good 3 hours pottering around the assorted rooms and gallery spaces experiencing the best the students had to offer.  And although it has been described as "The good, the bad and the ugly,"  I felt very good about what I was seeing and was sufficiently encouraged to keep on searching out more and more rooms to delve into, and I left ACAD hoping that one or both of my children will want to go and see the show tomorrow, so that I can take in even more.
Unfortunately the steward in the first gallery space told me that photography was only allowed if you are 'family'... although I believe we are all related, I don't think that was quite what she had in mind, so I have only my mental pictures to hold on to.  However, to keep the blog from looking completely dull, I have inserted images from the web of related works wherever possible... I hope none are copywritten and I will happily remove them if asked to do so.
But sorry that I couldn't illustrate the actual pieces in the show.

One significant point that occurred to me was that students graduating from the painting course had sometimes exhibited pieces in fibre.  I found this quite heart-warming.  One such piece that was stunning piece by Randy Niessen a mixed media (untitled) work with lines of taught fibres radiating from a focus on the floor, to 3 metres up the walls, where painted grid lines in the same colours of  purple, white, lilac, yellow and blue intersected and formed a mesmerising interference pattern which toyed with ones sense of perspective and dimensionality .
In the same room Cassandra Pauls piece of tumbling blocks... (Image on right from TRUCK Gallery website) acrylic on wood suggested the work of an artist recently exhbited in the Epcor gallery.
 and below with Nate Mcleod and Cassandra together... this piece really grabbed my attention in the TRUCK'S plus fifteen window space. Ah, so I was right!
Similarly The Mould Family Portraits ( that remind me so much of Maurice Sendak's artworks for Where the Wild Things Are ....)  being the work of Mynthia McDaniel might also have recently shown in Epcor. (see below from ACAD website). Good for ACAD to have its students actively seek local exhibition space.

Anne Fetterley (of Contextural)  had prime position in the entire show,  in the main gallery space.  Her work was shown off to full effect in the central space.  The four panels hanging in arcs to a lower surface strewn with onion skins.  I had seen the piece, Onion Skin Project, at the Contextural meeting both whilst 'under construction' and images of the show (two days ago)... but it was lovely to see it in place and set off by its juxtaposition with  the complimentary piece by Janis Milligan:  huge rust dyed panels on two facing walls.  Lovely pieces, fantastic curation.

There were so many pieces that caught my eye.   Robyn Weatherly had used video installation and photography to show off his blown glassware.Viviane Mehr a student on the painters' course worked coloured shapes on overlapping transparent ?plastic squares, the layers are held together at the top edge by a single straight line of machine ?chain stitch... A series of 6 pieces had the look of devored fabrics and were beautifully presented..
David Blankenstyn had taken green glass bottles and recycled them adding facial features as well as hair, cigarettes and so on so that each had its own character... An amusing piece called Collect Yourself, perhaps a nod to recycling.
 This piece by David was at Triangle gallery in December last year.

To finish I will note a lovely textile piece created by Judy Dibus, yet another painting student who worked in fibre - seemed to be a whimsical piece a colourful assault on the visual... Growth Chart is a 3D bar graph of growth with the bars, or rods constructed of wrapped cuddly toys bound together into their pillars of ascending height by thread.  This piece was cited in the central mall to give it plenty of space.  Wonderful.

My favourite piece of the whole show was a hand made paper sculptural effigy (and I say no more as I, sadly didn't record the name of the artist... perhaps I will get that tomorrow).  And second most favourite was Sarah Burchell's piece that was reminiscent of  Andy Goldsworthy's rabbit blood pieces, but Sarah used Logwood, soy milk, citric acid and iron to produce an amazingly rich palette that gave the 2D piece a deep 3D feel with intense brown and deep deep blue black colours.