Postgraduate Summer Program: assessment exhibitions

Alana Clifton-Cunningham Second Skin

This exhibition aims to inspire the discourse on the making of fashion and textiles – primarily utilising knitting as a medium. Second Skin draws inspiration from body decoration in the form of scarification, and explores the concepts of comfort, protection, beauty and aesthetics by adapting manipulated body patterns, literally and metaphorically. Body decoration is a paradoxical and diverse activity that humans have been performing possibly since the existence of Homo sapiens. These ‘body pieces’ have been designed to envelope, contour, cocoon and adorn only regions of the body, allowing the viewer to question the spaces between.

Alyson Johnson Baroque 'n Roll

Johnson’s Baroque ‘n Roll is located in the gap between authenticity and mimesis, myth, and pulp fiction. Her installation work will commence in the Gallery B of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery. The room will feature a baroque style trim mirrors and curtains, giving it an opulent atmosphere. However, contemporary cues in the form of customised wallpaper featuring motifs from paintings, 1970s style wood veneer panelling and a faux heater instead of a fireplace will make the space feel as much like a rock star’s hotel room as a siting room from the seventeenth century.

Francesca Mataraga The Empty Space

Negative or empty space is a concept that is central to a lot of art and is often explored as a central theme in minimalist or reductive art. Minimalist and post-minimalist artists have often used this idea of empty or negative space to create work articulating a sense of absence or emptiness through the use of material.

The Empty Project is the body of work produced for the MFA. It looks at the physical and phenomenological value of emptiness as articulated through the art object and through the use of material.