December means many things to many people. It can be a mad dash of Christmas shopping for some or making elaborate plans on where to bring in the New Year for others. For a select group, however, it’s the time of the year when all of their hard work comes to fruition. December, basically, equals grad show time and it’s when the bright young things at Edith Cowan University (ECU), Central TAFE, Curtin Uni or UWA come out and shine.

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ECU’s grad show this year is called Bellwether and there, in the midst of a whole host of talent, lies the sublime artwork of Stuart McMillan. His graduate pieces move between installation, painting and collage. In one instance, shopping trolleys project shadowy subliminal messages promoting happy consumerism, while elsewhere McMillan turns a deft hand to oil painting, creating wonderful work on found objects. It’s an overall vision influenced heavily by the environment at ECU, explains McMillian.

‘ECU has encouraged me to explore the possibilities of pushing my concepts beyond standard reasoning,’ McMillan expanded. ‘It has taught me a lot of different approaches to working creatively. Approaching my practice with both traditional mediums and contemporary technologies I am able to engage with my surrounds very differently.

‘The environment at ECU is a warm welcoming environment where new ideas and approaches from both students and staff are always encouraged,’ he added. ‘The Arts School has seen a few changes over the years. However I think it has benefitted from merging with communications, film, photo-media and performance. The only thing I wish for more is overall collaboration in all departments, not competition. Art covers so many fields.’

At Central TAFE, the artistic expression d’jour among the graduating Advanced Diploma in Visual Art students is decidedly more Gen Y. Both Kate-Anna Williams and Ashley Buck have turned their hand to art’s new skool expression of illustration, not the kind which rendered wonderfully detailed sketches, but the kind which fuses street art aesthetics with new-cartoonism. The result is decidedly hip and nostalgic, reminiscent of Saturday morning cartoons… and possibly influenced by the incredibly communal learning environment at Central TAFE.

‘The sense of community at TAFE played a big part in shaping my practice over the last 3 years,’ Williams said of her work, which has not only appeared in First Page but at La La Orange for the recent Windows on Williams. ‘There is a large emphasis on idea-sharing, both with the lecturers and with our peers. The studio classes in both diploma, and advanced diploma are run in a communal studio shared by the students of each different discipline. The assessments are held as critiques, in which students and lecturers alike give feedback and advice about each body of work. I feel as if a lot of the evolution process of my ideas can be attributed to this open exchange of thoughts about my work. Other students and lecturers have helped weed through my work and mess of ideas and really refine my practice.’

Buck also praises the open environment at TAFE for the positive impact it has had on his work. ‘It’s so open,’ he said of the overall learning environment at Central Tafe. ‘You have the ability to do anything, to experiment, to explore. You can come up with an idea and develop it in all the studio areas and you have the support of so many lecturers, who are all practicing well known artists. Also the peer to peer learning, you become such good friends with so many talented students that you learn from as well.’

Eleni Clark, from Curtin University, is another success story of the graduate show circuit with a large number of her works selling on opening night. It’s understandable why too: her paintings play with and dramatise the sexuality of the female breasts, doing so in such a way that resonates not only with female viewers, but males as well.

‘I have found myself consistently fascinated by the curious language of the breast, the breast that is every woman’s secret, the breast that denotes so much power,’ Clark explained of her magnetic paintings and miniature clay models. ‘I feel it is my responsibility as an artist to excite the senses, confront preconceived ideas and flirt dangerously with female objectivity in a way that only a female artist can do.’

It’s a certainty Clark attributes to the sound education Curtain has provided her with. ‘The lectures and technical staff at Curtin are all very knowledgeable, approachable and have some very interesting philosophies and ideas. In my painting and drawing classes in particular I was taught invaluable skills in how to view the visual world around me.’

Finally there is the upcoming Infuse show at UWA, among which Anna Cocks’ larger than life installations will be appearing. Cocks, who is part of the Site Fiction Collective (responsible for wallpapering the old Arcane Bookshop in over 70 OUTinPerth’s recently), has created an installation in which the body is consumed… within another body.

‘The body has always been central to my work,’ Cocks said of the piece appearing at Infuse. ‘I am interested in how people relate to the body and the physicality of the body, which is why I have decided during the last year to move in the direction of installation – to engage the body physically I felt I had to create a physical space in which the body could enter.’

The result is impressive – as is all of the work of all the students mentioned here. With four fantastic shows from four fantastic tertiary institutions, this years grad shows promise to pack a punch as they present an astounding amount of talent.

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GRAD SHOWS

• Bellwether @ ECU / November 28 – December 7 / Buildings 4 and 5, Mt Lawley Campus, 2 Bradford Street, Mount Lawley.
• Central TAFE Graduate Exhibition / December 10 – 17 / Central TAFE Art Gallery, 12 Aberdeen St, Northbridge
• Curtin University Graduate Exhibition / November 28 – December 10 / Dept. of Art, Building 202, Bentley campus
• Infuse @ UWA / December 3 – 17 / The ALVA Studio, Cnr Clifton St and Stirling Highway, Nedlands