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CONNECT: CREATIVE ARTS CREATIVE ARTS I CONNECT: CREATIVE ARTS 2 OUR FACULTY 4 sPACES AND PLACES 6 MAKING IT 10 sTUDY OPTIONS UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG WELCOME If you are creative, ambitious, and keen to make your mark, it makes a lot of sense to study Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong. It’s your entry into one of the fastest growing employment sectors in Australia—and the world. Creative industries is where our graduates work, and where they play as well. Like you, when they came here they were passionate about their chosen artform, they wanted to develop new skills and they were looking for new ideas and inspirations. These are the immediate things we offer you: the chance to strengthen your practical skills, to immerse yourself in a dynamic creative environment, to think critically about the arts, about history, about contemporary life. Our students produce diverse, ambitious and exciting works, in everything from traditional art forms to innovative new media. You’ll spend much of your time in studios, labs and theatres, practising your artform and finding new ways of tackling creative challenges. And then we offer a whole lot more, as our graduates have found out. PROFEssOR AMANDA LAWSON DEAN, FACULTY OF CREATIVE ARTS Professor Amanda Lawson has more than 25 years’ experience in the arts in Australia and during that time has been the director of several organisations, including the Crafts Council of NSW and Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, where she was also manager of Cultural Services and established the Hill End Artists in Residence Program. She has worked at the Australia Council, with NSW State and Regional Development, the Australian Research Council and as an independent arts consultant. She has expertise in arts marketing, audience development and collections and cultural project management. Professor Lawson gained a BA from the University of Edinburgh and an Honours degree from the University of Wollongong before completing a PhD in Australian Literature at the University of Sydney in 2002. At UOW she is director of the University Art Collection and teaches in the areas of curatorial and professional practice. CREATIVE Arts 1 WHAT WE DO CONNECT: OUR FACULTY 2 UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG Creative Arts offers you a dynamic and progressive education that connects hands- on studio production with critical reflection. This strong practice-based training undertaken in conjunction with a distinctive theoretical component is an excellent preparation for a life in the contemporary arts or creative industries. UOW embraces all aspects of the creative arts, from the visual arts and graphic design to media arts and socially engaged practice; from acting and performance, to stage-management, sound, lighting and audiovisual design, from creative writers, to documentary makers and journalists. Whether you major in painting and drawing, work with high-end digital technologies, tell stories on the page, or on the stage, through video, radio or new forms of convergent media, explore lighting and sound, or create objects using organic or synthesized materials, you will learn that there is so much more to a life in the creative arts. Learning is through thinking, doing and making: through practice and practical assessment as well as through theory and history, supported by staff who are professionals within their fields. From your first to your final year, you’ll be encouraged to hone your perceptions, and develop a range of practical, creative and critical skills, towards your future life as an artist, journalist, teacher, curator, producer, or cultural policy maker. You will benefit from being part of a multi-disciplinary unit recognised for its excellence and innovation, using electives and minors to build interdisciplinary expertise. A degree in technical theatre for instance, might be supported by a minor in media arts or creative writing, while someone undertaking a degree in visual arts and graphic design might want to pick up electives in digital media and professional writing. Increasingly, there are opportunities for you to engage with professional and cross-disciplinary experiences within your degree. CREATIVE ARTS 3 BUILDING 25 SPACES AND UOW WOLLONGONG CAMPUS Creative Arts teaches most of its programs from Building 25 PLACES on the UOW main campus. The building combines lecture- style teaching spaces with specialist facilities designed for each creative discipline: computer labs for design, theatres for performance, studios for visual arts, and recording and editing suites for journalism. The building incorporates gallery spaces for student work and several performance venues for theatre and writing students. § Creative Arts Gallery § Long Gallery § Drawing Studio § Sculpture Studio § Textiles/Printmaking Studio § Photography Lab § Design Lab § Computer Labs § Digital Media Lab § Journalism Labs § Radio Studio § Editing Suite § Performance Space § Black Box § Rehearsal Spaces 4 UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG BACKSTAGE HOPE, builDING 40 DIGITAL MEDIA CENTRE UOW WOLLONGONG CAMPUS UOW INNOVATION CAMPUS, NORTH WOllONGONG Backstage Hope is a three-storey creative arts teaching and The Digital Media Centre (DMC) is located on the Innovation research centre transformed from a disused backstage space Campus (iC) in North Wollongong. It offers state of the art attached to the University’s Hope Theatre (named after UOW’s teaching and technical facilities to support a professional first Chancellor, the Hon. Robert Hope). learning experience in Digital Film Making, Digital Photography, Film and TV Studio Practice, Editing, Animation and Media The facility includes professionally equipped rehearsal spaces and Arts. The following studio and exhibition facilities are used for equipment for theatre productions including a walk-on lighting industry-ready technical training, and as spaces to support mezzanine and control room which allows students to learn creative installations and projects: professional lighting, sound and video techniques. Backstage Hope also boasts dedicated study rooms, visual arts studios and an § Two-storey TV studio with a range of specialist, industry- exhibition space for postgraduate students. standard equipment § Animation studio with acoustic panelling, green screen and lighting grids § 2 ‘Black Box’ studios with acoustic panelling and lighting grids § 5 computer labs including an animation and editing lab, and a dedicated editing suite § 116-seat lecture theatre with widescreen cinema projection and 12.1 surround sound system § DMC Gallery space for exhibiting your work Students at the DMC have access to an array of both professional and high-end consumer equipment including Digital SLRs, laptops, audio gear (mikes, booms and recorders), studio lights, projectors and more. CREATIVE ARTS 5 MAKING IT In the Creative Arts it’s not just what’s in your head, or even in the classroom—it’s what you can bring into the world. UOW Creative Arts’ graduates are bringing their art to life in the studio, the museum and out in the community. 6 UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG DARA GILL BCA (VISUAL Arts & GRAPHIC Design) ARTIST (ART, RESEARCH, PERFORMANCE) Dara Gill is a young artist whose work regularly crosses lines It’s typical of the group, in that it challenges the audience to between art, research and performance. He restlessly explores rethink ideas about theatre and media. new media to make his art—sculpture, photography, film, theatre The group started when Dara and the other members were all and painting. students at UOW. He works out of his Redfern studio, an old converted shopfront. “At UOW I was mixing with performance kids a lot at the time. He does freelance design work to, as he says, “pay the rent”, and Between semesters, we’d put on shows. When you start out at is participating in more and more art shows, many of which call uni, being able to bounce ideas off people is important.” for new work. “UOW supported us a lot and the lecturers gave us feedback. One Dara is seeing a shift in focus from collaborative to solo work. of the great things about the uni was that there was no necessary “Collaboration was initially a part of my practice, but as time notion about what the degree was supposed to do.” goes on, I’m becoming more sure of myself and my instincts.” “I could manipulate the degree to suit my own goals,” he Despite this shift, he still finds time to work with other artists. explains. “My teachers were very open to me running away with a Since 2007, he has been a part of Team MESS, a group of artists project and taking it somewhere they didn’t expect.” and performers who develop and perform experimental theatre. “This was good. Uni is a time when you learn where you’re Their latest work, BINGO Unit, is a combination of live theatre, TV headed as an artist.” production and improvisation that will shoot around the streets of Melbourne during the Next Wave festival. CREATIVE ARTS 7 REBECCA EVANS BCA/BA (VISUAL Arts/History) ASSISTANT CURATOR, POWERHOUSE MUSEUM SYDNEY Rebecca Evans loves vintage clothing and fashion. Hailing from “It was a small nightdress that belonged to his son—and it was a family of dressmakers, her appreciation for yesterday’s fashion the clothing he died in. Normally it wouldn’t be kept, but because is absolute. She studies it, wears it, makes it from original of the exceptional circumstances, it was.” patterns and, as an Assistant Curator at Sydney’s Powerhouse Seeing the power of these personal stories is part of what Museum, works with it. Rebecca loves about curatorship. She also appreciates what we “When people ask me what a curator does I liken it to a keeper in have to learn from the past. a zoo,” she says. “I Iook after the animals, show them, make sure While she was still a student at UOW, Rebecca volunteered they’re as close to perfect as possible.” at Tongarra museum, a very small museum of local history She is, in fact, helping care for one of Australia’s most important supported by Shellharbour City Council.