FIRST Jade Behrens Preston Brook Monique Carey Minha Choi Temeka Clarence Renae Cleary Tristan Deeg Lauren Donoghoe Kaylyn Fairhurst Melanie Hain Jasmine Hammond Morgan Hawkins CLASSAbbey Hindmarch Caitlin Houston Matt Humby Charlotte Ison Gabriella King Ainsley Knox Susanna Kwok Alex Leman Claudia McCartney Shae-Lee McDonald Brad McKinnon Jasmine McPherson Sophie McSporran Tammy Marley Tahnee Marriott Makenzi Milton Tahlia Nicholas Teghan O’Beirne Luke O’Donnell Ellie Pritchard Serena Rossi Deema Rouady Redd Sarson Hannah Small Madison Small Tylah Smith Rebekah Staunton Lincoln Trevett Bethany Urbanowicz Harriet Venter Jackson Voorby Madison Waugh Logan Whitten Natasha Wilson Nicholas Wilson CURATED BY HELEN WILLIS IN CONSULTATION WITH COURTNEY NOVAK MUSEUM OF ART AND CULTURE, LAKE MACQUARIE 15 FEBRUARY – 5 APRIL 2020 In 2020, First Class celebrates its colourful series of visual narratives. twelfth year, showcasing the exceptional Fleeting slices of life are manipulated standard of work produced by HSC and distorted to encourage audiences to Visual Arts students from the Hunter reflect on issues faced by contemporary and Central Coast regions. Lake society. Macquarie City Art Gallery, now known The HSC Visual Arts course encourages as the Museum of Art and Culture students to create a body of work that (MAC), initiated the First Class project, demonstrates conceptual strength and and this unique show continues to be technical resolution. Those selected a highlight of the exhibition calendar. for First Class 19 have excelled in both Selected from school-nominated these areas, and demonstrate serious submissions produced in the previous involvement in the development of their year, the exhibition continues to respective art practices. The curatorial embrace the diversity of media and process, however, ultimately rests on techniques representative of the the selection of artworks that best Tristan Deeg enormous scope of the NSW HSC expose this generation’s awareness of Callaghan College Jesmond Senior Campus Visual Arts syllabus. This exhibition sees In the Best Interests of the Public (detail) the big issues facing us all. Fears for the photomedia, dimensions variable over 47 skilful young artists exhibiting environment and mental health issues, in the professionally curated gallery for instance, continue to absorb today’s Environmental concerns for our setting, which encourages audiences to youth, and this exhibition creates a waterways can also be seen in Logan experience the richness of local talent platform to present, interpret and Whitten’s An Individual’s Choices, which and the voice of youth. broadcast these fears. focuses on the destruction triggered by climate change. The human impact of Themes of nature and the environment, Bethany Urbanowicz’s installation pollution is revealed through a series memories, family and the importance In Bloom celebrates nature’s fleeting of visual narratives that depicts the of culture are distinctive concepts moments and the ephemeral manner damage caused by plastics and the predominant this year. Through the in which organic life blossoms and resulting devastating outcomes to the avenue of visual arts, these student grows. Her textural fibre sculptures are environment. The artist’s face becomes bodies of work are revealing subjective imagined organisms, oversized living a canvas signifying the pain, destruction observations of current concerns such as and breathing entities, each with their and death of our planet; the brush, a own distinctive characteristics. motif symbolising painting the planet Urbanowicz’s work encourages with greed and negligence. Whitten is audiences to reflect on the inspired by the visual arts activism of fragile balance in which our artists Banksy and Ai Weiwei. environment exists. Conservational fears are revealed Nicholas Wilson’s evocative work in Madison Waugh’s work A Land of Great Fertility explores the Depletion, which explores the ever-growing impacts that have arisen as ecological catastrophe resulting a result of the expansion of urban areas from the Carmichael coal mine in Australia. He comments on his work: in the Galilee Basin in Central ‘To a large extent these impacts have been triggered by the invasion of the FIRST CLASS 19 Queensland. Waugh states that ‘the Great Barrier Reef is part of British in 1788. The red line across the Nicholas Wilson, Merewether High School, A Land of Great Fertility (detail) Australia’s identity, but it is in photographs represents a 500km graph photomedia on aluminum, artline pen, ink, copic markers, 55 x 360cm danger, increasingly threatened of population density from coastal mental health, climate change, pollution ecosystems precariously balanced; Sydney to the Snowy Mountains. and social injustice. The fragility of the Adani’s coal mines are causing coral This line was arranged in-situ within human mind, our emotional connection to be bleached and destroyed through the landscape using electro-luminescent to past memories, exploration of temperature rises in the water'. Waugh’s wire, tent poles and fishing line, then identity and our increasingly threatened use of faded colours in the ceramic photographed. The lower section of ecosystems are presented through a forms supports these fears. the work incorporates text extracts from Governor Arthur Phillip’s Issues of cultural identity are strongly In her work Kwok hopes to subvert the journal written upon his 1788 arrival represented within First Class 19. negative undertones surrounding these in Australia and The Biggest Estate on Indigenous and ethnic connections as shops and to associate them instead with Earth, Bill Gammage, 2011.’ well as multiculturalism are examined the power, strength and good fortune Issues of social injustice are strongly within the Australian context. Women’s symbolic of the Chinese dragon. signified through Tristan Deeg’s Business by Claudia McCartney is a Personal and subjective narratives that photographic series In the Best Interests detailed homage from the perspective focus on the connections between of the Public. The work conveys the of Aboriginal women which explores nostalgia, place, relationships and the looming pressures that individuals are the intergenerational connections importance of memory and family subjected to in modern Western society. between people and land in a stolen are strong concerns in First Class 19. Deeg aims to spark discomfort in the cultural upbringing. McCartney’s family audience through his manipulated portraits use traditional Aboriginal images that express his personal dotting techniques associated with frustrations. ‘The motif of the “Pig” dreamtime painting. The works serves as a physical manifestation to are recontextualised with Western expose issues and concerns that too traditional mapping in response to often go unchecked in our world: the places that have impacted the corporate greed, imprisonment, women’s lives and from where they authority, conformity, surveillance have come. Three generations of Yuin and wars. All driven by an overbearing women – McCartney, her mother and culture that forces competition among grandmother – are revealed amidst individuals as well as a collective desire rich golden ochres and traditional map to consume material goods.’ dotting representing culture, home and connection to land. Cultural symbols are articulated in Susanna Kwok’s The Fortune- ate Ones, which Susanna Kwok, Merewether High School, The Fortune-ate Ones explores the concept steel, wire, newspaper, tape, paint, plaster bandages, Chinese of Chinese take-away restaurant receipts and menus, fortune cookie wrappers, chopsticks, take-away boxes, 90 x 90 x 90cm culture in Australia. Her sculpture takes Tahlia Nicholas’s haunting Souvenir: the form of a Chinese What I Remember, What I Forget dragon cleverly explores the fallibility of memories and fashioned from the role of photography in retaining thrown away found and defining these reminiscences. objects associated She draws inspiration from a family with Asian restaurants trip taken around Australia as a child. Matt Humby, Merewether High School, The Thoughtlessness and Vices of Honest Men (detail) acrylic paint, oil sticks, oil pastels, artline pen, board, 120 x 90cm each panel such as chopsticks, Many of her memories are linked with fortune cookie the remaining photographs from this Matt Humby’s The Thoughtlessness wrappers, menus and containers. holiday. Nicholas has used collagraphs and Vices of Honest Men captures his Kwok says, ‘Sinophobic detrimental and manipulated photocopies to reflect own ideas about what it means to be connotations are often associated with how her memories of the trip have not human. He asks us about our vices. these little take-away dens; however, for only faded over time but have become What provokes us to do sinful things? many new migrants they are a crutch fluid, shifting and ever-changing. The symbolism in the paintings is to help them survive this strange new In Jackson Voorby’s poignant work The drawn from his own imaginings, history world. With limited English skills Relevance of Narrative, The Preservation and popular culture and reflects on and no educational background, they of Memory and the Inevitability of the chaos and turmoil that happens established their way in Australia, and Decay he conveys personal experiences even to honest men. gave me a life they always wished for.’ through the permanence of architecture. Tylah Smith’s expressive paintings portray depicts a series of dismantled faces. The