Hungry Ghost 

Amber Camille Jacobs 

22 Jan-2 Feb

Amber Camille Jacobs' exhibition  Hungry Ghost  implements experimental and original use of paint, print-making, installations, animation and light in order to explore the ancient, Buddhist concept of the Hungry Ghost. 

Memorophilia 

Michelle Cawthorn

5 Feb- 16 Feb 

Memorophilia is a collection of works that explore personal and familiar memories and reflects on the ways in which our psyche presents itself to the outer world. The collages are derived from juxtapositions of memory and artefact, representational and non-representational forms; such as you might find in dreams. 

After the Mayans 

Meng-Yu Yan, Sam Shennan, Muriel Anne Ricafrente, Nick Fox, Tamara Muzikants, Hannah Carroll Harris, Beth Dillon, Kieran Bryant, Lachlan Herd, Harriet Robey, Lily Taylor, Trent Connor, Zac Fenn, Clare Powell, Laura Taylor, Rose Jurd, Georgia Emslie, Renae Swann, Cecilia White

Curated by Kieran Bryant and Lachlan Herd

19 Feb - 2 Mar at Kudos Gallery  and  COFAspace

Based around the 2012 phenomenon, comprising a range of eschatological beliefs according to which cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on 21 December 2012. This date is regarded as the culmination of a 5,125 year long cycle in the Mayan Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. 

Launch Sequence 

5 - 16 Mar 

The Kudos Gallery Committee 2012 presents Launch Sequence, featuring the work of graduating or recently graduated artists including Bernardo Bento, Kieran Bryant, Susan Bui, Sophie Clague, Eric Davidson Gluyas, Beth Dillon, Tamara Elkins, Nick Fox, David Greenhalgh, Sarah Kukathas, Gillian Lavery, Allison Marie Low, Tom Macphail, Ramesh Mario, Gemma Messih, Claudia Nicholson, Jason Phu, Lisa Sammut, Samara Shehata and Giselle Stanborough

Curated by the 2012 Kudos Gallery Committee 

Sometimes things don't go as planned. 

Some say that on July 20th  1969 Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.  Aldrin maintains that a UFO accompanied them out of the earth's atmosphere. Apparently their astronaut suits were so big that they broke the lunar module's "on" switch. As an alternative they used a felt tip pen to restart it and get back to earth. 

Chances We Take 

Jane Fontane 

19 - 23 Mar

In our formative years, we create the foundations of our identities. We form self-concepts and react to experiences; we become an individual. How much are we a product of experience? 

Chances we take  explores this process of construction through the unique perspective of pre-adolescence, investigating the notion that we are all constructs of our time, place and history, just as the presented screen-print works are of theirs. Concern is placed on the journey, the process that we all make from birth to death mirrored in the voyage the image takes from idea to reality, life subject to screen-print. Thus the conceptual properties of screen-printing are linked to the formation of an identity based on experiences as layers of the finished work, each informing the alignment of the next, drawn together in an exploration as portraits, interactive games and installation. 

Primary colours and superhero dress-ups: What is expected of us as we 'grow up'? Where did we come from, and how do we know where we are going? Is it really ok to be the sum of strength as well as flaw? 

Proximity 

Melanie Beresford, Sarah Bovis, Minét Brits, Zachariah Fenn, Matthew James, Aaron Moore, Simon McGrath, Simon Swadling, Santina Ingui, Louise Zhang, Jemima Trappel, Joe Oppel, Clare Maxwell, Lorna MacRitchie 

curated by Zac Fenn

26 Mar - 6 Apr

prox•im•i•ty : (noun) nearness in time, space, or relationship. 

At the very core of our beings, humans have a deep-seeded longing for companionship and fellowship. Loneliness is a kind of social starvation. Where has this longing for relationship developed from?
Our very livelihood is dependent upon the perfect structuring and balance of our solar system.
Can such an extravagant and complex network simply come about by chance? …or has it all been intelligently designed?

Join us as we as we explore these universal questions through art as a means of communication and expression.
 

Performance Anxiety  

Ben Rak 

9 - 13 Apr

Theories of performativity have asserted that all people are in effect participating in some form of role-play.  Regardless of what we imagine our identity to be, we render it for the benefit of both our selves and our audience.  This performance evolves in response to reactions, which in turn reshape our identity - it does not embody the identity, it constructs it.  Performance Anxiety is the result of an ongoing project exploring the role of style, body language, stereotypes, clichés and media narrative in the manifestations of cultural identity. By appropriating stereotypes, I argue that within this time of media saturation, the 'authentic self' is lost, replaced by a pastiche of media images and clichés. 

Illusion

Tom Rynne

16 - 27 Apr  

As artists we spend much of our time thinking about "The Truth", but in a world where truth depends more on what newspapers you read, what TV you watch and who your facebook friends are, the idea has lost much of its currency. As a group our works deal with a wide spectrum of ideas around truth, lies, fact, fiction, the real and the artificial. We aim to question what reality and illusion are, with stops at delusion, dreams, our own private wonderlands and the starkest of realities. Our works traverse themes from interpersonal relationships and connections to the need to escape the reality we find ourselves in, whether through dreams or through drink. We're here to question what is real and we're here to examine our illusions. 

Walking Mountains: Responses from the Heart

30 Apr - 4 May  

Daniel Antkowiak, Melissa Beowulf, Meredith Christie, Marissa Dale-Johnson, Donna Eddie, Amanda Farquharson, Jade Gunn, Wenhui He, Lachlan Herd, Joanne Meligonitis, Toshiko Oiyama, Katya Petetskaya, Chloe Platt, Spider Redgold, Anna Russell, Renae Swann, Rachel Waters, Christine Wiltshier

A pilgrimage through the Kumano Kodo Trail, Japan.  

A group Exhibition featuring works created as a response to an International Special Elective, taught and organized by Louise Folwer-Smith. Walking Mountains is a collective exhibition which shares with you  creative reflections and personal experiences from eighteen COFA students, following an international journey through culturally significant sites in Wakayama, Japan. These students, of varied artistic discipline, warmly welcome you to enjoy and engage in a brilliant display of cultural creative endeavours.

Morphology 

Ainsley Wilcock, Anitta Smith, Louise Zhang, Mathew Purchase, Emma Davey Jenkins

7 - 18 May    

Morphology: the branch of biology dealing with the forms and structure of organisms.

A multi-disciplinary exploration of art forms in nature playing with the phenomenal aspects of the seemingly irrational natural world and the imperial/rational world of natural sciences. Through The use of hyper-real colour and form exaggerate the artifice of recreating the natural in a gallery context. A documentation of our own understanding and imaginings of the science of nature and the natural. 

Emerging Topology

Josh Harle 

21 - 25 May 

All stories are travel stories.  

The spaces we inhabit are becoming progressively more legible through ubiquitous access to Google Maps and GPS navigation, introducing new types of travel story and new types of space. Emerging Topologies explores the shifting landscape of a city experienced through mobile mapping technology, and sketches out its own improbable paths through the shadows.

Informed by his previous research degree in Computer Science, Josh Harle has created a series of software tools to map, scan, and visualise the city in contingent, poetic ways, in spite of the rationalising imperative of geo-locative technology. The works tell tales: compiling unreadable maps of journeys through strange cities, and taking playful, winding trips across the smudged face of the reference map. 

Mark Visone 

28 May - 1 Jun 

Even though the questioning nature of art makes the use and manipulation of a 'gender toolbox' subjective and vague, recognition and use of these differences may allow the mature artist of either gender to suggest an emphasis towards masculinity or femininity in their own work. 

Point of View 

Josh Harle, Chris Henschke and Volker Kuchelmeister 

4 - 15 Jun

Presented by the College of Fine Arts and ISEA International Symposium on Electronic Art 2013, this exhibition explores the boundaries between real and virtual space and the relationship between observer and observed. It utilises electronic media to investigate the limitations traditional ocular optics put on our perception of mediated imagery while exploring and exploding the boundaries of the cinematic image.

Black Noise

Susanne Pratt

18 - 22 Jun

Drilling, blasting, heavy trucks, dozers, excavators, crushers coal trains, bulldozers, front end loaders, the throb of machinery-for those living by coal mining sites these are the vibrations of their night; the sounds of their day. But for the large majority of us-an 'us' removed from the extraction and manufacturing of coal-these sounds are a kind of black-noise, inaudible. Yet, these black-noises and the practices that generate these phenomena are impacting the climate in chaotic ways: after the black-noise we see the floods, the droughts and the various outages. 

女士门先生门，2008 年 H 。M 。S 。GOLDEN CENTURY 即将进攻 BONDIBEACH 。注意安全，一路顺风 。 

PLEASE SIR/MADAM， FOR 2008 THE H 。M 。S 。GOLDEN CENTURY WILL ARRIVALS ON THE BONDIBEACH. BE CARFUL & JOYFUL JOURNEY 。

Jason Phu

25 - 29 Jun  

 

小呀嘛小二郎 

背着那书包上学堂 

不怕太阳晒 

也不怕那风雨狂 

只怕先生骂我笨 

没有学问无颜见爹娘 

没有学问无颜见爹娘 

Cold Eels and Distant Thoughts

Michael Aird, Darren Bell, Mervyn Bishop, Adam Hill, Gary Lee, Ricky Maynard, Peter McKenzie, Michael Riley, and Jason Wing  

Curated by Djon Mundine OAM, Independent Aboriginal Art Curator, PhD Candidate COFA, UNSW 

3 - 13 Jul 

A travelling exhibition of photographs of Aboriginal men by nine Aboriginal male photographers. 

The enigmatic title of the exhibition comes from a statement by Afro-American boxer Jack Johnson (1878-1946). When asked why white women were attracted to black men, Johnson amusingly 

and cryptically replied: 'We eat cold eels and think distant thoughts.' 

Exhibition curator Djon Mundine OAM said "The first photographs of Australian Aboriginal people were taken in 1847: eight years after the invention of photography as we know it. Photographers of these times searched for the stereotyped 'primitive' and posed their Aboriginal subjects accordingly. It was only towards the end of the 1800s/early 1900s that some, still unrecognised Aboriginal people moved behind the camera to record their own vision. This exhibition is part of that story." 

The enigmatic title of the exhibition comes from a statement by Afro-American boxer Jack Johnson (1878-1946). When asked why white women were attracted to black men, Johnson amusingly and cryptically replied: 'We eat cold eels and think distant thoughts.' 

Weird Woods 

Daniel Lethlean Higson and Paden Hunter

16 - 20 Jul 

The clearing amongst the ancient trees, the lost city, the wizard's hut, the prehistoric island, the mysterious planetoid. 

Weird Woods is a compendium of strange and esoteric worlds brought into being through scribblings and dreamscapes. Born out of the vivid but half-remembered memories of Saturday morning cartoons, Weird Woods seeks to investigate the relationship of the cartoon object to the cartoon place.

 Weird Woods will present a series of works on paper by emerging artists Daniel Lethlean Higson and Paden Hunter. 

The Shape of Things to Come

23 Jul - 3 Aug 

COFA BFA Hon's Exhibition at the halfway mark & the GBK Awards at Kudos Gallery & COFAspace. 

Safekeeping

Melanie Beresford

6 - 10 Aug 

Finding security and losing it, often goes hand in hand. It's a little like hide and seek. In response, we find ways to protect ourselves from loss but the truth is, loss is a part of life. Using the home as a metaphor for exploring Attachment Theory, I have created various installations, videos and drawings in an attempt to capture a sense of how we deal with the inevitable.

The Whispering Gallery 

Lea Donnan 

13 - 24 Aug

With tactile, meditative imagery often horrifying and beautiful, Donnan presents a catalogue of situations and artifacts suggesting a disintegration of the underpinnings of global culture. Using self-immersive techniques to employ her own trans-cultural lens, Donnan details the places at which this global culture have begun to fray.  

A Place of Milk and Honey 

Annie Kennedy

27 - 31 Aug 

Using video, photography and sculptural forms, Kennedy has been exploring what it meant to be displaced from a familiar community, the difficulty of establishing connections to a new home and her search for personal identity and belonging in a new family. 

Tim Olsen Drawing Prize 2013

3 - 14 Sept 

The Tim Olsen Drawing Prize is a collaborative initiative between the Tim Olsen Gallery and the Department of Drawing and Painting at COFA. This  collaboration has been continuously supported by Tim Olsen Gallery and the new venture - OLSEN IRWIN. With the intention of encouraging excellence in drawing the Tim Olsen Drawing Prize, now in its thirteenth year, and the accompanying exhibition are important events in the College and School of Art calendar.

Kudos Award 

17 - 28 Sept 

Featuring a whopping $1,500 prize money from Arc @ COFA and a stack of industry donated goodies, the Kudos Award has set off the careers of some of COFA's hottest talent over the past decade. Now in its 12th year, this annual program seeks to recognise innovation and excellence across all disciplines at COFA. 

Titles

Stella Rosa McDonald

1 - 12 Oct 

Through video, print and photography Stella Rosa McDonald explores the role of writing, reading and editing in relation to the processes of representation. Titles establishes a link between the written word and the image and plays with the near collision of both.

Talk Show (after the break)

Curated by JD Reforma and Sandra Di Palma

15 - 26 Oct 

Talk Show (after the break)  is the second of a two-part exhibition, featuring the work of seven artists who have been invited to respond to the landscape of this eponymous genre of televisual entertainment. 

Wank Generation

Claire Pony and Coyote the Blimp

29 Oct - 9 Nov 

The dynamic duo claire pony and Coyote the Blimp showcase their works of ceramics, drawing and printmaking. 

Glaze of our Lives

Curated by Kristian Führer 

Glaze of Our Lives presents a diverse range of works produced by students in the ceramics faculty at COFA with the intention of providing an insight into the potential possibilities of working with the clay medium. 

Ingrid Mission

12 - 23 Nov 

Searching Within

Yulia Fomenko and Sylvia Riley

26 - 30 Nov 

Exploration through variety of media and support of human innate and historical need for objectivity and meaning in art. 

Andrew Haining

3 - 7 Dec 

Oculus Sinister

Brett Breedon, Kieran Butler, Renate Rienmueller & Katherine Rooke

10 - 14 Dec 

Oculus Sinister seeks to find new ways to consider contemporary photographic practice and what constitutes a photograph. The artists produce work informed by the history of photography and it's processes that speak of the underlying nature of the photographic image.