The VCA Art Grad Show returns this week with an extraordinary display of new work by graduating students at the University of Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts (VCA).
Featuring more than 160 works, the 2024 Art Grad Show is one of the largest exhibitions of emerging visual art in the country, offering audiences insight into the latest developments in contemporary art thinking and practice today.
The exhibition encompasses a wide range of contemporary art disciplines, including painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation, video, performance, photography and more.
Acting Head of Art at the VCA, Dr Kiron Robinson, said this year’s Grad Show is an inspiring cross-section of creativity.
“The VCA graduate exhibition is a one-of-a-kind showcase of the fresh perspectives and creative visions of the rising stars of visual art nationwide. The students have been working towards this milestone event for the duration of their studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music. I am immensely proud of them and their graduate pieces.”
Among this year’s highlights is a photography series by Bachelor of Fine Arts (Photography)student Tess Rogers exploring the boundaries of social reproduction, femininity and memory.
“Within my photographs, beds, sheets, doonas and clothing fold into one another to fracture time and hold space for reflection. There’s both a fragility and resilience in these time capsules,” said Tess.
“My practice is influenced by my family photo albums, the linen closet, the clothes we share, my Mum’s old jewellery box. I’m influenced by questions like ‘when and how do we allow ourselves to unfold lost emotions?'”
Open Cut by artist Rachel Rovira. Image supplied
Also exhibiting in this year’s show is Bachelor of Fine Arts (Drawing and Printmaking) student Rachel Rovira with a work responding to an active quarry located in South-East Melbourne.
“The huge voids and open cuts I show in my work form an archive of destruction and transience that bears witness to the landscape scars and extensive geoengineering of the earth’s surface required to meet human needs and purposes,” said Rachel.
“In tracing the material histories of extraction from the urban environment to the quarry, my aim is to draw hidden agents and forces of extractivism to the surface.”
For the graduating students, the exhibition represents the culmination of years of dedication, hard work, and a deep engagement with their craft and creative practices.
The 2024 VCA Art Grad Show is on display from 21-29 November at the University of Melbourne’s Southbank Campus and will be open between 11am-5pm daily. Read more and organise your visit. Audiences to the VCA Art Grad Show can also view Buxton Contemporary’s latest exhibition Tony Clark: Unsculpted.
