WORKING DRAWINGS / PRIVATE CONCERNS

- a response to the exchange exhibition from Tallinn in the form of an exhibition of works on paper by student artists in the RMIT University Undergraduate Painting program 2009.

The work in this exhibition has been selected from the final folios of undergraduate students, years 1 -3, enrolled in the B.A. (Fine Arts) course of the School of Art at RMIT University, Melbourne Australia 2009. As response to the exciting exchange exhibition of multi-discipline works from the Tallinn curated by Maria Juur that was exhibited to much acclaim and interest at RMIT’s School of Art gallery in 2009 this exhibition has instead chosen to focus in a low key way on student artists work with an emphasis on the medium of paper and the activity of drawing.
There were two reasons for this. Most obviously there was practical reason; paper is light and easy to travel. Secondly and more importantly, it is on paper often that an artist works out ideas, tries new methodologies, speculates and sometimes finds a way of resolving a project.
Dr. Phil Edwards, a lecturer in Painting at RMIT with the help of students, curated these works at the Melbourne end of this exhibition.
In many ways these works do not reflect the full range of media and conceptual concerns of all students or even of the student artists represented but they do act as a window into some of the issues RMIT painting students of 2009 were examining.
Each year the prevailing methods of expression of student artists alter with the individual approach of each artist and with the ever-evolving relationship early career artists have with the historical and cultural models of interpretation that have preceded them. Each year is different.
In 2009 it seemed that the works on paper in folios, sometimes only back-up work and not final pieces, often reflected a concern for drawn abstraction and how this activity may be contexualised in an era of increasingly high-tech media popular entertainment and art production. Ancient concerns about how drawing might be used to examine ambiguous space and geometry, memory and time seemed to find expression in the folios of this years students at all levels. Abstraction as metaphor and as a reactionary yet personalised activity again and again found expression in student folios even when final works in video, installation or painting sometimes seemed to be more overt expressions of contemporary art practice.
This is a quiet exhibition of often small and modest works that tell us a lot about the private thinking of these artists and their concerns. As with all private concerns we will never know the depth and extent of sensation these artists impart into the research that underpins their main practice and subsequent studies but the exhibition as it is selected hopes to give an entry point for discussion about shared ideals realised in separate ways between the art students of Estonia Academy of Fine Art in Tallinn and those in the Painting discipline at RMIT University Melbourne. It is this discussion between students of our two institutions these exchange exhibitions seek to encourage.

Dr. Phil Edwards
Lecturer in Painting
RMIT University
Melbourne, Australia