Art lovers in for a treat at TRANSIT 08

Art lovers are in for a fantastic treat this year when Southern Cross University’s TRANSIT 08 art exhibition opens on Saturday (November 8), featuring the work of 50 new artists.

TRANSIT 08 is the annual exhibition of graduating Visual Art students from Southern Cross University. On display this year will be an elegant array of contemporary visual arts including paintings, prints, sculptures, ceramics, digital art and video installations.

Students are busily putting the finishing touches to their works and the visual arts block is a hive of activity as the last licks of paint go onto the canvases, etchings run through the printing press and sculptures are lovingly smoothed and polished.

The exhibition is an exciting chance to see and purchase work early in the careers of these promising artists, some of whom are already well on their way to acclaim with recent sales to public and private collections.

Young Lismore artist Kieran Davis put himself to the creative challenge of switching from painting to sculpture for his TRANSIT exhibit with a set of hand-carved Jacaranda wood fairy wrens that he plans to feature in a cottage room installation reminiscent of grandma’s kitchen.

“I fondly remember sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen with her three wooden ducks displayed on the wall, eating scones displayed on a lace doily and drinking tea served from China cups,” Kieran said. “So I will be serving tea and scones on opening night and making an artistic statement about the value and meaning of simple things from the past and how much we may have lost by our rampant consumerism and striving to always have the latest gadgets.”

Ewingsdale printmaker Mandy Woodmansey said during her studies she had been “seduced by etching - a really lovely process working with voluptuous metal ... you fill it with colour and it simply sings.” Her TRANSIT offering is a set of prints that strive to expose the secrets and magical life of the humble printing press used by all of SCU’s printmaking students.

TRANSIT opens to the public on Saturday, November 8, from 5pm until 8pm, in the visual arts block (V block). It is free and all members of the public are welcome. The exhibition will be open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm, with extended hours on Thursdays until 8pm. It continues until Friday the 21st of November. The exhibition is closed on Sundays.

Photo: Evan Kosack, with his painting The Ecstasy of St Sebastian with Relativistic Fireball. The painting will be part of the TRANSIT 08 Exhibition which opens on Saturday.