Visual arts Honours exhibition showcases printmaking

Southern Cross University will showcase the work of two printmaking Honours students when Translations 2012, the annual visual arts Honours exhibition, opens at the Lismore campus on Friday, November 16.

The two artists exhibiting their work are Travis Paterson and Karen Stone.

Travis Paterson's project engages with historical analogies to investigate contemporary prejudice around gender issues. He charts forms of exile through installation using aquatint etchings, embossing, laser cutting, handmade paper and drawing.

In 2009 Travis won a $5000 John and Sheilagh Kaske Memorial Fellowship, a bequest that supports students studying visual arts at the University.

Karen Stone uses memory and remembrance of the environment of her grandmother's house and especially the floral dress patterns she found there to investigate the poetry and power of memory and notions of belonging. She works through digitally recreating floral patterns into computer enhanced drawings and then producing very large handmade paper pulp paintings on large silk screens.

Karen ‘paints’ by filling squirting sauce bottles with the coloured pulp which, when dry, leaves a fine, paper work.

An online catalogue features the artists and their work.

Course co-ordinator John Smith said the Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) program enabled students to take their work to a higher level through research training and the development of their professional gallery installation practice.



“Honours projects typically have a resonant personal, social and cultural currency. They indicate the depth of engagement with the world that these emerging artists can achieve through contemporary art practice,” Mr Smith said.

“The two artists exhibiting this year have produced visually contrasting shows. However they are both involved in the way personal experiences can be transformed, through art practice, in ways that are significant and informative to people across and throughout the community.

“Both these shows can be very confrontational at the same time as they reverberate with warmth and invite engagement and interaction.”

Translation 2012, Southern Cross University’s visual arts Honours graduation exhibition, opens Friday, November 16, from 5.30pm-8pm in the visual arts V Block at SCU’s Lismore campus, Military Road, East Lismore.

The exhibition continues from Saturday, November 17 through to Saturday November 24. Hours are 10am to 4pm (closed Sunday).

Photo: Travis Paterson’s Castaways, pulp printed handmade paper.