Art provides a way to communicate
ART exhibitions can be vehicles for communication on different levels governed by the motivation and the message that the artists wish to convey.
This can be complicated when attempting to explore concepts within the constraints of doctoral requirements. But it can also be a rewarding occasion celebrating the unpretentious joy of sharing experiences.
The Arts Gallery at the University of Southern Queensland is a versatile space that takes on the role of laboratory in presenting Inquisitive Creatures: Adventures Through Practice-Led Research, a PhD and Doctor of Creative Arts exhibition.
Despite cloaking their passion in often convoluted artspeak, a prescriptive but necessary academic format that often obfuscates the rationale behind the concept, the artists communicate a dedicated and absorbed obsession with their chosen projects.
Ellie Coleman looks at social values and ethical issues for a vegan existence by turning animal skulls encrusted with crystals into objects to be revered.
Tobby Lattimore becomes the artist-etymologist with his digitally enhanced collages of intimidating insects from an alien world.
An identity stalemate of mother/artist, freedom, responsibility is played out in a video installation by Linda
Clark.
Portraiture in bold linear gestures is used by Christopher Abrahams to explore identity where the face masks, but not completely conceals, the inner self.
For David Usher the landscape creeps up like a ghost at the feast in which memory becomes the spectre of reality.
Dan Elborne shows a small percentage of a monumental installation of tiny fingerprinted clay pebbles that memorialize Holocaust victims.
Fables, fairy tales, and hidden agendas shape the work of Ann Russell.
Performance art in the form of clowning is used by David Steggall to carry serious messages about child protection.
Jen Mize and Mark Sholtez are music recorders who have produced Twilight on the Trail an album that mixes jazz and country sounds.
Patterns of landscape defined by history and culture are interpreted through a personal filter in the paintings by Neville Heywood.
The Wilsonton Community Art Gallery is hosting Dan Goes Forth: Journeying with the Travelling Jays, an exhibition of paintings by Dan Wilson.
This body of work is a collaboration between Dan and his sisters who sent him images, emails and travel apps of their excursions in Europe and Asia.
Dan’s paintings are responses to the scenes and stories, translated in bright colours and enthusiastic brush work.
Dan found the locations on maps and researched the details which added further to his personal interpretation of the places visited.
Dan is a man with Downs Syndrome who imbues his paintings with a wonderful, uncomplicated sense of delight.
Dan has had several solo exhibitions all of which have been well received by viewers and supported by his many fans.