SCA Postgraduate Degree Show Review

The Postgraduate Degree Show at Sydney College of the Arts features a wide variety of works, ranging from film, photography, sculpture, painting to glass and even interactive shows. Many talented and hard-working artists will be exhibiting their work in the exhibition, including Kayo Yokoyama, Samantha Findley, Sara Sweet and Katherine Berger. Although their works differ in mediums and concepts, each work is unique and special in its own way. Yokoyama’s work is based around personal experiences, whereas Findley’s work is based around how other people will react to her work. Sweet and Berger’s works are similar, as they are both influenced by decay and nature, but they explore these concepts in a very different way.

Yokoyama has two works on display in the Postgraduate Degree Show. The first, called 108 Desires is comprised of 108 blown and engraved glass shapes with miniature chairs inside them, which are displayed on two shelves covered with fake grass. The second work is titled Homelands and it includes 6 large blown and engraved vessels exhibited on wooden chairs.

Growing up in Japan, Yokoyama has been constantly searching for ‘home’ and its familiarity, and this work is based around the search for the ‘homeland.’ The trees inscribed into the glass vessels represent comfort and finding solace in home, as trees are what Yokoyama finds comfort in. The miniature chairs inside the glass represent Yokoyama, as if she were sitting in them, making the work very personal and special.

After she finishes her Master of Fine Arts degree, Yokoyama intends to continue making art and will continue expanding and developing this work. Her goal in life is also to achieve a PhD.

Findley’s work is set in a darkened room, which features a labyrinth, with light projections and neon tube lights set in different positions around the maze. The work aims to inspire physical responses to light and to challenge people’s reactions to disorientation. Her work is very experimental and focuses on human interaction and interpretation of responses.

Although Findley came up with the concept and design, she employed a team to help make her work fit within the gallery at SCA. The project took around 2 years to plan, but only 4 weeks to build.

Findley would like to continue making art after she finishes her Master of Fine Arts degree and she intends to exhibit this work again in other venues. Findley also runs an emerging artist’s gallery called Kaleidoscope, in Danks St. Waterloo.

Sweet’s work is a series of four photographs, which comprise of girls lying in a bed of decaying roses. The complexity of her work comes from within the subject matter of the photographs. Having completed a research project on the sublime and how it has changed from a traditional meaning to a contemporary meaning, her work is influenced by the contrast of beauty and sublime qualities. The works represent the conflict between beautiful and dark qualities such as death and decay, and they focus on death as a process and how it can trigger the feeling of sublime. She was also influenced by fashion photography and Bill Henson, which is reflected in the style of the artworks.

Overall, the project took around a year to make, as she had to wait approximately 6 months for the roses to decay properly and to make the rose bed perfect. Sweet then has to choose only four shots from the thousands that she took. Although the series is finished, Sweet plans to exhibit her work again after she finishes her Master of Fine Arts degree.

Berger’s work Mother Tongue is a short 16mm film piece installed in a darkened room, projected onto a ‘sheet’ of milky water coming from a spillway device that flows into a small pond. Influenced by her residency in Canada; seeing the way they were losing their traditional lifestyle because of the change of nature, she worked with found footage of families in Canada and buried the footage in the earth of Tasmania for 2 months. She did this as a way of communicating and co-directing with nature and letting nature inscribe itself on the film. The outcome of this was a piece of film that had become almost abstract, with vibrant colours and various textures making the film truly unique.

After Berger finishes her Master of Fine Arts degree, she will continue making art, as well as continuing with her role as the Director of the Sydney Underground Film Festival.

Written by Elin Hickling
Year 10
Concord High School


When: Opens Wednesday 7 December, 6pm to 8pm. Exhibition continues to Wednesday 14 December – Monday to Friday 11am to 5pm, Saturday and Sunday 11am to 4pm.
Where: Sydney College of the Arts, Balmain Road, Rozelle (enter opposite Cecily Street)
Cost: Free, no booking or registration required.
Further Information: sydney.edu.au/sca/degree_shows/exhibitions


Image credits: (top to bottom) Kayo Yokoyama, 2011, Katherine Berger, 2011.