2023 “USU CREATIVE AWARDS”
CURATED BY LUCY BROSNAN
3 OCTOBER - 20 OCTOBER
Will Naufahu, Videos for a Home, 2022-23, Video still. Image courtesy of the artist.
Open to all students of the University of Sydney (USyd), and including the categories Art, Music, and Word, the University of Sydney Union (USU) Creative Awards is an amazing opportunity to showcase artistic works to peers, industry professionals and the local community at the USU’s contemporary art space, Verge Gallery.
ONLINE EXHIBITION
Yanming Deng, Melting CNY, 2021, Digital drawings on Kodak paper, 155 x 205mm. Image courtesy of the artist.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
BY LUCY BROSNAN
After being presented with the role of curating this year's USU Creative Awards I was briefly relieved to receive the opportunity, but after some time the excitement wore off. Followed was the all too familiar hesitant feeling of uncertainty, not knowing what quite to expect. I asked myself, how does one curate a selection of finalist work for an art prize? The USU Creative Awards is an exhibition that is formed by artworks selected purely for their artistic value and quality. Although they all exist within the same creative student community unified by the university, each artwork stands on this battlefield of competition.
2023 USU Creative Awards. Installation view. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
It's deceiving, isn't it? While a sense of harmony exists throughout the gallery, it exists in conjunction with the reality in which these artworks are competing with each other. The one thing bringing these artists, musicians and writers together in this space is an opportunity to win. From a curatorial perspective, the most challenging hurdle has been to transform a showcase of competitors into a unified exhibition while allowing the individuality of the artworks to sit on their own to be given a fighting chance to reach their goal of winning.
2023 USU Creative Awards. Installation view. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
In saying all this the exhibition, I cannot deny, is chaotic. Which from the perspective of a student is a pretty spot-on reflection of student life for emerging creatives today. This showcase is a glimpse into the contemporary in the midst of its continuous development. To be an emerging artist within this evolution of the contemporary we are constituted by doubt, hesitation, and uncertainty. Even as I write this reflection about the curation of this exhibition the anxiety in my jaw clenches. Uncertainty rises and falls throughout creative processes; however, this feeling of doubt is a necessary step, and nothing beats the feeling of coming out the other side of it. Each work you experience within the gallery most likely is a product of this shared experience of conquering the struggle within the act of creating. Although chaotic, the exhibition is made up of work that has been developed from this shared experience from the same community at Sydney University.
2023 USU Creative Awards. Installation view. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
It is easy to think the term chaos in this context is being used negatively when in fact I mean just the opposite. The chaotic character of this exhibition mirrors the diversity within the university environment. The artistic themes in this year's Creative Awards vary greatly from meditations of human intervention in the natural world to exploring cultural heritage, childhood nostalgia, and identity politics. You may expect the assemblage of such diverse themes to be tumultuous, but rather each work is connected by shared experiences coming out of the same student community.
2023 USU Creative Awards. Installation view. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
This chaos reveals the difference in each individual's practice, without it, we would be left with a repetition of the same ideas, a false and dreary representation of society. Your approach to experiencing the exhibition will quite possibly mirror the curatorial process, an all-overness and not knowing where to begin. As a spectator of the chaos, approach each work as if you would an individual. Give it the time of day as each will offer you something completely different to take away. Keep in mind that although they sit in competition with each other this assemblage of work exists within the same community, a product of turmoil and like me, you may be surprised by the connections between the works circumstantial to their shared experiences as emerging artists.