Information and enrolment sessions for 2015 Photo Imaging and Visual Arts courses!

The Trapezium Gallery at Nepean Arts and Design Centre. Photograph by Stuart Marshall

 

Nationally Recognised Training in creative industries is thriving at Nepean Arts and Design Centre. Our photo imaging courses to train professional photographers and our visual arts courses have a reputation as being amongst the best in the state. Our growing number of international students shows that our reputation for innovative, hands-on, skills-based creative programs is crossing both state and national borders.

 

If you would like to know more about studying Visual Arts or Photo Imaging with us in 2015, you are warmly invited to attend one of our information and enrolment sessions in January 2015.

These sessions will be held at 10am on January 20, 21, and 22 and 27, 28, and 29 at 10am in Building P, Nepean College, Kingswood Campus.

 

Details on how to find us can be found here:

http://wsifineart.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/how-to-find-nepean-arts-and-design.html

 

Things to bring:

• a notebook and pen, or notemaking device
• work samples of your photography or visual arts if you have any previous experience
• copies of previous qualifications and or transcripts if available.
• Please note: applicants for the Diploma of Visual Arts should bring 6-10 examples of their work-photographic documentation is acceptable. 

We have courses for beginners and intermmediate and advanced students. Come along and find out your options!

 

If possible, please RSVP to catherine.barcan@tafensw.edu.au to let us know which info session you will be attending- otherwise, just turn up!

 

 

 

 

Catherine O' Donnell's Rome Residency

The British School at Rome

 

NADC Visual Arts teacher Catherine O'Donnell has just been awarded The British School at Rome Residency, one of the National Art Schools major awards for 2014. The British School in Rome (BSR) is leading humanities and fine arts research institution and one of the most prestigious research academies in Rome. For over 100 years world-class researchers of the art, history and culture of the western Mediterranean and the best contemporary artists in the Commonwealth have been nurtured at this institution.

This 2015 Visual arts residency will not only provide Catherine with the opportunity to research and focus on her work, but also to use her fully equipped live-in studio for three months as a base to explore Rome and Italy's rich visual culture of the past. 

Rome holds countless significant sites of reference and research for Catherine as her work for the past 10 years has focused on the use of linear perspective and geometry. Her time at the BSR will be spent studying the techniques and theories employed by the 16 & 17th Italian Masters in their powerful architectural illusions. The Italian artists of this time created illusions of soaring architecture and floating figures painted on a flat ceiling which belies the real bounds of the actual physical space. Their paintings were organised in accordance with a scientific vision, bringing the depicted space into contact with true space. They developed an advanced understanding of optics, mathematics, geometry and linear perspective and it is these classical traditions of western art that Catherine will be studying, in both the writings and artworks of key Baroque artists.

You can check out some of Catherine's work at her website http://catherineodonnell.com.au/ and read more about the British School at Rome here: http://www.bsr.ac.uk/
Congratulations Catherine!

Urban Heat Islands

video production still, artist: Martin Horan

Advanced Diploma of Visual Arts students from Nepean Arts and Design Centre have been working in conjunction with Penrith City Council and multi-media artist Peta Khan to create works responding to the idea of the Urban Heat Island Effect, where urban areas absorb heat and release it back into their surroundings, creating islands of increased temperatures. The increase in roadways and built structures, and the removal of trees and other vegetation all contribute to this.

For many of these artists this is an issue that strikes close to their heart. Here in the west of Sydney, they find themselves in an area always several degrees warmer than their coastal counterparts. It is also an area experiencing rapid growth, where new housing developments are forming islands of their own.

The resulting  video work on show at the Dame Joan Sutherland Centre in Penrith is a compilation of pieces which range from local actions and interventions, to personal articulations and reflections, to pieces which engage with a larger environmental focus, showing concern with climate change, urbanisation and deforestation in general. The tree is a key feature in many of these works, as a symbol of cool refuge from the heat of our cities.

Creating works for video was a new experience for the artists, many of whom were more accustomed to traditional 2D disciplines, but one which was embraced enthusiastically as a collaboration between themselves and multi-media artist Peta Khan. Students were asked to respond to an initial brief and develop works suitable for video projection, and Peta had the challenging task of working with these pieces and knitting them into a cohesive whole.

The final video piece was screened at the ‘On Islands’ art festival at Eramboo in Terrey Hills, and will be screened at The Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre until December 17th from 7:30pm each night.

Jo Newton – project co-ordinator (TAFE)

With thanks to:

Karen Harris,  Senior Cultural Development Officer, Penrith City Council

for project co-ordination
Peta Khan,  Senior Producer, Maitree House Studios

for video compilation

and participating artists:

1. Ray Atkins
2. Jon Brew
3. Sandra Carter
4. Wai Cheung Lam
5. Lauren Grabara
6. Martin Horan
7. Barbara Hellman
8. Karl Hellman
9. Bev Kirby
10. Gloria Obbens
11. Sophie Temmhoff
12. Raelene Wright

video production still: artist Gloria Obbens