Serena Hart, so you want to see me cry?, 2021. Oil paint on canvas, 91.5cm x 122cm. Courtesy the artist. [Portrait of the artist in the centre draped in a sheet in a religious pose, surrounded by various birds and butterflies in a vast landscape. Inspired by a portrait of St. Francis of Assisi. Painting is framed by long gold fabric.]

Debut XVIII: Livin’ On A Prayer

Serena Hart, Panayiotis Kasseris, Johanna van der Linden , Bec Martin, Brigid Meredith, Caitlin Aloisio Shearer , Christopher Theofanous , Matthew Ware

2–19 Feb 2022

It has been a long 2 years. Debut XVIII: Livin’ On A Prayer comprises of new artworks from Bec Martin, Brigid Meredith, Caitlin Aloisio Shearer, Christopher Theofanous, Johanna van der Linden, Matthew Ware, Panayiotis Kasseris and Serena Hart.

Curated by Nikos Pantazopoulos from RMIT and Sanja Pahoki from the VCA, we selected recent graduates’ artworks that cut through the malaise and made us feel something. Works that were not necessary the loudest but were made by recent graduates whom we imagined sitting in the back of the classroom observing and finding space to be heard from the loud daily politics. The artworks chosen are loosely organised around themes to do with spirituality, religion, family and death.

‘This invisible material’

Whenever things feel like they are at the heights of difficulty I find myself saying ‘please god, no!’ ... I can feel my stomach in my mouth. When I’m in this state why can’t I shake off this idea, word, this invisible material called god? Is this all a repercussion from my childhood? Is this a framework I can’t let go of or a framework that makes it all bearable when things get difficult? When I was growing up I had two male role models, one was my neighbor Theo George, he was a Gregorian chanter at the local Orthodox church, the other was my biological father, a card dealer in the local Greek cafe. God was actually never present, but we went to church and spent time together being a community we were filling in the gap of God's absence.

When I was in Form 2, I went from sitting in the front seat to sitting in the back of the classroom. Everything changed in that momentous year for me - I could feel things external to myself. I had cravings I didn't understand. I was always embarrassed and sitting in the back seat where I could hide my shame.

Then, I remembered that I wanted to be a nun, and thought God was going to save me. I spent my school days trying to convert my peers. A priest at World Youth Day told us that masturbation was a mortal sin, so I instantly stopped and tearily went to confess my shame. When I finally orgasmed 5 years later, I stopped believing in God.

Who built a wall around pleasure and made it shameful? I wonder if nuns do masturbate? We all know the shit some priests have gotten up to, now THAT is shameful. It’s all a web of lies and fucked up ideals, you might as well masturbate the guilt away.

I wonder how different things would be for people without the presence of toxic shame. A dark, pressurised void, it feels like an invisible force field inside the body. Release, let go, expel. It just takes so much time.

Some kind of jubilant optimism. Some kind of looking up into the sky and looking back down again through the eyes of someone else. It's a shame the earth is round. I have astigmatism and my eyes are shaped conically. Can they take it all in? “All This Sky, That's All Mine” she wrote with some spirit, sixty years ago ... An optimism that never stopped expecting the next miracle. It's a shame I can't fit the world into my mouth all at once.

Could true joy be a true sight? I rushed into the garden once, expecting new blooms; although I found some, there was also decay. I had not expected to find

beauty in the latter, but I did. Miracles can be everywhere as they are 'miraculous.' I'm near sure Christ appeared to me in the form of a local duck. I've been more attentive towards these creatures since. I fantasise that I consume a model of the cosmos when I eat a mandarin. I've never thought of taking in all of anything; it feels far too burdensome of a task for me.

I’m pretending to be a bad boy, but I’m not really!

I saw the priest and he called me a sinner.

My mother has a little cross on her bedside table, just in case. I never thought we were particularly religious being brought up in a socialist country and all. When I was younger I used to think the cross was more about a fear of death rather than a belief in god. Now I am not so sure. My grandmother used to have a picture of Tito in her house. After he died and the civil war, the picture of Tito was replaced by a picture of Pope John Paul II.

My mother cooks fettuccine carbonara with cream, bacon, garlic and dijon mustard. That's about as close to Italy and religious taboo as it gets for my family. She gets the recipe from the first Australian Masterchef winner Julie Goodwin's cookbook 'The Heart of the Home.' A true culinary awakening for suburban mums the country over.

In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to in turn feel the need to be constantly visible, for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success — do not be afraid to disappear. From it. From us. For a while. And see what comes to you in the silence.

The artists, 2022.

Download exhibition text 'This Invisible Material'

Download DEBUT XVII Livin' On A Prayer List of Works

Melbourne Art Fair Gallery Night at the Nicholas Building
WED 16 Feb 6-8pm

View Debut XVIII: Livin’ On A Prayer and explore other art spaces in the Nicholas Building.

GALLERY NIGHT is presented as part of the Broadsheet LATE NIGHTS program, and is supported by City of Melbourne through the Events Partnership Program (EPP).

Please register your attendance for one of four half-hour sessions via the link.

Bec Martin, Cara cara orange peels sucked, 2021. Chromogenic print on aluminium dibond, 17.78 x 25.4cm. Courtesy the artist. [A photographic image of sucked orange peel slices with pink flesh on a white plate. The plate is in front of a window with condensation.]

Caitlin Aloisio Shearer, Assorted paintings installed in the Kate Daw room for the VCA Grad Show, 2021. Oil paint, chalk pastel and wax on canvas and linen, varied dimensions. Documentation by ALEC. Courtesy the artist. [Several paintings of differing dimensions, cover three white walls in a gallery space. Dark brown floorboards make up the lower half of the image. Two paintings of rainbows, one large and one smaller, hang on the central wall, whilst some paintings either side of these are indecipherable because of the wide-angle photo. A painting of an abstracted figure is crammed above the doorway on the left-hand side.]

Johanna van der Linden, Shroud, 2021. Latex, acrylic, found face, olive oil, paper, soap, wax, paper mache, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist. [This is a close-up image of part of the larger work “Shroud”. Expressive, subtle oil marks are visible on off white paper, which is covered in a layer of peeling, pinkish latex, and white netting fabric. These textures are stuck down to create organic forms which respond to human skin, veins and arteries. ]

Matthew Ware, Muscipula Diet-Boli (version 2.0), 2021. Digital video (still), 4:30min. Courtesy the artist. 9A woman in workout clothes balances on her hands upon a ten-metre-high crucifix in the Austrian alps.]

Brigid Meredith, Untitled (Moss), 2021,. Encaustic on plywood, 26cm x 30 cm x 1 cm, Untitled (white forms), 2021, encaustic on plywood, 26 x 30 x 1 cm. Courtesy the artist. [Two small, textural paintings on a white wall. One has shades of green and the other has shades of pink and purple.]

Panayiotis Kasseris, ́Πατρίδα αραεύω σε’ - ‘I am looking for a homeland’, 2021. Courtesy the artist. [A black and white image of two people holding hands.]

Christopher Theofanous, B is for Byzantine, 2021, 176 x 130 x 3 cm. Documentation by ALEC. Courtesy the artist. [This work is a large oil on canvas painting depicting byzantine-inspired forms and figures against a softly clouded/abstract sky on an unclassifiable murky green foreground. In more detail, a red-cloaked figure cowers in the left corner. Directly behind them are two cypress pines of differing heights, with a ghost standing as a crow might on a near top branch of the closer cypress pine. An aeroplane on short stilts lies on the horizon line, which points towards the knees of an elongated ghostly priest figure who has their back towards the byzantine rock formations, loosely gesturing human hands in between two gilded brass columns. Four short cypress pines and loose details of a distant background are directly after the rock formations and make up the horizon line on the far right of the canvas.]

Debut XVIII: Livin' On A Prayer, 2022. Photograph Nick James Archer. Courtesy the artists.

Onsite, Exhibition, Debut

Overview

Blindside’s annual Debut exhibition presents exciting and rigorous work by recent graduates from Melbourne’s leading art institutions.

Curated by Sanja Pahoki and Nikos Pantazopoulos.

Key Dates

Opening: DEBUT XVIII: 3 Feb 2022, 7am–9am

Melbourne Art Fair at the Nicholas Building Gallery Night : 16 Feb 2022, 7am–9am

Acknowledgment

This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.

Biographies

Serena Hart sees her practice as an encapsulation of the otherworldly and something beyond just herself. Her works are personal and often rooted in concepts of family and her own inner world. These themes are represented through symbolism, primarily religious or mythological. She finds herself travelling between reality and self-created dream worlds, searching for a blissful spot in the safety of the in-between.

Panayiotis Kasseris is an emerging Greek documentary photographer based in Melbourne, Australia. Panayioti graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Photography) in 2020 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) in 2021 from RMIT University. Panayioti takes photographs, for a career, because he can’t imagine ever not. Since migrating to Australia in 2012 he’s been interested in exploring and documenting his own journey to a foreign country and how all the different nationalities fit and coexist in this country.

Johanna van der Linden Johanna’s practise explores the relationship between the female body, Christian religion, and institutional power. Her sculptural and print based material explorations critique the transfer of power between institutional religious spaces and the domestic. Johanna puts forward her own female corporeality in defiance, expressed through material explorations, installation, and printmaking. Expanded printmaking processes explore the concepts of trace, absence and index using mono printing, lino carving, casting, tracing and embossing techniques. Johanna’s work reclaims a softness, a focus on the material body and presents the female body as a site of contemplation and devotion.

Bec Martin takes photos of stuff she finds fun to look at though a camera. With these photos she makes groupings and installations she finds equally fun to look at. Bec recently graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from VCA.

Brigid Meredith is a Melbourne/Naarm based artist investigating materials and their agency. Working across sculpture, painting and installation, her work is influenced by Post Humanist concepts. For Meredith the human/nature binary has similarities with the object/subject binary – _as one is usually dominated and subjugated by the other. Embracing an alternate approach of exchange and reciprocity can have interesting and liberating effects on the material, artist and audience. By bringing together the mediums of painting and sculpture Meredith seeks to create a highly tactile encounter for the viewer that reflects these potentialities.

Caitlin Aloisio Shearer I seek to understand the world through painting. Attracted to the sensuous nature of oil paints, I define the canvas as a home for emotional processing to manifest. Flowers, faces and figures are long-held personal tokens in which meaning has been repeatedly invested. I like to propose a generous realm where interior and exterior worlds meet; birthing that which is in opposition to the reality of daily life.

Christopher Theofanous My name is Christopher Theofanous, and I’ve just completed the Honours program in Visual Art at the Victorian College of the Arts. I am a painter who uses performance and readymade installations to investigate the critical and conceptual basis for painting. My imagery is devised by exploring the allure of devotional mechanisms that recur through art history, religious Byzantine iconography and contemporary art. I reinterpret segments of these spiritual/artistic works via Expressionistic painting techniques to inform a dialogue within a single painting or body of works. This enables an ongoing conversation between art history and my practice.

Matthew Ware is an artist from Melbourne.

Curators

Nikos Pantazopoulos is an artist exploring LGBTQI+ politics through an immigrant cis-gender gay male lens. His work remediates art history and popular narratives that are influenced by hegemonic culture. Pantazopoulos’ current research is engaged in Ancient Greek legacies and its influences on Modernism, Minimalism, relational, outsider art activities, and on labour and its economic values in our society. His use of materials critiques the classical traditions of the arts to repurpose them through a photographic data and technologically driven lens.

Sanja Pahoki is a Croatian born visual artist currently living in Melbourne, Australia. Pervasive technologies such as photography, video and neon are employed by Sanja to explore observations from everyday life. With a background in philosophy and psychology, and working primarily with photography, Sanja is a keen and sensitive observer of social interactions. Existential concerns such as irony, anxiety and angst are prevalent in her artworks. Sanja is currently the Head of Photography at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and is represented by Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne.