Exhibitions by higher degree candidates Deborah Kelly, John Lethbridge & Russell Lowe

Undertaking creative research at Master and PhD levels requires intense focus, dedication, continuous curiosity and a desire to interrogate every aspect of ones practice.  At UNSW Art & Design, we believe in supporting practitioners through rigorous study and the process of displaying visual research outcomes in the public domain.  Our degrees have been structured to further the careers of experienced artists who have already established critical practices.

UNSW Galleries occasionally offers its exhibition spaces to higher degree research candidates to exhibit their work in a museum standard environment running in parallel with major international projects and exhibitions. According to UNSW Galleries Director, Dr Felicity Fenner, “Such exhibition opportunities are considered the culmination of our advanced study programs. They are of significant benefit to the selected artists and represent an arts education institution that takes its practice-led higher degree research very seriously.”

Next week, alongside the opening of The Patient, UNSW Galleries presents three Postgrad Projects, which includes exhibitions of work by three current postgraduate candidates Deborah Kelly, John Lethbridge and Russell Lowe. Collectively, Postgrad Projects trace three distinctive investigations into art history and contemporary culture.

Deborah Kelly is an established artist whose work has featured in recent international exhibitions including the Biennale of Sydney. Scenes from the Death of Books explores and exposes the representation of women in art, bridging historical and contemporary imagery while inviting visitor participation in the form of workshops.

Senior Australian artist John Lethbridge, in his first solo exhibition in many years, presents a series of performative photographs and drawings. Entitled Imaging the Void: Making the Invisible Visible, Lethbridge’s project seeks to visualise connections between human beings and the natural environments in which we exist.

Russell Lowe’s research project, Dark Machines – Presence in the Sublime, brings (sometimes noisy) motorcycle engines into the gallery spaces. The work experiments with notions of the sublime in art, proposing through art historical precedents how new understandings of the sublime might be approached and understood. 

A&D Postgrad Projects opens at UNSW Galleries on Thursday, 2 June, 6-8pm (RSVP) and runs until 23 July, 2016.