The COFA Blog

Kings College London, virtual website tour image of Maughan Library

COFA extends a big congratulations to Keren Hammerschlag who has been awarded a three year King’s College PostDoctoral Scholarship, in the Centre for Health and the Humanities, History Department at King’s College London. Hammerschlag will be working closely with Ludmilla Jordanova on her PostDoctoral.  Hammerschlag completed her undergraduate degree at COFA in the department of Art History and education. The scholarship is funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Alexander Seton, I...U, bianca marble, resin inlay, 2009

COFA graduate and artist Alexander Seton has been awarded the 2009 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize worth $10,000  for his realistically soft looking hoodie, carved from a slab of bianca marble. Alexander Seton is well known for solid marble sculptures resembling soft fabrics. On Hold Lawnmower, a marble sculpture of a lawnmower draped with a white cloth is available for viewing in the 2009 Sculpture by the Sea exhibition.

Winner Phoebe Boyle with her winning work Second of the Primary #1 and Sarah, 4:40 behind

COFA proudly presents the 2009 Australian Decorative Fine Arts Society (ADFAS) Scholarship Exhibition, showcasing the work of the nine award nominees.

The ADFAS Scholarship Prize, first awarded in 2000, was established to foster interest and excellence in the decorative and fine arts, and to cultivate an appreciation of practice.

The Australian Decorative Fine Arts Society (ADFAS) was formed in 1989 and co-ordinates the activities of the 31 Decorative and Fine Arts Societies located in major cities and regional areas throughout Australia. Their aim is the “promotion and advancement of aesthetic education, the cultivation and study of the decorative and fine arts and the preservation of our cultural and artistic heritage.”

COFA congratulates the 2009 ADFAS award winners.

• The winner of the ADFAS Award 2009 was Pheobe Boyle. Phoebe wins the award with a body of works: Digital Animation, Drawing With Light, The Pinup and the Animals, Second of the Primary #1, and Sarah, 4:40

• The winner of the ADFAS Encouragement Award for 2009 was Dallas Gillespie.

This year, nine nominees were chosen to showcase their exhibits at the COFASpace Gallery. The students chosen to exhibit were:
Gemma Messih
Allison Bishop
Simon Wheeldon
Joshua Lincoln
Pheobe Boyle
Elyse Watkins
Dallas Gillespie
Alicia Wall
Elliott Mackie

Gary Galego, Carbonwood

COFA graduate and designer, Gary Galego, has been chosen as one of the Top Ten Finalists in the Bombay Sapphire Design Discovery Award 2009. Galego was chosen from over 90 entrants in the competition, more entrants than any previous year, for Carbonwood, an interesting design of a bicycle comprising of both wood and carbon.

“Wood and carbon is a relatively new combination of materials. It allows you to strengthen the structure in areas where wood may not be entirely appropriate. The design aims to highlight the possibilities of a material which is a quality I try to imbue in all my work” explains Galego.

The winner will be judged on the 14 October by a panel of judges including COFA graduate Liane Rossler from Dinosaur Designs, Vogue Living editor David Clark and Object director Steven Pozel.

The award provides opportunities for emerging Australian designers, on a local and international level, culminating in an exhibition hosted at Establishment, Sydney from 9 to 30 November before travelling to Melbourne in February and Brisbane in April.

The Bombay Sapphire Design Discovery Award was established in 2003 and is one of the most prestigious design awards, with over AU$40 000 worth of prizes to be won, including a trip to the Salone del Mobile, in Milan Italy. The winner receives a $30 000 grant.

Detail from Angelica Mesiti’s Rapture (silent anthem) Photo courtesy of the Artist.

The 58th Blake Priz e of $20,000 has been awarded to artist and COFA student Angelica Mesiti for a silent video work entitled [Rapture (silent anthem)] . Filmed from a concealed position beneath the stage at a rock concert, Mesiti’s camera looks out at a sea of ecstatic young faces. In a unanimous decision, the judges praised it for its beauty, emotional intensity and technical virtuosity. An enigmatic work that operates on many levels, Rapture depicts the joy of being alive while also hinting at the darker aspects of religious emotion.

Mesiti is better known for her involvement in the Kingpins, an all female artistic foursome who play with the gaps in and between with an infinite series of transgressive drag acts, utilising elements taken from mainstream media, pop culture and art history, to comment on issues of gender, sex, public space, consumerism and corporate branding.

The Blake Prize for Religious Art was established in 1951 and is the oldest prize in Australia dedicated to spirituality, religion and cultural diversity. It is a $20,000 annual non-acquisitive prize.

To view and excerpt of Angelica Mesiti’s 2009 Blake Prize winning work, Rapture (silent anthem), please visit: http://tv.unsw.edu.au/video/angelica-mesiti-rapture-silent-anthem-excerpt

The Blake Prize for Religious Art is one of the more prestigious art prizes in Australia. For 58 years it has been awarding a prize for works of art that explore the subject of religious awareness and spirituality. Unlike other art prizes that are awarded for distinct subject areas such as landscape or portraiture, the Blake has always invited a much more open, personal and idiosyncratic response, so much so that it has earned the criticism, ire and sometimes applause of critics and the public alike.

This year COFA is represented in the Blake Prize Exhibition by several members of staff and Alumni, including Dr Phillip George and Jasper Knight. Among the other entries are Kate Briscoe, Katthy Cavaliere, Tanya Cahitow, Leonardo Cremonese, Adam Cullen, Leah Fraser, Maria Ionico, Eva marosy- Weide, Angelica Mesiti, Ms. & Mr. (Stephanie and Richard nova Milne), Tom Polo,  Simon Power, and Leah- Nicole Torbay. As well as being represented in the category of finalists, two COFA Alumni are on the judging panel, Del Kathryn Barton and Andrew Frost.

The Blake Prize for Religious Art was established in 1951 and is the oldest prize in Australia dedicated to spirituality, religion and cultural diversity. It is a $20,000 annual non-acquisitive prize. This year there is also a new category, the Blake Prize for Human Justice. This new award, worth $5,000, will acknowledge and promote the work of artists who have addressed issues of human justice.
The 58th Blake Prize is awarded by the Blake Society Ltd in partnership with the National Art School. The Prize is named after the artist and writer William Blake.

COFA extends its congratulations on this commendable achievement.

WHAT: Finalist Exhibition, and Announcement of the Winner
WHEN: Thursday 3 September 2009. Exhibition continues to 4 October 2009.
WHERE: National Arts School Gallery

58th Blake Prize for Religious Art touring exhibition:
Delmar Trinity Gallery
144 Victoria Street
Ashfield NSW
12 January - 22 February 2010

Wagga Wagga Art Gallery
Cnr Bayliss and Morrow Streets
Wagga Wagga NSW
4 April - 1 May 2010

Gallery M
Marion Cultural Centre
Oaklands Park SA
20 June - 31 July 2010

T_Visionarium, Dennis Del Favero, Neil Brown, Jeffrey Shaw, Peter Weibel, Matthew McGinity 2007

UNSW’s iCinema, a three-dimensional, 360-degree virtual reality cinema, which has opened up new possibilities in art, education and industry training, has won a top prize at the “Oscars” of international design, the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA).

The iCinema Research Centre, together with industrial design consultants Tiller Design, took out a gold award in the IDEA competition, which is held annually by the Industrial Designers Society of America.

The Gold IDEA was awarded for the iCinema Advanced Safety Training Simulators (iCASTS) system, which is already in use teaching mine workers how to survive potentially life-threatening workplace hazards.

iCASTS creates virtual scenarios for training in a full-scale, immersive environment similar to a highly sophisticated computer game, with interactive controls for group or individual training. The training modules used in iCASTS were developed by UNSW’s School of Mining Engineering.

A number of systems have been sold in a multi-million dollar commercialisation success for UNSW and are in use for safety training in the NSW coal mining industry.

The virtual reality training packages place miners in a series of simulated underground emergency drills, giving them first-hand experience in how to escape dangerous situations.

While industry applications have focused primarily on underground coal mining, the versatility of virtual reality training is attracting intense interest across the mining sector and in education and new forms of artistic creation.

iCinema Centre director, Professor Jeffrey Shaw, said the award was a great honour for the team, who had worked to develop a new technology “driven by a vision of its artistic, educational and practical use”.

“Our research efforts are directed at developing new kinds of artistic experiences that can also inspire innovative industrial and commercial applications,” Professor Shaw said.

Tiller Design director Robert Tiller said winning an IDEA was recognition at the highest levels.

“The IDEA competition is like the ‘Oscars’ of international design,” he said.

IDEA 2009 article: http://www.idsa.org/IDEA2009/gallery/award_details.asp?ID=86
Businessweek article: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jul2009/id20090727_885997.htm

Story by Peter Trute | 02 9385 1933 | p.trute@unsw.edu.au

originally published on UNSW website: http://www.unsw.edu.au/news/pad/articles/2009/jul/iCinema_IDEA.html

The iCinema Centre has been selected as a 2009 Australian Museum Eureka Prize finalist for its AVIE and iDOME projects for Research by an Interdisciplinary Team. Established in 1990, the annually presented Australian Museum Eureka Prizes are Australia’s most comprehensive national science awards, rewarding outstanding achievements in science and science promotion/communication. “This is a first for the Art and Design sector ” said COFA Dean, Professor Ian Howard.

AVIE and iDOME are unique developments that represent collaborative research between the Faculties of COFA and Engineering and have provided the foundation for many other highly successful iCinema research projects.  T_Visionarium, PLACE-Hampi and Conversations@ the Studio, have been exhibited at ZKM Karlsruhe, Lille Festival, Biennial of Seville, eARTS Shanghai, the Immigration Museum, Melbourne and Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. AVIE  and iDOME have been adopted for large scale commercialization by  the mining health and safety training sector.

Winners of the premier national Science Award will be announced at a gala award dinner in Sydney on Tuesday 18 August at the Royal Hall of Industries, Moore Park, organised by the Australian Museum and its 26 partners and sponsors.

To view the News @ UNSW article on iCinema and Eureka, please visit: http://www.newspaper.unsw.edu.au/text/stories/index.htm

Hugh Marchant, Hugh, 2009, digital moving image with audio

COFA time-based art student, Hugh Marchant, has won the National Youth Self Portrait Prize with an unusual moving image with sound. Influenced by the American experimental sound artist Alvin Lucier, Marchant’s self portrait has been created by re-filming footage played on a television screen, transforming his original image into what he describes as ‘a fingerprint or a zebra pattern’ of an indistinct face.

“I created this work using high definition video footage that was played from one camera connected to an LCD TV while being filmed in high definition video on another camera. Sound was recorded from speakers and an amplifier using a shotgun microphone and a flash-card recording device. Then the cameras were switched and the recorded footage was played through the television and filmed again. This was repeated up to 20 times until the video looked similar to a fingerprint or a zebra pattern.”- Hugh Marchant

A selection of entries in the National Youth Self Portrait Prize 2009 will be on display at the National Portrait Gallery from 23 July to 13 September 2009, with an online exhibition of all finalists, including COFA graduate Anna Pogossova’s work, is accessible from here: http://www.portrait.gov.au/site/exhibition_subsite_nyspp09_5.php.

An annual event, the National Youth Self Portrait Prize seeks to encourage young people to embrace self portraiture and its expressive possibilities. Sponsored by the Australian decorative Fine Arts Association (ADFAS) and the Tallis Foundation, a $10000 prize is offered for the most outstanding self portrait. The National Youth Self Portrait Prize is in its second year.

For more information and to view Hugh Marchant’s full piece, please visit: http://www.portrait.gov.au/site/exhibition_subsite_nyspp09_4.php.

What: National Youth Self Portrait Prize 2009
When: 23 July to 13 September 2009
Where: National Portrait Gallery in Canberra

Text amended from National Portrait Gallery website by Helena Bezzina