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Artist takes aim at the great Australian dream

20 July 2005

A selection of sculptures, photographs and built structures created by Monash Master of Visual Art student Sarah Adams is on show at the Switchback Gallery at the Gippsland campus.

Reasoning and the Great Australian Dream, on display until 10 August, features 16 works influenced by Ms Adams' past -- her family connections and experiences of growing into adolescence in a small country town.

Ms Adams (pictured) grew up in Paynesville, near Bairnsdale and completed an Advanced Certificate of Art and Design at RMIT before undertaking a Bachelor of Fine Art degree at Monash Gippsland. She combines her masters studies with part-time work as a customer services officer at the LaTrobe Regional Gallery.

"This exhibition explores the connection between our present and our personal history," Ms Adams said.

"My subject matter is the family home and the irony of our own domestic ritual. I look at the heaviness of the emotional past and reflect the reliable suburban monotony we all have, then reinterpret the past by making it palatable, funny and comical.

Sarah Adams, 'lil' one I love you', 2005. Black and white photograph, digitally manipulated.

"I use images of people and references to places that are significant to me and model sculptural forms on much loved objects from my childhood."

Among the works on display are metre-square photographs of facades of the prefabricated 'Stawell' houses, which were among the first such houses to be built in Australia in the 1940s and '50s, and are still in abundance in Moe.

Ms Adams also has several mixed-media works in the gallery comprising stained wallpaper sourced from opportunity shops, as well as text, tapestry, items sewn from calico material and pieces knitted from strips of vinyl and plastic.

For further information, visit the Switchback Gallery website.