Gone are the times when studying art led to a lonely stint in a garret and an uncertain financial future. These days many art and design graduates are snapped up by industries hungry for artists who possess a wide range of skills.
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Preparing them for this brave new world while continuing to nurture their artistic creativity is a balancing act overseen by people like the dean of Monash University’s Faculty of Art and Design, Professor John Redmond.
"You used to be a painter, and that was highly defined with boundaries around it, and you didn’t go beyond those boundaries," Professor Redmond explains. "The reality isn’t like that."
Reality appears to hinge on a number of factors besides artistic talent, including technological literacy and flexibility. Marrying such qualities in graduates is one of the faculty’s long-term goals.
"Nowadays you can’t be a student in just one area," Professor Redmond says. "For example, we’re finding that fine art students are now wanting to get into the multimedia studio – and we’re encouraging them."
The new Art and Design building at Monash’s Caulfield campus represents a tangible consolidation of art and design activities at Australia’s biggest university.
Built at a cost of $9 million, the eye-catching structure skirting busy Dandenong Road houses state-of-the-art multimedia facilities, workshops, tutorial rooms, design studios, offices and an impressive gallery. Visiting artists’ studios will enable the faculty to host eminent practitioners from around the world for short-term visits.
According to Professor Redmond, the building will provide a vibrant hub for artistic activities at Monash.
"The building allows us to do many things that weren’t possible in the old accommodation," Professor Redmond says. "It’s a bit like teaching drama and not having a theatre. If you don’t have a gallery, you don't have the means of drawing the external culture into the faculty, or the highly visible means of expressing your vision."
Dating back to art and design studies at Caulfield in the 1930s, today's faculty is the end product of a series of mergers, restructurings and rationalisations which culminated in the achievement of faculty status in 1997.
"A major change in the past few years has been a new focus on the kinds of students we want and the kinds of things we want to do with them while they're here," Professor Redmond says. "We don't just want 'traditional' art students. We're aiming for a combination of skill and intellect - people who can define the ball game as well as be players in it."
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In the world of art and design, competition is tough and the scene ever-evolving. From the vantage point of successful business people, Jane Sinclair (BA (Graphic Design) 1992) and Steven Cornwell (BA (Graphic Design) 1992) remember Monash University fondly. "We loved it we only wish we could go back," laughs Sinclair, who helped set up the thriving Melbourne studio Cornwell Design with her partner after graduating. "It gave you an idea of how competitive it would be outside. You’re suddenly thrown into graphic design with a whole lot of talented people." Sinclair and Cornwell are among a group of notable Monash alumni whose work is on show at the new Gallery at the university’s Caulfield campus as part of celebrations to mark the official opening of the new Art and Design building. Kate Derum (GradDip Arts (Fine Art) 1994, MA 1998) has gone the full circle, first studying at Monash and then returning as a lecturer. As well as coordinating Monash’s tapestry studio and teaching in the drawing program, Derum has held several solo exhibitions and is involved in research into 20th century tapestry.
She wasn’t, she recalls, the typical ‘art’ student. "I was a mature-age student when I came to Monash in 1990, so my student years were spent combining family, work and study," she says. Installation artist Louiseann Zahra (BA (Visual Arts) 1992) also returned to Monash after graduating and now teaches photography part-time, combining lecturing with an active artistic program. Now in Paris on a federally funded artists program, she has been selected for the prestigious Moet and Chandon Prize Exhibition twice – in 1998 and 1999. "There’s always interest in traditional art-making processes, but over the last five years or so, a wonderful pluralism has developed," she says. "At Monash, we’ve been changing our courses to reflect this. Students are no longer restricted by materials or methods – their work is more dynamic." Dynamism is a quality often associated with another famous Monash alumnus renowned performance artist Stelarc. Known during his student days as Stelios Arcadiou, Stelarc recalls his tutors were largely sympathetic and accomodating of the artistic experimentation of the late 1960s. "We were breaking away from the basics,: he remembers. "I was interested in the idea of coupling experience with expression, the idea that you did something with your body, interfaced it with technology and created a new awareness." |
| The exhibition of graduates’ work, Monash Alumni: Space and Time, is on at the Gallery at Monash University’s Caulfield campus until 11 December. For details, call gallery manager Malcom Bywaters on (03) 9903 2882. |
