Art Excellence
This week, our Year 11 Visual Arts students and boarders enjoyed separate visits to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, to experience the cream of NSW's young artistic talent at ARTEXPRESS.
This annual event spans eight venues across NSW, showcasing outstanding HSC Visual Arts works and serving as both inspiration and aspiration for our current students. Their visits were particularly fitting, as Wenona celebrates the selection of four Class of 2024 graduates for this prestigious exhibition series.
Elly Butters' (2024) sophisticated photographic series is on display at Hazelhurst Arts Centre in Gymea until 13 April. Fascinated by architecture, she focused closely on the patterns in the Sydney city landscape, demonstrating a masterful manipulation of light and shadow. "I wanted audiences to question what the subject matter was, to take a second look," she explains. Working with her father's Canon camera and specialised lenses, Elly spent six months capturing over 2,000 images to create her final nine-piece series. Her innovative technique caught particular attention at the exhibition opening, with viewers intrigued by her natural manipulation of light and reflection, which was achieved without the use of Photoshop or other digital techniques.
Sophia Li's (2024) innovative multimedia work will go on display mid-year in the at https://artsunit.nsw.edu.au/creative-resource/artexpress-virtual-galleries. The three-part piece explores the complex relationship between individuals and the metropolis through an intriguing combination of painting, sculpture, and photography. "I was paying attention to how disconnected individuals are in the modern world," Sophia explains. Her work features a security camera installation alongside paintings dominated by architectural forms, creating an atmosphere that she says is deliberately cool and monochromatic, with carefully placed warm lights illuminating surfaces. Sophia will continue her artistic journey at the University of Sydney this month when she begins a combined Bachelor of Law and Arts degree with a major in visual arts − a path that may lead her to combine her creative and legal interests in gallery or auction house work.
Emily Zhang's (2024) work, The Picture of an Artist, will also feature at ARTEXPRESS. Her body of work comprises large-scale black and white contemporary charcoal self-portraits that explore the psychology of self-discovery through “a literary allusion to Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray”. Emily drew inspiration from Robert Longo's Men in Cities series and chose to represent Dorian Gray’s journey through self-identification, self-transformation, and self-destruction.
Claudia Croft's (2024) compelling figurative paintings in part capture contemporary scenes of train travel, exploring human connection and disconnection in the modern age. They speak to the urbanisation that connects and separates us from the perspective of a range of figures of different ages, backgrounds, and cultural experiences.
The selection of these four students for ARTEXPRESS, from a record number of 10 nominations in 2024, reflects the exceptional standard of Wenona’s Visual Arts education. It is a journey being continued by our current Year 11 students and the 2025 HSC cohort. We look forward to seeing how they interpret their world and translate their unique perspectives at our 2025 and 2026 HSC Visual Arts Showcases.