All Core Studies staff are practicing artists with national and international reputations. They have high levels of expertise in a diverse range of visual arts practices including public art, painting, drawing, installation, gold and silver smithing, printmaking, computer aided art and sculpture. Teaching by the permanent staff is complemented by visiting artists and artists-in-residence who participate in projects with the students. Previous artists in residence have included Professor Kinaid Silsat, Head of Painting Khon Kaen University, Thailand; Tony Twigg from Sydney; Maureen Enns from Canada; John Hurrell from New Zealand; and Professor Bannarak Nakbanlung from Chiang Mai University, Thailand.

Vivienne Binns
The work of Vivienne Binns explores what it means to be an artist in Australia with local and European histories, engaging with cultures in the Asia Pacific region. Her abiding interests are the function of art making as a human activity, which occurs in all social groups, and the manifestation s of this through out social environments especially in patterning and surface treatments.

Vivienne has spent time in Tokyo, New Guinea, the Cook Islands and Samoa. The patterned Tapa cloths from the region are a continuing source of inspiration to her. In 2000 she was in London researching Captain Cook’s voyages to the Pacific.

Her recent work, In Memory of the Unknown Artist encompasses material from her interest in Australian communities, Pacific and Asian cultures and industrially produced surfaces. Vivienne trained at the National Art School Sydney. For contribution to art, craft and community she has received the Order of Australia Medal, the Ros Bower Memorial Award and the Australian Artists Creative Fellowship. She exhibits with Bellas Gallery Brisbane, Sutton Gallery Melbourne and Helen Maxwell Gallery Canberra. Her work is held in major museums and collections throughout Australia.

Her first exhibition in the 1960s, held at Watters Gallery in Sydney, contained powerful sexual symbolism which was unexpected from a young woman, and is now seen as anticipating 1970s feminist art. In the 70s she was active in the crafts and fought for improvements for women artists and conditions in the arts generally. From 1972 she evolved an art practice in communities throughout Australia, often working from a caravan in rural NSW. The best known projects from this period are Mothers’ Memories Others’ Memories (1979-1981) and Full Flight when Vivienne worked from a caravan in rural areas of NSW. During the last ten years her practice has focused on studio-based painting.

[ top of page ]

by Vivienne Binns

David Jensz
My most recent work involves the integration of 2D imagery with 3D elements. I have always been concerned with the juxtaposition of materials, so that the combination of media often suggests a sense of transformation. This transformation can concern states of matter, such as a change from solid to liquid, or changes in physical properties, such as that from water to clay, from timber to coal, coal to fire wax to oil and so on. The transformations occurring in current works are those from one dimension to another.

There is a simplicity in my work that alludes to a greater complexity. The works with which I am most satisfied have a sense of the dynamic held at equilibrium; while the works embody balance, the potential for change is always implied.

I have recently exhibited at the O.K. Harris Gallery in New York, and at regional galleries throughout Australia.

Marcia Lochhead
Marcia Lochhead graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts (1st Class Hons) from the Photomedia Workshop of the ANU School of Art in 1993. In 1995 she was awarded an Anne and Gordon Samstag Scholarship which allowed her to take up a position in the Masters program at the Glasgow School of Art. There she produced experimental works which explored relationships which may exist between photography and three dimensional space.

Marcia’s recent works have concerned a merging of the ‘real’ photograph with the simulacrum/object, exploring unconventional spatial relationships between object and photograph. In these works, the concept of private, intimate space is transgressed by the public deployment of the work, drawing attention to one’s sense of body in space. The arrangement of elements creates a ‘third space’, one which allows the a fluid play of movement and encounter between the body’s surface and spatial architectonics.

Jan MacKay
Over the past thirteen years my work has dealt with interaction with place. I lived in Central Australia for seven years, the surrounding country forming source material for printed fabrics, paintings and drawings. My later work from Central Australia also included a human point of reference—that of my daughter.

My current work continues to develop imagery from ‘place’, now using Canberra and its environs as a focus. I will exhibit this work later this year at Gallery East in Sydney. I am also continuing to work on illustrations for the Ngaayatjarra Council Newsletter.

Elisa Crossing
Elisa has been a part-time lecturer at the ANU School of Art since 1990, in the Visual Arts Access program and, since 1997, in Core Studies. She has just completed eighteen months as coordinator for Spiral Arm and Artspace 71 galleries, during which time she curated several group exhibitions and secured an Australia Council grant to assist emerging artists and curators.

Elisa is currently working on a series of paintings based on water and exploring the theme of ‘search and rescue’. Following on from a water and light installation titled Unquenchable at 200 Gertrude Street, Melbourne in 1998, Elisa is designing another major installation combining these elements.

Glen Dunn
Glen completed postgraduate studies in sculpture at the ANU School of Art in 1991. In 1992 he travelled to Germany where he worked with several international artists including British sculptor Tony Cragg. Since his return to Australia he has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows and been the recipient of several grants and awards. In 1998 he was commissioned by the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne to make Neutrino for their Observatory Gate Project. Glen lives and works in Queanbeyan and is currently represented by the Ben Grady Gallery Canberra.

[ top of page ]

by David Jensz