PICA’s Hatched: National Graduate Show is a significant date on Australia’s art calendar. In its 24th year, Hatched 2015 sees 35 up-and-coming Australian artists, fresh out of art school, display their talents in the halls of the PICA Gallery.
Hatched 2015 curator Nadia Johnson says this year’s exhibition features a range of styles, techniques and emotions.
“This year there is something for everyone. Hatched artists’ attempt to unpack the more traditional notions of painting and sculptural practices. Their drawings are rendered in neon or chaotically sketched out by a pack of manic mechanical dogs. We have everything from large format photography, digital painting and crochet to animation, printmaking and endurance dance!”
Although the artists come from all around Australia with a wide range of backgrounds, common themes do appear throughout the exhibition.
“There are quite a few common threads amongst this year’s artists,” Johnson says. “Spirituality, and the role of religion in contemporary art. Many are concerned with ecological issues, consumerism and the consumption of media in culture.”
Johnson says selecting which artists out of all the applicants to include in the exhibition is a very long and rigorous process.
“We had over 90 nominations from there we narrowed it down to a selection of 35. This year’s selection panel was made up of Barry Keldoulis, director of Sydney Contemporary Art Fair and independent curator Matthew Ngui, alongside two PICA Curators: Laura Evans, from the education program, and myself. Often panellists become so invested in the process they come over to see the show and we’re excited to hear that Barry Keldoulis is coming over to check out how it all came together.”
Hatched provides a significant platform for career development and exposure for these emerging artists and previous entrants have gone one to display their works internationally. It also attracts a wide variety of people to the gallery, and provides an opportunity for a younger audience, and possible future exhibitionists, to get inspiration for their own art, as Johnsons explains.
“Hatched is always one of our biggest exhibitions of the year, with huge numbers of people heading into the city to catch a glimpse. Primary and high school groups as well as tertiary art students also flock to the exhibition to get a sense of what is latest in contemporary Australian art, learning about artists often only just older than them. Hatched audiences are young and older, they are inquisitive and excitable and often comment to us about how fresh and surprising the work by this crop of fresh graduates is.”
Hatched 2015 has its opening night Friday, May 1, featuring the announcement of the winner of the Dr Harold Schenberg Art Prize for one of the featured artists. The exhibition will then run until Sunday, June 21.
Full details at pica.org.au.
LUCY RUTHERFORD
