Hello. I am Dr Greg Creek, studio leader in Drawing at RMIT School of Art. 

I want to welcome you all to this Graduate Festival and the presentation of the Drawing Studio Graduates from BA Fine Arts. 

Across this semester, Drawing and Video students have created together in a supportive, adaptive and resilient community. Individually they have employed a wide range of approaches to art and drawing practice. Collectively they, like many student groups around the world, represent and embody the future potential of art in society. 

We hope you enjoy seeing their work. 

The varied art practices demonstrated in this show reflect on our moment now but will also reverberate over the following years as we and the students look back on their experience. It will be a formative experience, and they will undoubtedly recognise the broad, resourceful and nimble ways of thinking-through-making they have developed. 

We are very proud of how the Drawing Studio students have shown great support and care for each other – as they have encouraged, interpreted and critiqued the work of each other. 

Under COVID-19 restrictions, the suppression of physical contact with the art object has served to underline just how important that encounter is; in a complex time, we need all the material and experiential sensitivity we can muster.

The challenging nature of this year has revealed to us the valued nature of art-making – its’ risk-taking, creative, playful and synthesising qualities. 

I hope this online exhibition and festival motivates us all to seek out and engage with the actual artworks that students and the broader art world produce.  

This is cause for celebration. 

If I may, I want to especially thank all you students who comprise the heart and soul of this experience. Thank you for the privilege of teaching you and your generosity and creativity. 

On your behalf I want to thank all those who have supported you – from your family and friends to the professional and academic staff across your studies.

I also want to thank your 2020 Drawing Studio lecturers: Peter Westwood, Sangeeta Sandrasegar, Jennifer Mills, Ben Sheppard, Ruth O’Leary and studio technicians Andre Liew and Raph Buttonshaw. 

Please join with me in wishing our graduates the very best for their emerging careers, and have a great time exploring their work in this 2020 RMIT School of Art Graduate Festival.

Dr Greg Creek, Studio Lead, 2020