Master of Fine Art video transcript
The Tone of our Times. The Freedom Principle. They're just two books sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read.
Welcome to the MFA Coursework Exhibition – the Graduate Exhibition for 2020 at RMIT University. Such a pleasure to introduce the students’ works, and to celebrate with you. It looks like a couple of artworks on the wall, on the floor, a couple of installations, maybe a performance or two, some jewellery. Lots of things.
What do they mean? Why? Why does someone bother? Art's a tricky thing, isn’t it? So much looks like art, sounds like art, feels like art. It's easy. Seems easy. Seems easy to pretend. Each student comes with a folio. Looks good. We see potential, they see potential, and they want to do something. And then there's a process of questioning, contextualising, playing, thinking through, playing through, reinventing, hitting the wall, really moving around the wall, jumping over it, climbing under it, digging over it – all of those things.
I think what our students really demand from themselves, and what we set up as an environment to happen, is that something really meaningful happens in the process as we work out what's meaningful to us as makers, as citizens, as artists, as humans and our relationship to the world; how we fit in, how we might fit in, how we would like to fit in, and how we would like the world to fit in with us. So it seems like persistence is important, you know, a sense of context, but so much of it really requires play, adventure and going outside of the habits that we have, that we know, and finding new forms of meaning and new forms of expressing meaning through objects.
I think that's occurred for all of our students. And I want to congratulate the 2020 graduating students. We’ll dearly miss you. We've enjoyed working with you. And you've worked with a beautiful team of staff, supervisors, lecturers, technical staff and administrative staff.
And I've got the sense that all of you really believe in what you've done in your projects, and that comes through to us as an audience. So none of what you're doing feels like it's pretence or like it's tricking or like it's easy to fool. All of it feels straight to the heart, straight to the eyes, straight to the ears and it impacts – and it's very exciting. And other people will really love seeing it, hearing it, feeling it, wearing it as you go out into the world, making your next projects — your next work.
We wish you really well! We’ll miss you dearly – all of us in the MFA.