Grad show at the National Art School - 29 November

With the new James Bond on Monday and Alaska last night we'd used up the babysitting sources for this week so I was flying solo over to NAS to check out the grad show opening.  Would the Mrs be kicking herself for choosing Daniel Craig over the students? Lets find out ...

The studios are open for the first few days and there are heaps of grads.  That adds up to more work than I can cover in a quick post.  You can see why the editorial in this months Australian Art Review wondered if "there is too much art-student toothpaste being squeezed onto too small an art-world toothbrush".  Kelley Stapleton's Perspective Portal was the star of the show in the main gallery (pictured above). This was on the second floor and had many punters lining up to walk through.  In the main space I also liked Bligh Jackson's animation video work of 'Pollock Painting'.  He had the action in a single circle on screen, kind of like the Bond opening but with mad dripping instead of the gun pointing.  Montana Miller was also a standout here.  She was doing drawing on underwear and nighties.  The underwear seemed a little nana style to me but then as my better half pointed out you can probably fit more on to that style of garment than a g-string.  Her work in the drawing studio was my favourite here ('Little Prayer for you', pictured above).  Also in the drawing studio was Veronica Habib whose 'Safety Line' series re-imagined your bog standard travel 10 bus pass with some social commentary (pictured below).  I quite liked these and think she should contact NSW Transport to get some on the buses for real.  Veronica also helpfully has a website which is I think a must for any art grad and something even AAR might agree increases your chance of getting on the toothbrush.  I also have Clementine Barnes and Kit Christian's names written down as artists that impressed but as I am getting to my notes a week late I can't put works to the names (and unhelpfully google can't find much on them yet) so you'll have to go and have a look see for yourself - the show is open until December 8.  From memory one of them did these cool colour works with bright yellow or orange on the back so that the works had a visual effect of glowing.  Pretty cool.  I think the other were these quite naive Basquiatish works that I liked because of incongruous overuse of rainbows.  Go figure.

Points:  3 to Kelley Stapleton for 'Perspective Portal'. 2 for Montana Miller for her drawings on undies. I have a bright orange pair of budgie smugglers from my beach running club that I might just commission for a lobster, drop me a note! 1 for Veronica for the tickets and for having a website.  Congratulations everyone on graduating. See you in some galleries.