Postgrad show at NAS - 30 October

Five years in a row for me checking out the NAS postgrad show.  That has to be some kind of record.  The new innovation this year is the online catalogue!  Finally.  These kids are racking up the HECS debt so the least the school could do is help out with some online promotion.  Here's a link to the site.  It's a little old school as they sort by major but give them time.  The better thing about the web presence is that the shop feature is fully operational.  Take that COFA and SCA!  Anyhoo, enough on the marketing, let's see the art ...

So the great thing about opening night, and the first few days, is that it is open season on the studios.  So you get to see a little more than the supposed highlights in the main gallery.  Quite often my favourite works are out in the studios and again I wasn't to be disappointed.  Out in the side gallery were some fantastic installations.  Elena Tory-Henderson's Big Yellow (plastic strips hanging across the gallery) and Liya Mirzaeva's Pink Rocks (pictured above) were memorable. In the painting studio a couple of artists seemed to have developed a signature, both Sarah Fitzgerald's geometric works (especially the big X) and Kylie Barber's broken down canvasses (the image I tweeted was her Gold Fold).  In the photography space the Mrs gave her tick of approval to Sarah Dugan for her iconic Australian rural scene (and I recognised her from last years grad show, congrats on the honours).  The main space seemed more cluttered this year, but maybe that was just due to the crowd milling about Jeff Wood's interactive toothbrush painting machine contraption (had to be seen to be comprehended). Certainly no artist seemed to pull away from the pack in my mind.  I liked Steven Latimer's still from Asphalt Dingoes (pictured top).  But then again you are talking to someone who has a pinterest board called 'cars with racing numbers'!  And who could miss the big happy portrait of Ian Thorpe, covered with sequins, by Murat Urlali. And on checking him out online I see he did a Tony Abbott in smugglers as well.  Bit of a swimwear theme, come down to North Bondi at 6am on Friday and you might just see the Big Lamington in his budgy smugglers! Now that is art.

Points:  I am going to reward making a statement, so 3 points to Elena Tory-Henderson for the Big Yellow installation.  I didn't take a good photo of it and sadly, as it is NFS, the image on the NAS site isn't very big, which is a long way of saying apologies for the bad image below!  2 points for homo-erotic mad maxness of Steve Latimer's car 69 (top).  1 point will go to Sarah Dugan for Encounter from the Badland series (above).