Past Artists in Residence

Katherine Marmaras is a Melbourne based printmaker and visual artist who incorporates printmaking techniques with other mediums to create works which explore the notion that art may be purely decorative.

Intrinsically and instinctively motivated, she abstracts colours, patterns and motifs found in nature, architecture, interiors and textiles to create works that are layered with textures and random marks; juxtaposing decoration and art.

Her work is process driven as she often finds herself losing all sense of time in the me

Katherine Marmaras is a Melbourne based printmaker and visual artist who incorporates printmaking techniques with other mediums to create works which explore the notion that art may be purely decorative.

Intrinsically and instinctively motivated, she abstracts colours, patterns and motifs found in nature, architecture, interiors and textiles to create works that are layered with textures and random marks; juxtaposing decoration and art.

Her work is process driven as she often finds herself losing all sense of time in

ditative process of random and repetitive mark-making especially when working with clay.

Katherine’s prints and works on paper have been exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally, in select group and award exhibitions and is represented in public and private collections including the National Gallery of Australia and the Brooklyn Art Library in Brooklyn, New York.

Website: www.katherinemarmaras.com
Instagram: @katherinemarmarasartist 
Email: hello@katherinemarmaras.com

Project

During my residency I plan to create a series of ceramic and mixed media works for exhibition. The works created will be an expression of the immediate and local surrounds by taking a closer look at objects found in nature and ephemera.

My intention is to create works which contemplate and reflect upon how natural forms impact our urban landscapes and the spaces which we live in; whilst exploring the notion that art may be purely decorative.

I look forward to immersing myself in the environment and capturing the moments and seasonal changes of the local surrounds. I hope to offer the community the opportunity to see and experience their surrounds through what may sometimes be overlooked in the day–to-day.

Russian born, Maria now lives in Melbourne, Australia. She has been drawing and painting since childhood, but pursued other creative interests like graphic design and illustration in her twenties. She is currently completing a bachelor of Fine Arts at Monash University, focusing mostly on painting and drawing. Prior to making the commitment to pursue a full-time art career, she worked as a freelance Graphic Designer for several years. Maria is passionate about working from observation, this includes life-drawing, portraiture and still-life. In the studio, she works with photographic references which allow her to carefully construct figurative compositions in order to explore delicate and complex narratives. Her work is inspired by her personal experience of the world and the stories of others.

Website: www.mariaradun.com

Project

During her residency at BHCAC, Maria will develop a new body of work comprised of a series of creative portraits in oil paint medium. The artworks will be created in collaboration with the local community and feature people who immigrated to Australia at a young age. The resolved paintings will be exhibited at the BHCAC in May 2018. 

Edwina Marion (21 August – 19 November)

Biography
Edwina is an illustrator and artist based in Melbourne. Originally from Perth, she moved over in 2012 with her husband to pursue her career and finish her studies, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts (Illustration).

Edwina works with many mediums, including watercolour, oil, pen and textiles. Her work has been displayed in galleries in New York, Los Angeles and Melbourne, as well as being sold at local markets. Edwina also recently illustrated a children’s book, My Backyard Circus.

Edwina enjoys animals, flowers and comedy, themes she often explores in her work. She is passionate about social justice in general, and especially women’s rights, and volunteers helping young people with The Salvation Army.

Project
During my residency I plan to further explore the themes of femininity, nature and beauty, along with the connections that are made between them. I will be exploring a range of mediums but working primarily in watercolours, pencil and textiles as well as working on larger scale portraiture. I want to explore why we find nature beautiful, and why do we connect nature with femininity and beauty. I want to explore femininity in relation to how we construct the female gender and why we connect certain ideas or images to this construct, and how fashion plays a role.

Website: https://www.facebook.com/themarioncollective

Catriona Galbraith (1 May – 23 Jul)

Biography
Catriona is a cross-media artist, working primarily in photography, painting and sculpture. In recent years, Catriona’s works have focussed on a growing interest in digital media and photography, which are used as a framework for multi-layered, mixed media works. Everyday and found objects frequently provide creative inspiration and feature in the works. Catriona is also a qualified lawyer with many years’ experience providing policy advice and managing major reform projects for the Victorian Government. Reflecting this experience, her works develop from considered, conceptual frameworks despite the everyday imagery often featured.

Project
During her residency, Catriona will produce a mixed media exhibition featuring rare and classic ‘Star Wars’ Lego spaceships, including iconic models such as the Millennium Falcon, the X-Wing Starfighter and the Imperial Star Destroyer. The original model spaceships will be displayed and will also act as a creative springboard for the production of vibrant mixed media works inspired by the models. A range of interactive installations and large artworks will be created, incorporating a variety of media including photography and sculpture. The resulting exhibition ‘In Your Face in Space!’ will encourage children and viewers of all ages to reinterpret the model spaceships in new and unexpected ways.  ‘In Your Face in Space!’ will run at BHCAC during the school holidays from 10 – 16 July 2017.

Jihye Min (27 March – 24 September)

Biography
Jihye Min is a Korean-born Melbourne and Sydney based artist who aims for mutual empathy with her audience through multidisciplinary projects. She especially focuses on genuine expression of her interior conflicts for effective interaction with the exterior world.

After completing her Bachelor of Art in Seoul she extensively traveled all over the world and she has exhibited in Korea, New York, Washington, Antwerp, and Melbourne. While completing her Master’s degree at UNSW Art and Design in Sydney, she showcased her projects in notable events and at venues such as live performance in the National Art Gallery and a duo show in the Michael Reid Gallery.

Recently, she has mostly presented in outdoor sculpture exhibitions like Sculpture at Scenic World in the Blue Mountains, Hidden Sculpture Walk and Sculpture at Sawmillers Reserve. All projects go along with live performance or poetry for better communication with her audience.

Now she is looking for the metaphorical destination in terms of art practice in Australia. As she classifies herself as a public artist, she wishes to belong to communities to which she can dedicate her artistic talent; she has previously been nominated for Artist Residencies in Dandenong and Box Hill.

Project
My new multidisciplinary project scrutinizes the theme of time and space. That will respond to heritage sites in Box Hill; it can be presented by photographic and video images. These will contain aspects of the historical spaces along with live performance, ceramic installation and poetry to narrate my artistic interpretation of the times and the spaces. I would like to become a storyteller of the community to deliver the confined mystic stories in the heritage sites; that are the times the buildings have gone through for a century. These heavy volumes of stories, which powerfully weigh on the spaces, can impress the public; they will feel more engaged with such historic sites. Actually, the present community is making a continued history in this era; the extending stories of our region will be a treasurable legacy of our next generation. This project will be a remarkable event to re-spotlight the heritage sites in Box Hill.

Website:   www.grayishneutral.tumblr.com

Yinghong Li (20 February – 27 August)

Biography
Yinghong Li (Sophia), was born in Foshan China, where the city was full of history about making ceramics. In 2005, she came to Australia to study Arts, and graduated from the Master of Fine art in RMIT University in 2009.
Having a studio in both Melbourne and Foshan. Allows for her love of traveling and experiencing daily-life with her family in different cultures.

She combines contemporary-art elements and traditional cultures into her artworks. Her paintings are full of different layered elements, including brush marks, abundant colors and patterns, describing each moment of her travelling or her daily-life experiences. Her ceramic sculptures are mostly of plump ladies dressed in cheongsam, elegant and graceful. They represent ideas about beauty, by combining cultural elements in the decorations and glaze.

Project
‘Looking for my Symbol’ is my project during the residency at BHCAC.
I love doing abstract paintings and making some plump ladies with ceramics. Both my paintings and ceramic-sculptures have their own strong art languages. Most people can not find the similar elements between my ceramics and paintings. That has encouraged me to start this project.

During the residency I plan to ‘BREAK, READ and THINK’.
Slow down working, have some BREAKS and do more READING would be a good start. For example, Pablo Picasso was successful in this respect, and I would like time to gain more of an overview of my art-works, to THINK about what the connection between my paintings and ceramic sculptures is.
‘Swap Elements’ – Also I would like to Swap Elements between my works. For example, do some paintings about figures instead of abstraction, or using the same painting skill in my ceramic glazing. That would give me some ideas about my next step.

Website: http://www.yinghongli.com/

Annemarie Murland is an internationally exhibiting artist and researcher who previously lectured and tutored (9 years) in the undergraduate and postgraduate program at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales.

Annemarie’s area of speciality is the practice of abstract painting and drawing. Annemarie shared her knowledge and experience in her workshops “So You Think You Can’t Draw”. In these workshops the students developed their material knowledge and learnt the ABC’s of drawing using experimental drawing strategies.

During the residency at Box Hill, Annemarie continued her research into exploring the material capacity of the traditional drawing surface using the local landscape and its material identity as a departure point for making new experimental works of art.

Melanie works with text components, video and installation strategies to display her extensive personal photographic archive; within these images she investigates the meanings of memory, loss, longing, absence and the complexity of time.

For her project ‘All the Gardens I Could Find’, Melanie focused on exploring the relationship between the garden, the archive and memory. She invited the garden and art lovers of the community to come forth and partake in the project by reflecting on their ideas of the garden, drawing on their own experiences and memories. The conversations and interviews between the artist and participants contributed to a new video work ‘Garden, Memory, Archive’ which was screened as part of her solo exhibition at Blindside ARI in November 2016.

Melanie completed a Master of Fine Arts (Coursework) at RMIT University in 2010. She has exhibited her work extensively in Australia and internationally. She is co-founder of The Australian Thai Artist Interchange (ATAI), a cross cultural exchange organisation and part of the collectives Concrete Post and Eye Collective.

Visual and community artist Melissa Peacock’s residency involved workshops ‘Drawsome’ for adults with a disability who wished to celebrate, develop and continue to explore skills in drawing. The artwork from ‘Drawsome’ formed an exhibition that was showcased in the BHCAC gallery.

Melissa has worked as a community arts worker and coordinator of an arts and crafts studio in Edinburgh.

Growing up in the Pyrenees region of Victoria on a sheep and wheat farm, Melissa’s work explores the idea of sharing spaces in rural and urban landscapes.

Melissa also engaged with the wider community to create PomPom Sheep. These sheep contributed towards the National Wool Museum’s Guinness World Record of the ‘Largest display of handmade sheep’.

Julienne is a visual artist who works with watercolours, acrylics, gouache and inks.

Julienne has a Diploma of Fine Art (Painting) RMIT, a Trained Technical Teachers Certificate and a Therapeutic Massage Certificate.

“I’m passionate about painting. My style is naturalistic, with subjects from life and imagination. I work in oils most of the time using semi-transparent layers as I develop the painting. Fruit and flowers are my favourite subjects although recently I have returned to painting portraits.”

‘Then and Now’
As part of her residency Julienne developed a community art project working with Whitehorse Schools and Residential Ages Care Facilities.

The aim of the project was to foster understanding between generations. Students were invited to meet and get to know senior citizens, write about an aspect of his or her life and paint or draw a portrait. Primary students met residents from Regis Inala Lodge and secondary students befriended residents from Regis Lake Park residential aged care facilities.

“Over the year as Artist-in-Residence at the Box Hill Community Arts Centre I grew very appreciative of ‘The Loft’ studio. It has been somewhat like a second home. It is the first time as an artist that I have had the benefit of a separate and dedicated place to work.

After a year of endeavour it was lovely to be able to share my work with others. There have been many encouraging comments.

Producing the thirty paintings has been very rewarding and also challenging. Along the way I have needed to solve many technical and design problems. I feel that I have refined my vision and gained in artistic confidence. I aim to bring images to life that could not otherwise exist so that others may share my joy and fascination with form and colour I can thoroughly recommend the experience of being Artist-in-Residence in the supportive atmosphere of Box Hill Community Arts Centre.”

Tina Alesi was very excited to be a part of the Box Hill Community Arts Centre and creating art with the community. Tina created the “Wishing Tree Project” based on the hopes and dreams of the Box Hill community.

“I look forward to working with the community of Box Hill to create this very special work. Hopefully we all see how deep down we all want the same sorts of things, love hope and acceptance, etc… it’s a great thing to see in this day and age.”

Classes for the project ran in the school holidays aimed at children and families. Tina also worked with other groups within the centre, throughout the year.

Tina’s art practice consists of painting, collage and installation. Tina loves colour and playful expression of paint. Geometry features a lot in her work and the underlining need to express happiness through colour is her aim. The meaning of her work incorporates the contrary elements of human desire and how truth can become lost in the commercialization of society. The “Wishing Tree Project”, was a part of that research.

Tina studied Art at RMIT and then completed her Post Graduate Diploma in Education at Monash.

Vanessa is a Glass and Ceramic Artist, who specialises in kiln cast glass and ceramic slip casting techniques. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Glass, from Monash University, which she completed in 2008.

During her time at BHCAC, Vanessa enjoyed exploring and developing the use of ceramics in her practice, and enjoyed connecting with the diverse range of artists and community groups who are at the Art Centre.

Vanessa was involved in creating ceramic art and slip casting workshops for different groups within the community. Vanessa encouraged members to seek inspiration from their lived experiences and local surroundings, with a project based on the idea of casting everyday found objects.

Vanessa’s own work is very much concerned with the everyday, spatiality and exploring states of mind. She is inspired by the unexpected beauty, horror and whimsy that can be found in the most ordinary and banal of places, and seeks to create work that is intimate and drawn from domestic life.

The Loft studio was Nikita’s artistic hideaway for 2011. She spent much of her time developing a community arts project to help celebrate the Box Hill Community Arts Centre’s 21st birthday. Nikita worked with the members of the community to explore past and present imagery and create an artwork which was exhibited as part of the centre’s birthday celebrations in October.

Nikita specialises in charcoal drawing as well as paper-cutting and textiles. While working in The Loft studio, she created a series of artworks that were exhibited in the BHCAC gallery and other venue’s across Melbourne.

Nikita studied fine arts in Mildura until 2006, through Latrobe University before moving to Melbourne to study with the Melbourne Institute of Experimental and Creative Arts in Therapy. She also spent several months of volunteering in central Australia at the Warlukulangu Art Centre in Yuendumu, Northern Territory. Nikita has experience in community arts in north and west Melbourne through The Centre in Errol Street, North Melbourne.

In 2010 Judy was completing her Master of Fine Arts at RMIT University two days a week. Judy also has a BA Fine Art, Diploma of Visual Arts and Diploma of Stitch and Studio Textile. Judy’s main focus in the arts is Multimedia – painting, installation and patchwork.

As part of resolved works for her BA Fine Art course. Judy was involved in group works at galleries, organising Christmas programs, children’s puppetry and a live performance.

During her residency Judy worked with women’s issues and the building of self worth through usage of art (painting) and craft (patchwork) which were exhibited at BHCAC.