Artworks I Made in Art School…
…and what I think the assignment was
A quick backstory: Straight out of high school, I went to COFA (aka College of Fine Arts now known as UNSW Art & Design). I did a Bachelor of Fine Arts and majored in Photomedia. It was a 3 year course where you were encouraged to explore the depths of your artistic brain. Assignments were judged as equally on the creation as they were the concept, so unless your well composed photo of a bunch of flowers had a heart shattering, soul destroying reason to exist, you’d probably get shit marks.
Back to why we are here: I finished in 2013, so I really have forgotten about most of the assignments I was given during my time at COFA. Lucky for us, I still have a lot of the artworks saved on various hard drives - I just have no idea what the concept was for them. So some of them are kinda weird.
Let’s see what I think the assignment was, based on what I created, and what my concept might have been.
Artwork #1
The Assignment Guess: Using black and white film, tell a story across 3 images that resonates with the medium of film.
My Concept Guess: The downward spiral of a possession - downward linked to coming down the stairs in the right photo. I went full fancy and did a triple exposure in that bottom left image. I think we must have developed these ourselves in the darkroom. That triple exposure image would 100% been about juxtaposition of light and dark, happy and tortured, inside and outside. Top left, would have been about transition.
Artwork #2
I think I considered calling this “so legit you’ll shit”
The Assignment Guess: “Good artists imitate, great artists steal”
My Concept Guess: Lol I remember making this - I found a Renaissance style artwork and stuck some fake teeth over her mouth then printed out a bunch of copies on my home printer which was running out of ink, so each copy got progressively more shit (I sincerely apologise for past Marnie’s wasteful use of supplies and promise that I’ve since become much more considerate and make environmentally friendly decision).
I wanted to make something so bad, full of lies, and obviously stolen that it became more desirable. The idea would have been that this holder was stuck on the wall and students could come and get a piece of legit art without the price tag.
Artwork #3
The Assignment Guess: I am pretty sure this was an assignment for ‘Studio Lighting’ and we needed to recreate a famous artwork in the studio.
The Concept Guess: This will forever be my favourite thing I ever created artistically. ‘Leda and the Swan’ became ‘Marnie and the Pigeon’. I’m not sure why but the studio prop closet at uni had a bunch of taxidermy birds (including this horny pigeon) so it seemed a waste not to make use of them.
I hit this assignment with a double whammy of concept, because as well as nailing the lighting angles, I gave a nod to Alfred Hitchcock style lighting in the background. Why? Because ‘The Birds’ and ‘Marnie’ are both A.H movies ;)
Fun facts about this shoot:
It took 100s of shots to get the bird shadow right - we had another taxidermy pigeon hanging from a string, spinning in front of a light.
I am laying on a pile of stools and garbage bins covered by my bed sheet. It was incredibly painful.
Special shoutout to Angus and Anthony who I remember helped me big time with this.
I don’t know who drew this but I am sorry to all of us