Pop-up at the Sculpture Park

An installation designed to surprise pedestrians and another made from more than a hundred donated shoes were among the art works recently created by the School of Art’s Foundation Studies students in the International Sculpture Park.

For the first time, the first-year students created outdoor installations across the vast expanse of the park at the edge of the ANU campus. The four week long assignment has previously been held at the National Gallery of Australia. 

Also for the first time, the new artists were assisted by students from postgraduate programs in Art History and Curatorial Studies.

Art History and Curatorial Studies students gained valuable insights into the practicalities of working with artists, and gave advice on documenting the artists’ work and positioning the installations on the site.

This collaborative effort was arranged by Foundation Studies Lecturer Gilbert Riedelbauch and Charlotte Galloway, from the School of Cultural Inquiry.

The students’ pieces were edgy and inventive and created in a short timeframe. Many students found they had to quickly adapt their initial concepts to cope with windy conditions on the day.

Foundation Studies brings together first-year students from all the workshops at the School of Art and gives them a well-rounded introduction to a variety of two and three dimensional media. Teaching students to document their work is another important aspect of the course.

We spoke to some of our students about the work they exhibited on the day.  
 

Martha - Printmaking Workshop, and David - Furniture Workshop

 Brother and sister team Martha and David worked together on their installation, designed to surprise pedestrians who walk or ride past on the adjacent path. 

“This assignment was a great opportunity to be creative with the space, and we were given broad topics to work with,” says Martha.

“It’s a bit of a cheeky joke, using the familiar ‘stop, revive, survive’ sign. The seats are there, but we’ve made it so that people can’t actually sit on them.” 

Zoë - Video and Animation Workshop

 “My work is called the ‘River of Reflective Souls’, although I haven’t decided on the spelling yet. It’s about me reflecting on my first year of art school. This is my last hands-on art project because my focus is now turning to video and animation.

“The piece is made up of 174 shoes spray painted silver. I’m amazed I got this many shoes in only four days – I put ads out on ANU Stalkerspace, Wattle and Gum Tree, and went around to op shops to collect any shoes they didn’t think they would be able to sell. I was surprised that people had so many shoes lying around that they didn’t want to throw away, but they were happy to give them to me because they wanted them to go to some use.” 

Jess - Art History and Curatorial Studies 

“We were each assigned to a group of students from the School of Art. Our job was to help them with personal documentation such as their bio, documenting the progress of their work and providing advice on the site for the work. I’ve really enjoyed the assignment, it’s given me an intriguing insight into the way artists work.” 

You can see more photos from the day on the ANU Facebook page