Introspectives – Melbourne Polytechnic’s Graduate Exhibition

Carla Murray, one of MAC’s former students, is among 12 other Melbourne Polytechnic Visual Arts Painting graduates exhibiting their entire year’s work this month.

The group exhibition, entitled Introspectives, is primarily painting focused, with some drawing, printmaking and mixed media works.

The graduates also had the responsibility of organising the exhibition completely; from the curatorial process to promoting the event.

Carla Murray with her painting Wimmerascape 1
Carla Murray with her painting Wimmerascape 1

Carla attended Melbourne Art Class for a number of semesters and then moved on to study art at VCA, and is now completing a Diploma of Visual Arts – Painting with Melbourne Polytechnic.

Carla explored abstraction this year, and her bold works really stand out in the exhibition. Listening to her process was fascinating; she traced Google maps of her home town, Dimboola in the Wimmera region, then transferred these drawings onto the canvas and drew extra lines and patterns intuitively.

She then painted the different lines and shapes and the finished piece somewhat resembles an organic aerial map, with many shapes open to interpretation.

Carla created three other works in the same way, using greens, browns and whites.

Carla Murray Feelings of Home series
Carla Murray Feelings of Home series

This limited palette gives these works a different feeling to the map-like paintings; like you are underwater in the cool shade when viewing them. You could also almost make out some of the white patterns to resemble bones.

It was encouraging listening to the viewers of Carla’s paintings interpret the different shapes and apply their feelings to each piece; it is exciting when abstraction works and creates a dialogue between the viewer and the image.

Introspectives will run for one week from October 24 to 30 and is well worth a visit to see what young artists are producing.

Details of the event:

Where: Melbourne Polytechnic’s new Inner Space Gallery. The gallery is located near the corner of High and Chapel Streets in Prahran.

When: 24 to 30 October, 2014 11am – 4pm (excluding Sunday)

Cost: free