LIZ MILLER & BRETT SMOUT

30 April – 18 May 2012
Exhibition Opening: 16 May from 6 to 8pm
SCA Graduate School Gallery,
As part of Head On Photo Festival 2012

An exhibition featuring the work of Sydney College of the Arts PhD candidates, Liz Miller and Brett Smout.

Miller recontextualises and playfully subverts common clichés and archetypes seen excessively in the global mass media as a means through which to inspire, stimulate and entertain both the art world and the mainstream. Working with the absurd––and seductive––themes of the sex, violence and status, Miller deals with subject matter that is recognisable and easy to like, in order to create an intense dialogue between content and context. Varied in media, Miller creates imagery that evokes a deep sense of the ironies between iconic images and the reality of our behavioural patterns. She aims to produce a colourful and entertaining engagement with contemporary consumption and the familiar paradoxes within.

Through Smout’s PhD research, his goal is to develop low temperature clay and glazes for ceramics, with the intention of reducing energy use. He uses industrial and agricultural wastes as components in the clay and glazes that he has developed. The exhibited multi-media work reflects the experience of being an affluent consumer living in the midst of the climate change debate in the early 21st Century. It explores the paradox of making art while having concerns about personal patterns of consumption, waste, and energy use and the effects of these on the environment. References are made through the exhibition to individual and collective responses to the debate and to political lobby groups’ attempts to influence attitudes regarding science.