You're invited

Anouska Phizacklea, MGA Director, and Natasha Bowness, Chair, MGA Committee of Management, warmly invite you to the opening of

LEGACY. Your Collection. Our Story

and

TOPshots 2017-18: celebrating emerging artists

Saturday 16 June 2-4pm

Official announcement from 2.30pm

LEGACY. Your Collection. Our Story. 

For over 30 years MGA’s benefactors have been instrumental in the development of the only public collection solely dedicated to Australian photography, and it all started with a tapestry donated by Harry Seidler...

Now numbering over 3 100 Australian photographs, MGA’s collection illustrates the story of photography in Australia and its development is in no small part due to the generosity of donors. Collectors, supporters and artists have been critical to the collection’s development with over half the collection built through donations.

LEGACY. Your Collection. Our Story. celebrates the impact benefactors have had on the development of one of the nation’s most unique and important collections, a collection dedicated to Australian photography and its artists. LEGACY teases out the fascinating and compelling stories behind the works and their donors, and along the way showcases significant works that chart the history of MGA, from a Joseph Albers tapestry donated by Harry Seidler, the architect of MGA’s building, through to the most recent donated works.

TOPshots 2017-18: celebrating emerging artists

Over the past ten years MGA has celebrated the work of emerging photomedia artists with the annual TOPshots award and exhibition. TOPshots showcases artwork produced by students studying the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) subjects of Art, Media and Studio Arts. Each of these subjects has a different focus within the broader course of arts education offered to Victorian secondary school students, making the TOPshots exhibition an exciting overview of different creative trajectories.

The artworks displayed in this exhibition offer little more than a glimpse of the year-long course of study each of these young artists has undertaken. It would be remiss not to mention the laborious nature of each of these subjects and the hours spent testing, refining and creating final folio pieces and documenting creative processes in visual diaries.

MGA is proud to have the opportunity to acknowledge the excellence of young photomedia artists in our community, and welcome our visitors to take inspiration from the creative potential that TOPshots 2018 represents.

The finalists for TOPshots 2017-18 are:

Natalie Bocquet Princes Hill Secondary College

Marek Dague Princes Hill Secondary College

Lacey Gilbert Luther College

Holli Hickman Caulfield Grammar School

Sam Hooper Scotch College

Chris Jackson Scotch College

Ben Macri Marcellin College

Isabella Murray-Goold St Paul's Anglican Grammar School

Cam Myers Woodleigh School

Helen Nguyen Loreto Mandeville Hall Toorak

Bryce Peatling Beaconhills College

Sophie Smith Melbourne Girls Grammar

Nikita Smith Vermont Secondary College

Emily Tolan St Margaret's School

Letran Truong Wellington Secondary College

Jamie Tung Luther College

Courtney Turner Kingswood College

Amanda Twigg Loreto Mandeville Hall Toorak

View their work online here