For over a decade, MGA has celebrated the work of emerging photomedia artists with the annual TOPshots award and exhibition. TOPshots showcases work produced by students studying the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) subjects of Art, Media and Studio Arts as well as the International Baccalaureate (IB) Visual 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 online 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 and celebrate the excellence of young photomedia artists in our community, and to welcome our online visitors to take inspiration from the creative potential that TOPshots 2019–20 represents.
MGA would like to congratulate Rachael Erdody, winner of TOPshots 2019–20. Her work was chosen from the shortlist of finalists by guest judge Katrin Koenning who is a Melbourne-based photographer and winner of the 2019 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize.
In making her selection, Koenning wrote the following statement:
'In her collage work from the aptly titled series Disturbing scenes from my everyday life, Rachael Erdody both presents us with a kind of dystopian fracture – a homage perhaps to acknowledging our nightmares – as well as a gently humorous glimpse into a playful otherworld. Drawing reference to art historical contexts and yet extending these back into a contemporary context, the work offers a plunge into darkness and respite from it all the same. Time is suspended or made anew, and so is the real. 'Untitled' collides and re-writes internal and external, known and unknown, imagined and experienced. In its mashed-up state, the already-seen becomes a new place.'
TOPshots 2019–20 finalists:
Billie Angelone
Mentone Girls' Grammar School
Tamara Barton
Vermont Secondary College
Julia Batchelor
Beaconhills College
Jack Cameron
Scotch College
Iris Elgar
Balwyn High School
Rachael Erdody
Lilydale High School
Olivia Gomatos
Avila College
Lucien Male
Kingswood College
XianZhen Meng
Yarra Valley Grammar
Griffin O’Neill
Woodleigh School
Molly Stapleton
Beaconhills College
Sophie Wassmann
Wesley College, St Kilda Road
VIEW ONLINE GALLERY HERE
