MGA has been celebrating the work of emerging photomedia artists with the annual TOPshots award and exhibition for over a decade. TOPshots is open to students who have studied 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 exhibition have been selected from a large pool of entries, and represent a small sample of the vast array of talent that emerged out of Melbourne’s high schools in 2020. MGA is proud to have the opportunity to foreground and acknowledge the excellence of young photomedia artists in our community while providing a vital platform for these artists to share and exhibit their work.
Curator: Stella Loftus-Hills
We are delighted to announce that the winner of TOPshots 2020–21 is Anika McClean from Woodleigh School for her work 'Knocking on COVID's door' (2020). The award was judged by MGA collection artist and 2010 Bowness Photography Prize winner, Lee Grant, who is a Korean-Australian photographer and researcher with a background in social anthropology. Based on the South Coast of NSW, she works on commissions and long-term independent and collaborative projects to explore themes such as community, identity and belonging, often combining photography, video, sound and text.
In choosing the winning work, Grant was drawn to this work because she says, ‘it speaks both simply and beautifully – using an experimental process – to speak of the times we are living in. I can't imagine the impact COVID must have on our young people but Anika's focus on being creative in a difficult time and speaking of her experiences on a really simple level, ie. her doorstep, is both captivating and inspiring.’
Artists:
Natalie Catalfamo
Loreto Mandeville Hall
Zac Hibbins
Kingswood College
Chloe Kopec
Toorak College
Olivia Martin
Loreto Mandeville Hall
Anika McClean
Woodleigh School
Jaime Morcos
Caulfield Grammar School, Wheelers Hill
Jordan Morise
Avila College
Anneke Morris
Swinburne Senior Secondary College
Millini Mule
Padua College
Samantha Pickering
Woodleigh School
Adam Shimota
Caulfield Grammar School, Caulfield
Ashton Taylor
Padua College
Sam Triandafillou
Padua College
Jackson Trundle
Monbulk College
Joahanna Wickramaratne
Caulfield Grammar School, Wheelers Hill
VIEW THE SHORTLIST HERE
UPDATE 29 October 2021: MGA will re-open on Wednesday 3 November 2021 with COVIDSafe measures in place to ensure the safety and wellbeing of visitors to the site. Learn more here.
UPDATE 9 September 2021: MGA is temporarily closed in line with government restrictions, once restrictions have eased we will announce an opening date for this exhibition.
