New artistic talent revealed

Australia's newest artistic talent will be showcased when COFA's graduating students exhibit their final projects, the culmination of a long creative journey.

The COFA Annual exhibition, opening on Tuesday 24 November, celebrates the achievements of students completing their art, design and media programs in 2009.

COFA Dean Professor Ian Howard says the show provides a glimpse of artists that will lead, even dominate, for decades to come.

"All the work is impressively 'of the moment' and each artist and designer appears to have found their own individual voice," he says.

The COFA Annual has become a rite of passage for students before they begin work as professional practitioners.

Bachelor of Design graduate Hannah Young says the exhibition is a significant milestone.

"The Annual celebrates the end of a long, incredible journey. It's something I've looked forward to throughout my entire degree," she says.

Young travelled to Wales earlier this year with more than 60 designers, planners, artists and architects to work on an urban design brief in Cardiff. The brief was a collaboration between the British Council and Professor Richard Goodwin's COFA Porosity Studio.

Young's exhibition in the Annual is a series of photographs inspired by her time in Cardiff, entitled Edible Architecture, which explores urban estrangement.

"The pink chair in the images represents the comfort and security of home that's often absent in the urban environment," says Young. "As I travelled round the city the chair was slowly 'consumed' in an attempt to ingest the nourishing qualities of something safe and familiar."

2009 has been highly successful for many COFA graduates. Internationally acclaimed artists Shaun Gladwell, Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro represented Australia at the Venice Biennale and Angelica Mesiti, part of the all female performance crew the Kingpins, who met at COFA, won the Blake Prize.

Media contact: Fran Strachan | 9385 8732 | fran.strachan@unsw.edu.au