HATCHED, PICA’s 18th National Graduate Show

Richard Blackwell Stacks (wood), 2008 screen print on cardboard Courtesy of the artist. Australian National University

Now in its 18th year Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts’ HATCHED National Graduate Show is an established highlight on the Australian cultural calendar. An annual exhibition of work by the best of this country’s art school graduates, HATCHED is the most prestigious and comprehensive survey of new emerging artists in Australia today.

This is a great opportunity to spot the future stars of Australian art.

2009 sees a new approach to the exhibition with the final selection of 44 graduates being undertaken by a panel of art specialists. These include Sydney gallerist Darren Knight of Darren Knight Gallery, Melbourne artist Viv Miller and PICA curator Melissa Keys. The selected graduates were chosen from 93 submissions from 20 art schools nationally.

As part of this new trial approach every art school will continue to be represented at this national event, however, the selection panel now has the opportunity to identify specific work for inclusion in the exhibition from a national perspective. This approach may see the Hatched exhibition evolve in new ways into the future including identifying new and emerging trends, directions and ideas across Australia’s art school scene.

Created by a brand new crop of national art talent and loaded with ideas, the works in the show engage notions of memory and history, landscape and place, sustainability and the environment, identity and relationships, logic and rationality, space and time, politics and everyday life, isolation and the body.

‘The National Graduate show is a necessary stop-off for all those interested in the future of art in Australia. Not only to see who’s hot and who’s not, but also spot the trends in art education and discuss leanings in art thinking.’ Ric Spencer, The West Australian, May 2007

Always kaleidoscopic, the 2009 Hatched showcase features an extraordinary array of media and formats including: installation, photography, drawing, painting, sculpture, text, performance, video, sound and media art.

Since its inception in 1992, Hatched has provided a unique and important opportunity for recent graduates from the nation’s leading art schools to exhibit their work alongside that of their peers from around Australia.

Highlights of HATCHED 09 include:

• Regional WA artist Hayley Bahr’s wistful wheat installation
• Kate Barker’s evocative and layered water colours composed from family holiday snapshots
• Juliet Bennett’s fencing wire globe, photographed in the landscape
• Ben Foster’s drawing machine that questions the authority of reason and logic and promises to never produce the same drawing twice
• Danielle Leonello’s Masticate project in which the artist collects and examines 2880 samples of discarded chewing gum from across a university campus
• Collaborative pair Michael Prior and Lachlan Conn’s ‘time machine’ titled Chronox

HATCHED 09: National Graduate Show
Opening: Thursday 16 April, 6–8 pm
Exhibition dates: 17 April – 7 June 2008