​​We welcome you to the inaugural New Contemporaries Online Showcase, presented by Sydney College of the Arts (SCA), The University of Sydney. We wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which the SCA is located, the unceded Gadigal land of the Eora nation. For most of this academic year, our community has been spread across Australia and abroad. Collectively we have been working on many different First Nations’ country and we pay our respect to their ancestors and to their elders both past, present and emerging.

This online showcase represents SCA’s graduating cohort navigating the challenges of yet another unprecedented year, working across Screen Arts, Photography, Painting, Printmedia, Sculpture, Ceramics, Glass and Jewellery and Object. The works within represent the capstone of degrees including the Bachelor of Visual Arts, Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) or Masters of Moving Image.

This platform brings our students together after many months of being unable to gather in person. It was created in consultation with a colourful cohort and designed to mimic the textured experience of wandering through studios located on-campus. Each profile can be accessed through an object captured from the artists’ own working space and is personalised to echo their creative ethos. Unlike the physical exhibition, it offers glimpses into their working process and provides pathways to explore their work further via personal website links.

In parallel to this online showcase, we are pleased to have been able to deliver a physical exhibition of the same name at SCA Gallery and adjoining spaces in SCA’s new home in the Old Teachers’ College Building at Camperdown Campus. It is open by appointment from 1-11 December, 2021. After the physical exhibition closes, this website will remain as a repository of their artistic achievements and time studying at SCA.

New Contemporaries would not have been possible without the dedicated support of SCA’s academic and professional staff who managed online and on-campus learning throughout the COVID-19 restrictions.

Above all, we commend each and every student for continuing to create through disruptions and during isolation. This incredible showcase is testament to their enduring creativity, resilience and commitment to art making. We are proud to present their work and wish all continued success in their future careers.

A Haiku for the Artist

Look down to sky. Learn
To tie your shoelaces and
Always dance barefoot.

SOUND OF WOLF HOWLING
OOOWOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOO
EXPERIMENTAL ART = EXPERIMENTAL LIVING
EXPERIMENTAL LIVING = EXPERIMENTAL ART
OOOWOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOO
BRAVO TO THE ARTISTS AND THE TEAM THAT HELPED MAKE NEW CONTEMPORARIES HAPPEN. OOOWOOOOOOOOOO

Film is a collaborative art form - so how do you create one in a global pandemic? SCA’s Semester 2 2021 Masters of Moving Image graduates are the first to complete their degree entirely online. They have shown talent, courage, inventiveness, and tenacity to get their projects to the screen, using re-purposed mobiles, small-cast scripts, portable rain machines, bespoke SFX, and, in one case, an entire village, to explore themes of love, madness, discrimination and hope. The results are proof that even a pandemic can be a creative catalyst and a shining testament to film’s enduring power to build bridges between worlds.