The Perth Institute of Contemporary Art’s (PICA) annual national graduate show, Hatched, is a chance for 23 artists from around the country to get their first taste of professional life.<\/p>\n
Now in its 34th year, Hatched takes the best of graduating artists’ work from 20 institutions around Australia to create the only national graduate survey exhibition.<\/p>\n
“[Hatched] is part of our work in supporting emerging artists,” PICA director and CEO Hannah Mathews said.<\/p>\n
“Hatched, over its exhibition history, has presented the work of over 1,400 artists to audiences here in Perth, and some of those artists have gone on to really big careers.”<\/p>\n
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Hannah Mathews says the exhibition helps emerging artists from around Australia to find each other. (ABC News: Emma Wynne)<\/p>\n
One of those artists is Archie Moore, whose work ‘kith and kin’ won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2024<\/a>. Khaled Sabsabi, whose work featured in Hatched in 2005, will represent Australia in Venice in 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n To be selected for Hatched, graduating artists are nominated by their lecturers and then hand-selected by a panel of artists and curators from each school.<\/p>\n “It’s quite a rigorous process. So it means that the quality, the rigour of the work, the ambition and experimentation of the work is quite high, which is really good,” Mathews said.<\/p>\n “This is a professional gig. It’s a creative compulsion for artists, but it’s also a professional pathway that PICA wants to support them on.” PICA Hatched temporary exhibition space in Forrest Place. (ABC News: Emma Wynne)<\/p>\n Making a career in art<\/p>\n Over the years, Hatched has expanded from being an exhibition to a professional development opportunity that teaches participants what’s involved in being a working artist, and how to keep going financially while they do that.<\/p>\n “The artists all come to Perth. They meet, they spend time together, they watch someone else install their work, they learn about fundraising, they learn about media writing, they learn about how to think about accessibility and training and access for their work,” Mathews said.<\/p>\n Marcus Payne’s work, Yorkshire Tea, involves real tea and many smashed tea cups. (ABC News: Emma Wynne)<\/p>\n This year, through the philanthropic support of the Mindaroo Foundation, PICA has paid each artist a loan fee for their work, which is industry best practice.<\/p>\n No-one quite seems to remember how the only national survey of art school graduates in the country came to be in Perth, but Mathews says one of the great things about the event, especially for artists not based in Sydney or Melbourne, is giving them a community.<\/p>\n “One of the big things that the artists in Hatched reflect on each year is that they love having made this community of peers, so that when they travel to Adelaide or they travel to Sydney, or they go up to Darwin, they know someone in town,” she said.<\/p>\n “They’ve got someone to call when things get challenging. They’ve got someone to call if they have a question or a problem or an achievement.” Madi Jones’s hyper-realistic self-portraits, Internalised I & II, were created with ball-point pens. (ABC News: Emma Wynne)<\/p>\n The fragility and comfort of home<\/p>\n Rosemary Tamas-Cao, who graduated from the Queensland College of Art and Design in Brisbane, has a work in Hatched called ‘ee with ellow owers’ that the notes record is made of Vietnamese rice paper, onion skins, hair, cotton thread, rice, a fridge shelf, perspex wire and LED lights.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rosemary Tamas-Cao says her work highlights the fragility of home. (ABC News: Emma Wynne)<\/p>\n “This work is an installation performance and it’s set as an incomplete room, so the walls are made of Vietnamese rice paper and there are missing walls as well,” Tamas-Cao said.<\/p>\n “The space itself recalls temporary housing that my family and I were accommodated in when I was younger.<\/p>\n “All the materials, including the rice paper, the onion skins and my hair, which is used to stitch poems, they are all really impermanent and scant.<\/p>\n “But for me, they evoke a comfort, the nourishment and presence of my home. And a key part of this work, too, was showcasing the fragility of home in a time of the upheaval of both the climate and housing scenes.”<\/p>\n Rosemary Tamas-Cao’s work, ee with ellow ours, on display at Hatched. (ABC News: Emma Wynne)<\/p>\n Rosemary Tamas-Cao’s work uses rice paper which degrades over the course of the exhibition. (ABC News: Emma Wynne)<\/p>\n Tamas-Cao said being chosen for Hatched was “super exciting”.<\/p>\n “I’m immensely grateful for this opportunity,” she said, adding that her university gave her a lot of encouragement.<\/p>\n Talking back to colonial imagery<\/p>\n For Tom Duffy, a Dharug man who studied creative arts at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, art is a way of speaking back to colonial narratives and depictions of Aboriginal people.<\/p>\n His triptych, ‘Djagats (The Newly Arrived\/Native Dignity)’ takes two paintings by 19th century artist Samuel Thomas Gill and challenges how Gill depicted First Nations people.<\/p>\n Tom Duffy has challenged depictions of Aboriginal people in colonial art.\u00a0 (ABC News: Emma Wynne)<\/p>\n In Gill’s Native Dignity, a First Nations couple promenades down a street<\/a>, wearing shredded versions of Victorian dress \u2014 the frockcoat, top hat and crinoline skirt.<\/p>\n In the background, a white couple, more conservatively dressed, regard the couple with disdain and horror, and the picture seems to mock the Aboriginal couple’s confidence.<\/p>\n In Duffy’s interpretation, the couple’s true dignity is restored, and the paintwork references possum fur, a traditional garment that was stamped out by the colonists who insisted Aboriginal people must wear European-style clothing.<\/p>\n One of the three works from Tom Duffy’s Djagats (The Newly Arrived\/Native Dignity) triptych. (ABC News: Emma Wynne)<\/p>\n “I wanted to use [Gill’s] material and flip it so that it became a symbol of pride for Aboriginal people,” Duffy said.<\/p>\n “I’ve used the craft of possum fur as a symbolic thing in the work as well. It was a craft that got put to sleep by colonialism.<\/p>\n “When the settlers came, there was a process where Aboriginal people had to dress like the white men.<\/p>\n “The possum fur clothing disappeared, and in the last maybe 50 years, it’s been reawakened.<\/p>\n “And so now that possum fur is a symbol of cultural resilience.”<\/p>\n Tom Duffy’s work Djagats (The Newly Arrived\/Native Dignity) triptych. (ABC News: Emma Wynne)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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