Short Reviews - Compiled from emails responding to the Elam Graduate Show 2004

I thought the show was good but a pity that overall the artists were not present to explain their work to the viewers.

If you managed to forgive the building for its lack of purpose-built exhibiting features and then ignore that the work was positioned in it, I thought the work had a lot to offer. I found it was helpful to pay attention to the names of students (artists) as in quite a few of the temporary cubes, the tight spaces and overlaps made it hard to define the individuals' work. Perhaps that is the nature of the beast of fitting a show into a space not specifically designed for exhibiting.

In these times of intellectual & conceptual art, which requires a great deal of research to comprehend, it was inspiring to see many artists unfashionably talking about life and expressing beauty and emotion.

Dear Crease, Some cool work - but maybe students should be able to construct and understand materials before they can deconstruct effectively.

Tahi Moore showed a video work that would go on forever; it would be there at anytime and for anyone.

The work of Phillipa Makgill [painting graduate] was distinctive to me because she made attempts to involve or implicate her work with the space she exhibited in. Phillipa's decision to sand back the warped floorboards of her Wooden Mansion room exemplified (for me) the specific lyricism with which she deals with her chosen objects and materials

Nick Austin's, a sculpture student, to me had some visual and spatial sensitivity - a sensitivity to materials and composing. Unlike most else. Almost all else was insensitive and derivative....timid

I regret to say that overall I was a bit Underwhelmed

Not publicized enough...

The exhibition varies in intensity, but I always look forward to it all year long, as a touchstone of sanity. Sure it's escapist but it's escaping to something, not from something, so if you give yourself to it, the rewards are immeasurable; it's simply one of the best weekends in the year.

Highlights were works in the sculpture department that meandered their way across crawling, horizontal floor areas, where secret squirrel activities busily took place. Dimly lit surfaces, where a non-disclosed protagonist chips away at a project which is not entirely clandestine, since they are aware of, but indifferent to, the meandering observer. The workstations of Susie Pratt's installation spring to mind.

I'm afraid I have never been too impressed by what goes on at Elam. I find most of its output rather boring, ugly, or both.

I didn't know, so I didn't go. A shame really

SHORT REVIEW CONTRIBUTERS: Kate Brettkelly-Chalmers, Charles Cooper, Phil Dadson, Maggie Greeson, Andrew McLeod, Daniel Munn, Ceili Murphy, Victoria O'Sullivan, S.Pam, cellulite rose, Simon Rees, Kathy Reid, shwan, Vegard, Toresen, Deborah White.

Nick Austin, 2004