Youth art on show at TMAG

Make your Mark image

Works by young artists from around the state are now on show at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) as part of the fourth Make Your Mark youth art project.

Make Your Mark is a youth art initiative of TMAG with a focus on youth expression, creativity and community participation. Every project involves a nominated art form to explore, and a theme to respond to. The initiative is delivered by the museum’s art education program AccessArt, in partnership with local governments from across Tasmania.

This year the project has focussed on the theme of home and has engaged youth from the municipalities of Circular Head, City of Hobart, Glenorchy City Council and Waratah-Wynyard Council to participate in artist-led workshops and produce sculptural art in response to this theme.

Each project group has explored what home means to them both in terms of the physical spaces and structures we live in, belongings we surround ourselves with as well as the connection home has to our very sense of identity, independence and freedom. The young artists involved have each drawn on diverse backgrounds and life experiences in engaging with this idea.

The public outcome of an exhibition at the state museum and art gallery is a great recognition and celebration of the achievement and effort by all the project participants.

TMAG is committed to being active in the community through projects that create connections between its site, collections and contemporary culture.

Ms Rebecca Tudor, Senior Producer Public Programs at TMAG says that Make Your Mark is one of TMAG’s cornerstone youth outreach programs that enables TMAG to deliver experiences at a community level each year.

Make Your Mark gives young people a voice and provides an opportunity for them to express their views on issues that matter as well as recognising their creativity”, Rebecca says”.

Sara Wright, lead artist on the Glenorchy City Council project says that it was an incredible privilege to work alongside young artists as a mentor to help them realise their creative vision.

“The theme of home was particularly significant for this group as everyone involved in the Glenorchy project was born in a different country and is making a new home for themselves in Tasmania.”

“We’ve learned together that the concept of home can be many things. Always and most importantly, it is a place we make and carry for ourselves within our own bodies”, Sara says.

This year’s exhibition follows on from previous successful iterations of the project in 2014, Make Your Mark: Freedom, in 2015, Make Your Mark: Respect and in 2016 Make Your Mark: Death.

Make Your Mark: Home is on show in the Bond Store Basement at TMAG from Wednesday, 4 October until Sunday, 22 October 2017. The exhibition is open Tuesday to Sunday between 10:00 am – 4:00 pm.

Make your Mark photo

Image details:

Top: Andy Vagg and Circular Head project participants

Bottom: Young artists from the Glenorchy City Council project Moo Blut Lay, Ali Nazari, Kitichai Chuaywan with Sara Wright, (lead artist on this project); Willie Joseph, Project Coordinator and Rebecca Tudor, Senior Producer Public Programs, TMAG.