Student Profile
Image from Heart of Gold Project 3
Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont
Artists
Bachelor of Arts (Art)
Why did you choose to come to Curtin?
We had heard positive things about the art course at Curtin, in terms of the staff and facilities.
What did you think of your time at Curtin?
It was invaluable in terms of making connections with people within the arts community, our lecturers and our peers.
What was the highlight of your degree? What did you enjoy most?
We formed a successful collaboration during our degree, and we still work together successfully 7 years later. We formed many friendships with likeminded people and developed the foundation of our professional arts practice. Winning the award for best students working in time-based media and performance at our graduation was another highlight.
Please detail your career path since you graduated…
We have been working together collaboratively since 2001. Our work spans performance (concentrating on song and dance), film, photography, design and theatre production, with an ongoing interest in the elements of pop culture.
We began by applying for smaller group shows and doing whatever we could to get our work shown. After a few years people began to notice what we were doing and we began to get offers for exhibitions and performances.
To date we have exhibited in galleries such as the Australian Centre for Photography (Sydney), The Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Canberra Contemporary Art Space; and later in 2008 we’re exhibiting at The Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), The Gallery of Modern Art (Queensland) and Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts (St Kilda).
One big highlight was winning the City of Perth Art Award in 2007 with our photograph So That Liberty Shall Not Perish From This Earth from the Heart of Gold Project 3 series. Another was being accepted into the prestigious Primavera exhibition at the MCA, which will open in September this year.
We have some design and art direction work coming up with STEPS Youth Dance Company and have also been working on a musical called Heart of Gold with fellow Curtin graduate, Thea Costantino, since 2004, due for production in 2009. We hope to find further work in these areas to complement our art practice.
Do you think your degree helped you in your career path?
Most definitely. The review process in art school helps you to carefully consider the way you develop new work, how you visually present it to an audience and also how you speak about it. Sometimes it was challenging, but we learnt a lot from those assessments.
Also your peers and lecturers are a great support network in the arts community, post graduation. Coming straight from high school into a degree, that kind of network is very important.
What did you think of the staff at Curtin?
We respected the lecturers working within the art school at Curtin as many were professional artists, working within the Perth arts community, nationally and internationally. The technicians we worked with were also very helpful and friendly.
We received great support for our work when we needed it.
Would you recommend the degree to others?
We would recommend the degree to people who aren’t looking for traditional arts training. The course at Curtin is very focussed on contemporary art, which is what we were looking for.
Having a studio space to work in full time and to be able to receive feedback and support from lecturers and peers was invaluable. It is a great environment to prepare you for a career as a professional contemporary artist.
The lecturers were quite open minded too – there were no performance majors when we were there, and they were happy with us doing performance and film work instead of painting, which was our major at the time.
More of their work can be found at www.heartofgold.net.au