S 37° 47` 52.94",
E 144° 57` 43.994"

A photograph of a canvas artwork. In situ to the artwork is a brown fence and bright green grass in the foreground. The canvas includes gestural movements, lines, brush marks and strong red markings. In the centre of the image is a blue shape and overlaid a rose drawn in navy paint.

Nicholas Currie,

All Is On Rose

Digital photograph of painting with broom. Painting: acrylic paint, house paint, oil pastel and enamel paint on stretched canvas, 1.5 x 1.8 metres

For this work I reviewed my family history with the University. My grandma worked as a cleaner for the University, typically in the Scott’s building, today known as the Glyn Davis Building. My practice as an artist tends to be figurative or performance-based bodies of work. With the stimulus of psychogeography I used the tools my grandmother used to paint; marking the campus with mops, whiffers and whipping movements. Muted colours and mixing of pigments symbolises the continuous and diverse work that the University generates. Being an Indigenous Australian it is always important to tell stories when given the opportunity. This piece gestures to my grandma and the work she did at the University so that I could one day attend and feel comfortable for my body to be in the same space.

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Nicholas Currie is a multidisciplinary artist, writer and creative working and studying on Wurundjeri land. Being of Indigenous Australian, Polish and Scottish decent, Currie works in themes of autobiography, identity and place through contemporary references to Dadaism, street art and brutalism. He studies at the Victorian College of the Arts and works in construction.

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