It is with great pride that we present the 2025 Ascham Visual Arts online catalogue, showcasing the Bodies of Work created by our Year 12 students. This collection represents the dedication, skill, and creative spirit of 33 young artists who have explored diverse forms of expression including drawing, painting, printmaking, photomedia, graphic design, and mixed media.
Each work stands as a testament to the deep engagement between students and their teachers—a journey of artistic growth nurtured through critical dialogue, technical refinement, and sustained effort over many months.
I would like to extend heartfelt thanks to the Visual Arts team—Sharon Hare and Bronwyn Jones—for their unwavering commitment and passion in guiding this year’s cohort. I’m also grateful to Andrew Mallon for his invaluable work in designing and producing this catalogue. It has been a privilege to work alongside such dedicated colleagues.
As our students prepare for the next chapter, we wish them all the very best for the final HSC examinations. We look forward to December with anticipation, hoping to see our students’ talents recognised in ARTEXPRESS 2026.
Jeff Morabito
Head of Visual Arts and Design & Technology
My etchings reflect the love that my family shares for one another. The beginnings that have stemmed from my mum and dad’s 22 years of marriage are a central theme of my work. This collection is ultimately a tribute to my parents, two sisters and the everyday charm of Bundilla. Through these prints, I explore the stories that have been etched into the essence of my family property.
These suits symbolise power, conformity and institutional control. Yet, they are inhabited by an invisible energy that flows across, blurring the boundary between the human and its environment. Here, individual identity is collapsed and absorbed by these constructed systems, serving as a foreboding reflection of our increasingly uncertain future.
My work is a deeply personal response to the loss of my friend, Andrew Findlay. Using the symbols of the heart and tree, I reflect on the lasting impact of his absence. The tree, nourished by his ashes, stands as a living testament to his presence—lost to the ocean but reborn in nature’s cycle. The heart symbolises my journey from flourishing, to grieving, to hoping and renewal. Rather than resolving grief, my art creates space for its enduring presence to coexist with life.
The bond I share with my sisters has always had a huge impact on my life, their past and present choices shaping who I am now in the future. My work reflects this influence as an untethering rope, weaving around and binding us together to respectively shape who we are both individually and as a collective.
In my photography, I explore the tension between ideals of femininity and the raw reality of the female body. Using fabric and flesh, I reveal how beauty rituals cast women as sacred yet sacrificial. Beneath the façade lies flesh, blood and instinct—exposing the truth of what it means to live in a body shaped by cultural expectation.
My body of work examines the paradox of connection and disconnection. In particular, I explore the complex, fractured relationship between my father and his two sons, who reside on the other side of the world in Austria with their mother. Despite the physical distance and emotional divide, an enduring bond remains, defined by their shared identity as father and sons.
My work explores the fleeting beauty and vitality of nature at its peak. Through imagery of flowers in full bloom, I celebrate youth, energy and the vibrancy of life. The delicacy of flowers is highly captivating to me, hiding beneath their blossoms the complexity of inevitable decay.
This series explores the idea that travel is not merely about discovering new places but uncovering layers of meaning within the unfamiliar. Each etching captures a moment shaped by place, memory and movement, reflecting how places resonate with our inner selves, offering glimpses into landscapes that invite reflection. These works suggest a world richer and more connected than imagined, where curiosity deepens our sense of belonging.
I explore the intimate tension between body and object, merging limbs with domestic items to form unsettling hybrids. These surreal scenes blur the familiar and unfamiliar, revealing how identity is shaped by the mundane. Through this interplay, I evoke absence and presence, inviting reflection on how we project ourselves onto everyday things—and how they shape us in return.
In this series, I explore the architecture of the Sydney Opera House, not as landmark but as living form. By isolating its curves and angles in darkness, the structure becomes unfamiliar—like a figure, a creature, a monument to something unknowable. These looming shapes suggest presence and intention, culminating in a luminous entranceway: a threshold into a space both iconic and eerily uncharted.
My body of work captures the essence of my grandparents’ farm, Sunnyside—a world of excitement, laughter and adventure that defined my childhood. I celebrate the raw, vibrant energy of my favourite memories there through layered applications of bright pink, yellow, orange and blue paint, using intricate, hand-cut stencils. This labour-intensive artmaking process allowed me to explore my passion for mechanical forms whilst creating a vibrant and playful aesthetic, subconsciously challenging traditional expectations of machinery being ‘masculine’ subject matter.
Throughout my childhood I found it hard to distinguish dreams from reality, having an intricate web of nightmares and dreams that permeated through my life while awake. In my body of work, I aim to recall the haunting yet comforting atmosphere within these memories and the sense of being lost, within the chaos of a nightmare, driven by an abstract purpose that will never be fulfilled.
My body of work interweaves different perspectives from my grandparents’ farm, revealing how family traditions and shared experiences create a layered connection to place. By capturing these juxtaposed moments and observations, I celebrate the farm as a living archive of identity, memory and generational bonds.
Soft Serve transforms nostalgic Australian ice creams into sequinned textile sculptures, glorified like relics beneath glass domes. Drawing on Pop Art and childhood memory, the works freeze fleeting pleasures in glittering excess. By exaggerating scale and surface, the series satirises how media and memory inflate the everyday into icons of desire and consumption.
My body of work traces the subtle unravelling of feminine identity under societal pressure. Stillness carries tension as forms begin to break down, dissolving into earth, fabric and shadow. Suspended in a black void, fabric coils mid-air, and the body fragments into the landscape. The subject resists containment, slipping between presence and disappearance in a slow, luminous departure.
Growing up in North-West Queensland, I’ve been deeply moved by the ever-changing landscapes and untamed power of nature, especially during the wet season. My etchings capture the powerful, often devastating floods that sweep through, conveying the vast, raw beauty of a landscape transformed by summer rains.
My etchings draw from images of my family farm where I grew up; a place rich with memory and meaning. They are a quiet tribute to one of my closest childhood friends, my neighbour—whose life was tragically taken by a waterborne parasite found in the creek waters. Rather than focusing on grief or darkness, these works honour her spirit through grace and simplicity. They celebrate the bond we shared and the beauty of the landscape that shaped us, transforming loss into a visual memory of love and friendship.
Within my body of work, I make an exploration of strange worlds based within a play which I have written. Motifs of forests and strange abstractions representing various complex emotional states and feelings are apparent, depicting the inner turmoil of the main character ‘Eliot’ an author, as unreal and ominous figures within his mind inspire fear, confusion, distortion and awe, a depiction of the de-stabilising nature of the artistic process.
Rocks have existed since the dawn of time. Silent witnesses to the rise and fall of civilisations, they carry the memories of the earth itself. In a sense, we all call one great rock home.
My body of work reinterprets the Dutch Vanitas tradition with colour, humour and curiosity. By blending symbolic objects with playful motifs, this work celebrates life’s impermanence without sorrow. It invites viewers to reflect on mortality not with fear but with wonder, embracing the unpredictable journey without dwelling solely on its transience.
My body of work invites contemplation on the delicate balance between vitality and impermanence, embracing ageing as a natural and beautiful part of the ephemeral human experience. Using my grandmother alongside the growth and decay of floral elements to embody the grace of aging, I navigate through the concept of time and vitality. Through this interplay, I aim to reveal the profound beauty in the transience of life.
My work reimagines ‘still life’ by using decaying fruit to explore time, impermanence and the fragility of beauty. Through light painting, I illuminate what is often overlooked—mould, rot and imperfection—transforming decay into something visually rich. These images challenge ideals of perfection and invite reflection on cycles of life, consumption and the inevitability of change. Tender Rot becomes a quiet, contemplative form of resistance.
Twins live in a state of perpetual connection; their identities intertwined in ways that are impossible to fully separate. My body of work of my mother and my aunt explores this bond—how they remain distinct yet inseparable; each always carrying a part of the other, in ways we can never fully understand.
My practice explores the resistance of women against the constraints of the domestic setting, the darkness in the world of ‘the dream’. The figure dressed in black, as if mourning her autonomy, takes on strange contortions reflecting her struggle—contrasting unusually with her ornate environment.
Everywhere we look, the natural world captivates us with its performance. The flowers bloom theatrically, bursting into vibrant hues and moving with a dynamic, dance-like grace. These are just a few examples of nature’s brilliance, and my body of work is a celebration of such wonders.
My body of work explores personal and collective growth through coloured pencil drawings. By blending realistic and non-realistic hues, I reflect how change can be both vivid and distorted. The shifting forms and tones suggest fading memories and fragments of the past that shape who we become. I’ve included my own childhood drawings alongside the new works, to highlight transformation over time and honour the lasting impact of those around me.
Raised on a rural property in Cootamundra, my family’s strong connection to farming has shaped my identity and creativity. The landscape and experiences of my childhood have left a lasting imprint, deeply influencing my body of work and the person I’ve become.
My body of work celebrates the beauty of my neighbourhood through a one-kilometre microcosm. I pay tribute to the overlooked charm in familiar streets, trees, parks and homes that shape my daily life. They invite others to pause while completely immersed in beauty—reminders that wonder lies in the everyday.
My work explores the illusion of fame by transforming mundane objects into glamorous, glittering scenes and capturing the narrative of the ‘Wannabe’, a girl consumed by ambition and perfection. Inspired by celebrity culture, I use digital and real glitter to critique ideals of beauty, success and authenticity. This work questions society’s obsession with surface, revealing how the dazzle of fame often conceals emptiness beneath the sparkle.
Come closer. What do you really see? My body of work explores the part of nature often overlooked as it is too violent or unsettling. My series aims to bring that violence to paper and invite the audience to confront the often-unseen cruelty in the natural world, capturing the chaotic interplay between the cycle of life and death—the brutality of nature.
In this series, I use lines, shadows and lighting to create an eerie suburban atmosphere. By contrasting illuminated subjects with darkened exteriors, I reveal the quiet strangeness of the everyday. This work emphasises the precision of composition and light, inviting viewers to see the familiar suburban landscape anew—through the unsettling, transformative lens of night.
I explore the overlooked spaces where human-made structures interrupt the natural world. My work investigates how we build, inhabit and then abandon, leaving behind silent imprints of what was once alive. These forgotten sites reveal the transient nature of our interventions, and the quiet stories embedded.
This series of etchings reflects my journey through the galleries and museums of Paris and London that I visited last year as part of an Art tour. The work reflects my fascination with spaces where art and history converge. Each piece captures the character of these landmarks, highlighting their atmosphere, light and architectural beauty.
Live and learn in an exciting, vibrant environment that nurtures self-confidence, resilience and participation. Begin the enrolment process now or find out more about our approach.
We look forward to welcoming you.
