ARTEXPRESS 2025 Showcases Exceptional Work By Year 12 Students

One of the yearly highlights at the Art Gallery of NSW is when ARTEXPRESS arrives, the exhibition that displays the best of the HSC Visual Arts cohort in 2024 from across New South Wales. Across a number of different artistic forms, like painting, ceramics, photomedia and textiles, visitors can appreciate the full creativity of this cohort while it’s on display until late-April. 

Curator Louise Halpin, who’s put together ARTEXPRESS for the past six years, explains the exhibition’s unique appeal to City Hub: “It’s both a learning resource for other students when they come with school groups, but it’s a really key exhibition because our general public love to come in and see what young people are passionate about, and get a reminder of what it was like when they were 17 or 18.”

“I love seeing what students are coming up with each year, what they’re experimenting with and the ideas they’re coming up with” Louise continues. “This year, I’ve noticed a really strong approach to family, siblings and the connection to past generations, particularly if they’ve come from other countries. They’re really exploring that in a creative way!”

A sense of family and connection at ARTEXPRESS

An example of that strong familial theme comes from Ziggy Marsden (Newtown High School of Performing Arts), whose photo series Nana’s old home is a very personal work about the now-abandoned plot where his Nana used to live shot on Polaroids and Super 8 film. “I really like touching on personal things in regards to memory in my artwork,” says Ziggy. “I think it always conveys in your artwork, because it comes across as very intimate.”

Ziggy didn’t expect his work to make it to ARTEXPRESS, but he was absolutely delighted when he found that it had. He says: “It made it feel like the hard work paid off, but I was also happy because it was such a personal subject that got selected. It almost felt like the memory that I was trying to convey almost came back to life a bit, because it was such a surprise!

“It also feels like a celebration of upcoming artists as well, which is really important because sure, there’s a lot of amazing art in the Gallery already, but it’s also really great to look at the generation that’s upcoming,” Ziggy concludes. 

Feeling a sense of surprise is common amongst the ARTEXPRESS students, including Dominiek De Graaf (Lambton High School), whose work Overstromen explores how rising water levels will affect her home country of The Netherlands with blue and watercolour. “When I moved here to Australia, I learnt a lot about climate change, and that my country will be underwater in 30 years. It was a topic that was really close to home for me.”

Understandably super excited when she found out her work was selected for ARTEXPRESS, Dominiek gives an insight into why that is by explaining just how much effort is required to make a major work: “While creating it, I would spend nearly the entire day in the art room because I’d have lots of study periods. Then I’d take the art home, work on it til 10pm and occasionally worked all night to finish it.” 

“I was really, really happy when I first found out my work would be shown at the New South Wales Gallery,” continues Dominiek. “I thought ‘Oh, I’ve been there so many times for school excursions, and now my artwork’s gonna be there.’ It’s really exciting!”

Students unafraid to make statements in work

Another interesting mix of politics and the personal comes from Mia Sky (St Clare’s College) with Clytemnestra’s chorus, an explicitly political work about the eternal struggle of women for autonomy and self-actualisation that depicts female figures like Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago and Marina Abramovic. “The work is largely drawn from my own interest in ancient history, and my love for Art Nouveau,” says Mia of creating the piece. 

“It kept developing from one small idea, and it didn’t really come together until the final stretch,” Mia continues. “In the work, there’s a lot of details in it, and I think the meaning is there – you just have to try and identify all the different pieces that I tried to add to it, especially if you’re culturally literate and know history”

Mia mentions the importance of political art, too, saying: “I think it’s really important now, especially from young people, to not dismiss political art as being pretentious, but as a tool to make people’s voices known. The world’s changing, there’s scary stuff going on, and we need to be aware of the past, the present and the future.”

Isabella Pex (Tuggerah Lakes Secondary College), whose portfolio work The pillars of masculinity also takes a political approach, interrogating the hyper-macho Western genre through a feminine perspective. “I’ve been a fan of Westerns for a long time, but I always noticed women were either left out of the narrative or left by the wayside with derivative portrayals,” Isabella says. “So I wanted to make space for a more female view of the genre and its tropes.”

To achieve this, Isabella mixed photos she took of women in her life such as her sister and overlaid these pictures with textures, before painting over them. After hours upon hours of work, Isabella describes how she felt when the work was done: “It was a mix of resignation and complete release. I could finally sleep again and relax!”

Then, she found out it would be at ARTEXPRESS, and a new feeling washed over her: “I was just in shock! I didn’t really know what to think… looking at the screen, I thought it was a glitch or something. But yeah, it was crazy to find out I was actually in the exhibition, but also very great!”

ARTEXPRESS a surreal opportunity for featured students

Another instance of a mixed approach to creation comes in Manifesto automobilistico by Anthony Douaihy (St Patrick’s College), a photomedia exhibition that focuses on the car as a work of art through vibrant long exposure and macro photography. “I was inspired by the futuristic movement of the early 20th century in Italy, with inspiration from Giacamo Balla, Umberto Boccioni and Gerardo Dottori,” Anthony says of his process. 

“That art movement itself captures dynamism and fragmented scenes, so using that inspiration I was able to create still images that created movement, as well as a soundscape of car noises,” he continues. Going forward, Anthony is looking to employ the skills he learnt making his major work into his studies as an architect, as well as taking photos (he’s still a big fan of cars!). 

Like many of his peers, Anthony could’ve never imagined he’d have work in the Art Gallery of NSW; “I was surprised that I made it into the biggest Gallery in NSW, and I’m of course really happy to be here as well.”

The amazing artwork of these 5 artists and their 45 other fellow students is free to view at ARTEXPRESS 2025 the until April 27th 2025 at the Art Gallery of NSW.