Of the 30 graduates from the Adelaide Central School of Art, we think you should keep an eye on these three.

On December 3, the Adelaide Central School of Art’s (ACSA) largest ever Visual Arts cohort will conclude their studies with graduate exhibition, Sensory Narrative.

Of the 30 students graduating, we’ve picked these three as the ones to watch.

Grace Marlow 

Grace Marlow is one of two recipients of the Bachelor of Visual Art (Honours) Scholarship. As such, she will be graduating this year with a BVA already under her belt.

Also under her belt are some considerable accolades: she in the winner of the inaugural ACSA and Artlink Magazine Art History Award, the NAVA Ignition Award for high achieving student in Professional Practice, and was a selected artist showing in the Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition earlier this year.

Through her art, Grace aims to challenge people’s unthinking reliance on assumptions, particularly regarding gender.

“I’m interested in the assumptions that people rely on to navigate their lives in an easier way, and how these assumptions are often troubling and limiting when they concern gender. Assumptions about what categories women and men belong to, and how that’s a binary division,” says Grace.

“As a maker I’m trying to find moments when reductive assumptions can’t be relied on to understand my world. So instead I’m interested in having people actively engage with their bodies, and alternatively experiencing objects around them.”

Grace’s graduate piece, which is a sculpture installation, follows that thinking through.

“You physically have to navigate around the body of work,” says Grace. “I’m hoping that the density of the sculptures in this piece has a physical response in how you navigate and think about how close the sculptures are to you. I’m hoping that people rely on responding to the work in bodily ways, where you might be repulsed by something, or you might be drawn to the kind of texture or something like that, instead of trying to rely on these logics where you try and make sense of the work.

“And then,” says Grace, “maybe we can accept complexities instead of relying on logics or assumptions.”

Bernadette Klavins

Like Grace, Bernadette will also be graduating with the Bachelor of Visual Art (Honours) Scholarship under her belt.

Bernadette works in sculpture, with a specific interest in looking at instances of geological transformation in local environments.

“This year I’ve spent a lot of time walking and observing really subtle material events, such as a puddle evaporating, or the idea of drift wood. So, just observing and looking at how I can engage with these sort of material events,” says Bernadette.

“All my work this year has been sculptural and looking at how the performative might become a part of that sort of interaction with materials.”

It’s a fascination she says stems from the Japanese movement of Mono-ha: “Those artists are really interested in paying attention to the materials’ agency and sort of using rocks and timber in a really minimal way to highlight their potential latent energy within them and giving them space around them.”

Earlier than that, Bernadette recalls a life-long love of drawing, the ability to draw conclusions from her observations on the world around her, and a steady stream of encouragement from those around her.

“I had a lot of support through high school from my art teacher and my mum. My mum studied at ACSA, so she always really encouraged me.”

Beyond the grad show, Bernadette had hoped for some down time, however, upon stumbling across a felled tree in the Mitcham Council area yesterday, she’s already set to begin working on her next project.

Jasmine Crisp

Jasmine has always drawn, but it was only when she began studying at ACSA that she became a painter.

Fast forward to the end of her degree, and she’s now creating phenomenal large-scale oil paintings of the people who most influence her life.

“I enjoy travelling and learning about how people respond to their cultures in different ways to each other and different matters,” says Jasmine. It’s within her work that Jasmine explores how a subject’s culture influences their thinking.

The people depicted in her graduate work are close friends of hers. “I’ve characterised their personalities to try and describe the relationships that can occur through using objects and personal identifiers. Using objects – usually treasures that we love – to symbolise ourselves to other people,” says Jasmine.

Beyond graduation, Jasmine says she’ll be applying her practice to three-dimensional surfaces. “I’m thinking of layering panels into shapes and working on something sculptural.”