This year's Create students played a pivotal part in NCAT's premier annual event, Couchfest,
a collaboration of music, visual arts and performing arts with key values centred around diversity and sustainability.
The Create students were given the brief to work collaboratively to repurpose curb-side couches as art installations for the music and arts festival. Each group was given a couch or arm chair and a very short time line. They had to negotiate through inspiration, ideas, processes, obstacles and personal preferences to find a shared and sustainable vision for each couch.
The couches ranged from:
- The Silent Reviewer: a movie couch, replete with popcorn, videos and remote
- A boat like couch called Imagination where children's stories come to life and wishes come true
- The Couch as nest: Branches, twigs, feathers and leaves formed around this snug couch
- The Deconstructed Armchair: An old armchair is completely dismantled and rebuilt into a sculpture
- The Love Hotel Couch: Based on Japanese Love Hotels, this couch investigates ideas around intimacy in our crowded world
- The Ai Wei Wei Column: Inspired by the installation work of Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei, three plastic Bunnings chairs in faux marble sit precariously atop a roman column
- The Desert Armchair: Eroding in the desert winds, this chair and side lamp are slowly disappearing
Initially the student's were unsure about working together, but they threw themselves into the project and discovered the joys of collaborative art installations.
One group decorated a tiny house, built by the college's Building pre-apprentices, as a very old school comfy lounge room! The Tiny House was used as a stage on the day for acoustic acts.
Special mention also goes to one student who went off on a side track to investigate emoticons and why there is never the right one for your mood. She explored as an interactive piece the possibilities of a series of NCAT emoticons.
All images ©NCAT
