On Saturday PSC’s Degree Pathway students gave their research project presentations in a day-long seminar. It was exciting to hear the results of their investigations into such issues as food sustainability, plant species preservation, and media strategies for the animal rights movement.

A prominent theme of the seminar was the representation of identity, personal experience, and transformational role-play in such areas as the transmission and socialisation of fears and phobias, body image, the use of personas and masking in portrait photography, fetishism and the intriguing world of historical re-enactments in contemporary Melbourne. A further focus was Neo-Abstractionism in art photography and video, an interest that seems to be gaining momentum, notwithstanding the diversity of approaches described in such contexts as the representation of personal experience, portraiture and the visualisation of music in art.

Adding to the diversity of themes, and providing an uplifting end to the day, was a fascinating survey of the cultural and religious traditions of charity in Western and Middle-Eastern societies and the visual representations these have engendered. These semester-long research projects promise to deepen, enrich, and give further impetus to the Pathway students’ creative visual projects, which will be reaching completion in the coming weeks.

Amber McCaig, Still Life

Jessica Meyerink, still from untitled video