We asked Ronnie a few questions about his experience working on the  Top Arts 2013 publication and his advice for young writers.

1.    Can you tell us about the process of authoring this publication?
My job was really to figure out each student’s story. It’s interesting to hear about processes. My favourite part of the process was trawling through the minute details of what went into each artwork because the artists had usually tried so many ideas before they landed on something that worked.

When you’re writing about these processes, you really need to hang them off a story. I needed to figure out what each artist wanted – their motivation -– and show how the quest to make an ideal artwork was really a quest to answer some deeper, more personal question. It helped that the artists were so articulate about why they were making this art; they’d clearly spent a tonne of time hunting around within themselves.

2.    What surprised you about the students’ work?
I wasn’t surprised by the depth of engagement or the variety of the ideas I encountered – teenagers are brilliant thinkers, which we know. What absolutely blew me out of the water was the advanced SKILL on display, the raw technical firepower. Since when can people paint like that before they’re 50? It’s criminal.

3.    Do you have a favourite work of art in the publication? Which artists do you think are worth keeping an eye on?
My personal favourite was Michelle Zhong, because I have a soft spot for line drawings. At The Lifted Brow, where I was Editor and Publisher for five years and nowadays am Art Editor, most of my job involves commissioning line art – so I see a lot of great stuff, but a lot of average stuff too.

Michelle has a great philosophy underpinning her practice; ultimately, she just wants to entertain herself with whatever she draws. Somehow the free play has led her to create these incredibly rigorous works, with lots of little motifs – like a personal mythology – strung through.

4.    Do you have any advice for students who wish to become writers?
There’s only so much you can teach someone who isn’t writing every day – it has to be regular and you have to be producing a lot of it. You get a better grip on sentences the more you use them. Raw experience is the most important thing.

The Top Arts 2013 publication is available in the NGV Shop for $19.95
Visit the Top Arts 2013 exhibition page for more information.

Being the Tops Arts 2013 intern was a really valuable learning experience. Not only did I gain indispensable skills and experience for my future career but I also go to encounter what goes on behind the scenes at the Gallery. I was given tours of sections of the Gallery I never knew existed – the labyrinth of departments downstairs, the curatorial department with its treasure trove of art books and our office where I had my own desk. A highlight was seeing the conservation department where I was shown a recently restored triptych by Rogier van de Weyden and taught about the conservation process.

Tops Arts 2013 was a great exhibition to work on because there is always a wide variety of artistic talent on display, including photographs, paintings, drawings and installations. It was lovely to meet many of the artists who were exhibiting as they were just as excited as I was to be involved. I am very grateful to Jess, Erin, Jemma and Liz for being so kind, helpful and entertaining as well as the Gallery for giving me the fabulous opportunity. I already miss walking through the Great Hall each morning on the way to the office.

Enter exhibition design.  In an attempt to visually unify the exhibition, design techniques are employed in simple ways.  Incorporating one colour (the bright orange from the Dulux Enviro range – Fiery Glow) and one logo from the catalogue cover, to media and advertising, to children’s labels and feature wall colours, this technique aims to establish the exhibition contextually.

Drawing on themes of the hand-made, a bright orange string line travels along the gallery perimeter.  Appearing as a hand-drawn line that travels throughout the exhibition, defining the various gallery spaces as all part of the one exhibition without relying on signage, and highlighting themes of individual craftsmanship and the personal narratives of the artists.  The logo on the title-wall is also made out of this string (common builders string bought from a hardware store) and provides a cohesion to the design of the exhibition.

Finally, in an attempt to engage one of our primary audience groups for this exhibition – students, both in person in the gallery and with our online content, a competition encouraging students to photograph themselves in the space was created.  The design for this involved graphic designer Connor Bryt who designed the logo and masthead for the exhibition, marketing who created the facebook page for it and exhibition design who designed the poster inside the gallery space on the title-wall and in fact, designed the entire title-wall with this specifically in mind.

For more photos of the exhibition space visit the Top Arts Hub

Art was pretty important to me in Year 12, I enjoyed that subject the most, I always have. It was also good for my life outside of school, having to focus on one thing when I’m usually so chaotic!

I spend a bit of time on trams and I find it really, really curious – it’s kind of a different world in there, where people isolate themselves from each other. I find it very strange. And it’s quite a curious thing, that all these people from different walks of life are crammed into one space, yet there’s little to no interaction. I thought it would be a really interesting subject to delve into, and have a bit of fun with that. So I kind of experimented around sketching on trams, and I incorporated painting. I decided I wanted to do a portrait, and then went from there.

Melburnians were my inspiration. I’m from New Zealand originally, but I’ve been here for the last four years. I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands – wood carving and stuff – so I wanted to incorporate that a bit. I suppose you could say that I took a little bit out of Impressionism and stuff, building up and taking out the paint.

Art is definitely something that I want to pursue. I’m off to Paris in a couple of months for a year. I’ve got a children’s book that I want to finish off, I’ve a whole lot of little paintings. It’s about a florist and a robot, and it’s a bit of a play on the curiosities of one observing the frailty of life, and the other just curious about how a machine can relate and feel. I’m also hoping to have an exhibition over there, I’d like to do a lot of painting. I’m just going to go and live there for a while – I think it will be really inspirational for me to be in a completely different environment. After that, I’d like to go on to do a Bachelor of Fine Arts, most likely in Melbourne.

It’s amazing to be exhibited in Top Arts 2012. I have visited the exhibition a couple of times and the calibre of work is pretty high. I didn’t even start the school year thinking that I’d apply for Top Arts 2012. But to get the opportunity to even submit my work and get into it, it’s just incredible – one, that I can exhibit my art to the public; and two, the fact that is going to look great when I apply for universities. And I’m going to be down the hall from some incredible artists!

See Monique’s work in Top Arts 2012 at NGV Australia until 15 July 2012.

Studio Arts probably was my outlet subject. I did physics and maths and stuff, so they were like the total opposite. It ended up being recreation sometimes – I didn’t have to think on the same level and felt more free.

The meaning and direction of my work weren’t as important to me as exploring how to express myself. At the start of the year, I was basically unable to paint. I mean, I could paint – I had tone and line, but using colour remained for experimentation. I was interested in Surrealism, but choosing portraiture gave me a focus, because I didn’t have any, I felt totally lost. With portraiture, I took elements of style – style was the main focus, I needed to develop my own distinctive style. Trying to express people’s inner feelings secondary. I thought initially I’d be doing Surrealist sort of work, but it turned out more Expressionistic. I got into Fauvism a little bit – Matisse and Marc Chagall – that’s where I got my colour theory from. I didn’t directly study and borrow it, but it was an influence. And that came out not in the initial figure and chair, but in the background, that sort of abstraction.

It was interesting, because I was painting three works – I get bored easily, so I would change between them. What happened was I painted the figure in and I did the more realistic part of the work, and had the background, and it seemed the piece was lacking something. I’d been working on the one of my grandpa Ted (it’s in my folio but it won’t be shown in the exhibition) which is a really expressionistic piece, the whole idea and theme there is colour, colour as an expression of life. Because he’s an old man and the way I painted it is so vibrant it just pulls him out, gets him moving. I came back to the portrait of my Dad after exploring all that. It’s interesting, because even though you explore throughout the year, you explore a lot through the actual making of that last piece. I guess I realised that I had a little something else to add, I found that in making a different work that I could use the new abilities I found from the previous work.

I want to study a creative discipline. I currently don’t have a space like a studio to paint properly, so I’ve had to put painting on hold. I do draw quite a bit, and I’ve enrolled to study architecture at Monash Caulfield.

Being exhibited in Top Arts 2012 tells me that I have something slightly different. There’s lots of work that gets in that is of a really high standard, but I really tried the whole year to find a bit more of my own personal flavour, and I think that sort of differentiates me from the rest.

See Tim’s work in Top Arts 2012 at NGV Australia until 15 July 2012.

For Art, I started out with the theme of ‘dreams and imagination.’ I was really lost – I had no idea what I was doing, so I just picked that theme even though I didn’t really like it. Then my teacher showed me some paper art and I thought it was really cool, so I developed some paper ideas. I had worked with paper before, but not like this – not replicating things. I initially made altered books, little miniature worlds out of books with paper. I’d have a book, and then I’d make a little couch and coffee table, furniture and that sort of thing. But I didn’t think it conveyed my message of ‘dreams and imagination.’ I’m not really sure how it started, but one day in class I just made a paper pen that I thought was cool, and I just went from there.

My worked ended up being a bit of everything: exploring what people have in their bags, how they relate to things – you know, everyone has an iPhone, but mine is personal to me. I was interested in how people personalise their everyday objects. Some of the bags were ones I made up – I’d make up a character and picture what they would bring with them. Some of the others… well, I did empty my Mum’s bag and see what she had in it!

I’ve always loved art, drawing and making things, but I think my passion is fashion design. This year, I’ll be doing fashion design at RMIT.

Every year, Mentone Girls’ does an excursion to Top Arts, so I’ve been a few times. Last year, me and my friend looked at the works and were just blown away by how much effort went into them. We thought to ourselves, ‘We can’t do that, it’s impossible!’ To think that I actually did it is pretty incredible.

See Jade’s work in Top Arts 2012 at NGV Australia open until 15 July 2012.