IB VISUAL ARTS 2023

Amelie Mentiplay

In my exhibition I am exploring the concept of Transport (Public Transport) and the liminal time spent between two locations. I wanted to capture three main aspects of transport being: connectivity, protection and community. These ideas are linked through the presence of modes of Public Transport throughout my exhibition and a coherent colour scheme drawn from the colour representing PTV (Orange: Bus, Blue: Train, Green: Tram). The style of each artwork also remains simple and minimalistic emulating the PTV app and advertisements to solidify the consistent link to public transport.

My motivation for creating an exhibition surrounding public transport was developed from my consistent use since a young age. I have many memories of catching public transport as a child and as I grew older it began to represent my independence, reducing my reliance on my parents for transportation. PTV was also integral to my knowledge of where I lived and how to get around local geography, knowing most of my tram, train and bus routes by heart and using them as signposts to what suburb I’m in or which suburb is the next along.

Artists that inspired my artworks are Jenny Watson and Howard Arkley for their representations of urban Melbourne and the suburbs. I really admired their use of colour and depictions particularly of houses as their subject matter. Edward Hopper’s artworks also heavily inspired the energy and sense of quiet in my artworks. I was really drawn into his compositions and their intimate depiction of a moment in time and as a result tried to emulate similar qualities in my artworks.

My artworks were influenced by the idea of liminal time and the three main concepts. Working with the exhibition space provided I wanted my exhibition to appear in a circular nature, as it’s experienced it feels like a journey itself. This is evident through two artworks. The centre is a painting named ‘Home’. It is the direct centre of my exhibition and the largest artwork, conceptually it is about always leaving and returning to one place, being home. The second directly connects and is called ‘Leaving-Arriving’. This is a video based on my doorbell camera for several months which depicts me coming and going from my house in video. I made my exhibition interactive for the audience through Looking through a Window where they must peer through a cut out train window to view the works, physically drawing them into my exhibition.

The rest of my exhibition explores liminal time spent inside of public transport, only two other paintings occurring from a perspective outside of PT, one being a map, and the other from right outside a train. Protection and community are often interlinked ‘Crowded community’ and ‘People we meet’ are both directly interacting with the idea of community of Public Transport and the new environment people are put in when they enter the liminal state in transport. This is connected directly to ‘Snippets in time’ and ‘Looking through a Window’ which explore the superficial and fleeting, yet insightful impressions of people and their lives that are only obtainable inside of the liminal space of Public Transport. All of my artworks have similar aesthetic qualities of busyness, togetherness and yet, solitude. They all involve blues, reds, yellows and pastels making the exhibition overall cohesive and binding the different mediums together, consistent with my illustrative style.

I have used oil paint, acrylic, made one paper-based collage artwork, one illustration using pen and a video. I chose oil paints as my primary medium because I enjoy the results and quality of oil paints and made use of the longer drying time to add details after painting the base colours. I made one acrylic painting because it was a very simple design and decreased the amount of time I needed to make the artwork, also making it have a matte quality which suited the idea of the flat map. The collage was influenced by the clean simplicity I could achieve through cleanly cut paper and the repetition and pattern of the same colour pallet and simple style as my paintings.