In Conversation with Prof David Cross and artists Elyse de Valle and Rob McHaffie

11 May 2017, 6-7.30pm

Deakin University Art Gallery, Burwood Campus (Building FA, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood VIC 3125)

Please join us for another exciting In Conversation with ‘Unproductive Thinking’ artists Elyse de Valle & Rob McHaffie and Professor David Cross, Deakin Faculty of Arts and Education. The artists will discuss the ideas explored in works currently on display at the Deakin Art Gallery, and the ways they deal with the ever increasing pressures to transform, improve and ‘optimise’ both themselves and their practice.

‘Unproductive Thinking’ exhibition features moving images, drawing, photographic, ceramic, sculptural and painting based artworks by an inter-generational group of Australian artists at different stages in their artistic lives and careers. The subject of their works range from inner dialogues and negativity, to feelings of exhaustion and worthlessness, the unconscious and working with others.

Refreshments provided.

Teachers who register via the AEV website, will receive a PD certificate of attendance complete with the APST standards.

Elyse de Valle

Elyse de Valle is an emerging artist who utilises materials and site to express the conceptual concerns of her practice. De Valle’s work explores little known narratives that permit her contemplation of creative labour, memories, loss and experience. It is often a pursuit to trace and respond to social history, reflecting on how memory is encoded directly and indirectly within the built form.

Elyse de Valle completed a Bachelor of Fine Art with First Class Honors in 2012 and a Masters of Fine Art in 2015 at Monash University. She worked at the National Gallery of Victoria and currently works at Museums Victoria and from her studio at Artery Cooperative. De Valle has held numerous shows around Melbourne as well as undertaking residencies in Carrara and Noepoli, Italy and San Francisco, USA.

Rob McHaffie

Rob McHaffie was born in Melbourne in 1978 and currently lives and works in Melbourne. He works in painting, watercolour and ceramics, contriving collaged subjects from porcelain models and magazine cut-outs into the confessions and social observations which have come to characterise his practice. Humour and pathos intertwine in Rob McHaffie’s piercing observations of humanity. His paintings offer up images of everyday life and often explore a folk sensibility.

McHaffie has recently held solo exhibitions at Art Basel Hong Kong with Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, Australia and Brett McDowell Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand. He is a recent winner of the Geelong Contemporary Art Prize and finalist in the Basil Sellers Art Prize at the Ian Potter Museum of Art (2014) and the Doug Moran Portrait Prize, Sydney 2013.