My imagined world revolves around the concepts of love, connection and self discovery. After 20 odd years, I have found that most humans want to be seen, heard and most importantly loved. These are some elements that most human beings often strive for, long for, yearn for. From my viewpoints, I believe that love, warmth, laughter and many other positive essences of life can be found within. 
I feel like there always has to be some kind of concepts or themes that run through all kinds of work of art. In many ways, looking from my personal point of view, those concepts or themes are just like mirrors that constantly reflect social, political and cultural issues of the world which we all inhabit. I want to create a work of art that will solely reflect a sense of chaos and confusion.In order to depict our social situation at this present age, I feel like this is the trap that all of us fall into. I feel like the world nowadays is all about mass consumption, wealth and power. All I can see really is just chaos and confusion. No one on earth can bring their wealth and power with them once they depart from this world. For my future project, this is a theme I plan to portray through my creative work.
What I aim to accomplish in my major project is to reflect upon the idea of self-discovery. A transsexual woman and various flamboyant elements are the metaphors for selfhood in my works. I want the viewers to be able to comprehend with the notion of what we see on the outside could potentially be someone’s identity on the inside. In the case of depiction of this male androgyny, the elegance clothes, a heavy make-up, a blonde wigs are crucial elements that shape the identity of this trans woman. And this is the concept that I want to get across to the viewers.
My name is Pirada Kuanpoth. Ever since I was a child I had always felt like I was a different from everybody else . I didn’t have any friends at all until I got into university. But I have always loved making art. It’s the best form of communication between myself and the world around me. It’s my passion. I feel happy whenever I get a chance to do something creative.
Personally, I believe that art is purely about self-expression. Most of the time when I create any forms of art, there’s no legitimate reason behind it. With these particular series of works, they have nothing to do with my major project at all whatsoever. They reveal my perception of the world at the time I was creating them. I like the use of heavy marks, distinctive lines and shapes. Abstraction is certainly an area I want to expand further.
Tyza Stewart is a visual artist who explores gender identity through an art practice based in continual self-portraiture. Tyza uses documentation and memories from their own childhood as well as more current experiences to inform an interrogation of understandings of normality in relation to gender. Resulting self-portraits depict ambiguously gendered selves that publicly fail to conform to gender norms as the works are exhibited. By both resisting and engaging with popular understandings of transsexual narratives, Tyza highlights some alternatives to the strict binary understandings of gender that constantly proliferate within our society.
Tyza is a recent Honors graduate of the Queensland College of Art and is currently represented by Heiser Gallery, Brisbane. Tyza’s work has appeared in numerous exhibitions in Australia, including 15 artists at Redcliffe Art Gallery, The Churchie at Griffith University Art Gallery, Brisbane, Breakthrough, Gympie Regional Art Gallery, Interstate Romance at Pseudo Space, Sydney and BEAF 2013 at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, Brisbane.
On the last two days, Jess and I got to work with Louise again. This time we were feeling extremely excited because we got to delicately handle large paintings in the massive store room. Our task on the last two days involved recording the titles of the paintings, the artists’ names and the paintings’ locations in the store room. It was a very technical task. Basically, the purpose of it had to do with the gallery’s collection database which solely dealt with managing the locations of the artworks. Before we commenced our task, Louise printed out three contact sheets which had mini photographs of all the paintings inside the store room. Thus, we then had to use those sheets as our guide and look for tags which were attached to each painting. Those tags must have had all of the information/details about each painting. All we had to do was write down those details. Eventually, it took an entire day for Jess and I to go through all of the paintings in that store room. While we were recording the details and information about the paintings, we came across many works by well-known artists such as Leonie Watson, Tony Tuckson etc. We got see the works that were just magnificent and so powerful. There were so many extraordinary paintings which I never thought that I would ever get to see. And on the last day, I had to take photographs of all the paintings in the store room and worked with the collection of loaned artworks. Overall, all I could say was that the experiences of volunteering were so great and so rewarding and it was something that I could never forget.
This artwork is part of the current major project that I’ve working on. I used blonde wigs as the most crucial elements in this work. My main aim of this particular piece of art is to portray the idea of androgyny and flamboyance. This concept ties in with my three paintings. My essential focus of this project is to embrace male transgressive androgyny which is something that has always been viewed as a rebellious accessory in modern pop culture.
As part of my major works project, I have been creating a series of paintings which focus upon the subject of transsexuals and post-gender imagery. However, with this particular piece of work, I started off by painting a tiny portrait of Rayon. Then, I intentionally painted a larger size version of her right on top of the smaller painting which ended up creating a translucent effect. Though, I am quite happy with how it turned out but I feel like the background of this painting needs more work.
I have learned more skills through working with other people and benefit from their experience. Doing work placement at the Wollongong City Gallery has equipped me with many useful skills. For example, I learned how to work as a team and my communication skills have been improving tremendously. Not only that I tend to have more understanding in terms of how the organisation works but at the same time, I got a chance to develop my own confidence and ability to work with others.
CAVA 361 Curatorial Practice Assessment (15%) 