Nyoka Evans

Untitled 2023
video with sound, duration: 8:50 mins
Matthew Flinders Girls Secondary College, VCE Media

Weightlessness 2023
colour pencil and watercolour on paper, cotton
Matthew Flinders Girls Secondary College, VCE Art Creative Practice

 Untitled statement:

Untitled is a short film heavily characterised by the Australian landscape, the coastal bush and the ocean. The film explores our connection to the Australian landscape, and themes surrounding belonging, adventure and a sense of time. The story follows a young girl as she travels from Geelong to the Bellarine Peninsula for a surf one afternoon in the middle of winter. I wanted the story to feel like a magical place, somewhere unknown, remote, far south. Like a secret that only she and the audience knows. I wanted the landscape to appear beautifully untamed and wild.

Weightlessness statement:

The ocean has been a very important part of my childhood and teenager years. My artwork Weightlessness is primarily a reflection of the joy I have found in the ocean. This installation features some abstracted and loose interpretations of oceanic scenes, shapes and colours, and other representational illustrations of local marine life. Using a range of colours and techniques, I aim to celebrate the biodiversity of the ocean, its sense of beauty and its raw strength and irrepressible wilderness.

The individual illustrations have been machine sewn and attached to hanging strings that drift and rotate in the natural breeze, emulating the gentle, swaying currents of the ocean. The weightlessness of the paper and the fine thread reflect the delicate and sacred nature of the ocean, particularly the local reef system of the Great Southern Reef.