Josie Cavallaro

Born 1973, Sydney
Bachelor of Arts, Fine Arts (Hons)
Graduation show: 1994
Graduation ceremony: 1995, 1998 (Hons)

Artwork in Space YZ

On a Wall Somewhere in Sydney, 1999
Digital print
42 x 59 cm

This work was created on return to Sydney from spending the majority of my UWS Honours year on exchange in Thailand. I was keen to re-connect with the city by creating simple interventions. Consider it a warm-up for re-entry into the local art community. While in Thailand, I became interested in Nang Yai, a form of traditional shadow puppetry that used the body of the performer to motion shadow puppets made from large pieces of buffalo hide. I exchanged leather for felt and experimented with notions of shadow-play in public space.

I grew up in Penrith. On finishing high school in 1991 I applied to study visual arts at my local university. The year I commenced at UWS was the first year that the faculty operated at Z block at the back-end of the Nepean campus. The vastness of the new facility filled me with both trepidation and possibility. Even as a student, object making and installation was the touchstone of my art practice. The expansive dry landscape of the Nepean campus enabled a mindset for creating work outside of the studio/gallery and on a seemingly uncontained scale. For years, I contemplated creating projects in response to the decommissioned drive-in cinema owned by the university and located between the Nepean and Werrington campuses.

My degree sat within the Faculty of Visual and Performing Arts, which also offered degrees in Design and Theatre. In principle, this provided students with the opportunity to work across arts disciplines. Tinkering in performance, I was eager to be exposed to performance making with actors within a theatre context. I crossed-over to the theatre department (Theatre Nepean) and welcomed a different approach to making and evaluating performance. I was acutely aware that this opportunity was unique to this university at the time.

In my final undergraduate year, I was awarded an opportunity to study at Silpakorn University, Thailand. Ceramics lecturer Jacqueline Clayton secured a Keating Government grant that encouraged university exchange within the Asia Pacific Region. My fellow students that I recall on this trip were Monica Borg, Darryl Brown, Rebecca Dowling and Wayne Mow. I was so blown-away by this experience that in the two-years that followed, I worked a day-job and studied Thai language at night. The aim was to save enough money to return to do my honours year at UWS with a portion of the degree on exchange in Thailand. I achieved this and formed some great relationships with the art community in Bangkok. This included the wonderful late Montien Boonma, who ushered me into my very first solo exhibition.

However my exposure to artists and art-making from diverse cultures had its genesis in Z block. A cohort of lecturers, namely Jacqueline Clayton, Noelene Lucas and Joan Grounds, shared their passion for cultural exchange as both artists and educators. This included the opportunity to meet a stream of international artists that presented differing world-views on art making and creative communities that has influenced how I engage, facilitate and make art today.