‘Everyday objects are given new meaning’: Meet VCA graduating artist Rachel Rovira

Rachel Rovira is a graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts student at the VCA. Rachel’s work uncovers the harm of extractivism through her own experiences undertaking fieldwork.

Hi Rachel, could you introduce yourself and your work in the VCA Art Grad Show?

I’m graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing and Printmaking. In my work for the VCA Grad show, I'm responding to an embodied encounter with an active quarry located in Melbourne’s south-east. Situated on Boonwurrung land, it produces most of the hard rock aggregate used by Melbourne’s building and construction industries. In tracing the material histories of extraction from the urban environment to the quarry, my aim is to draw hidden agents and forces of extractivism to the surface.

What inspired your creative practice this year?

I would say that my greatest inspiration in my creative process has been the works of W. G. Sebald – in particular, The Rings of Saturn. He constructs beautifully crafted narratives around places which feel left behind by the passage of history, intermittently punctuated with black and white images which do not bare any obvious connection to the words that surround them.

Reading his works earlier this year became a strong motivator for exploring sites of abandonment in my own practice. The freedoms of walking – with the attendant pleasures of pausing, ruminating, peering, questioning, imagining and narrating – have become an important part of my creative process.

How does fieldwork inform your practice?

My resolved work emerged through the act of doing fieldwork – through the perceptions and understanding generated through the experience of being in place. The fieldwork methodology involves lengthy, intimate encounters with places and things and being exposed to its rich portfolio of ineffable material impacts. Applied to the chaotic and messy legacy of resource extraction, this perspective allows for a closer understanding of our continuing role in, and complicity to, the violent legacies of resource extraction.

How has your practice evolved during your studies?

I think my practice has been a slow progression from artmaking informed by broad ideas and concepts towards an art practice informed by the stories and histories embedded in landscapes. I came to realise that the most effective way to explore issues which pose an existential threat to our world is by locating it in the local, in the personal.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to study Drawing and Printmaking at the VCA?

Let the mistakes guide and grow you. Try to welcome criticism and seek feedback from as many different people as possible. Some of the most productive feedback I’ve received has been from people who are completely removed from the world of visual arts.

From your perspective, why is art important in today’s world?

Art has the unique capacity to reframe and re-orient our understanding of the world. The gallery space is a site of speculation where everyday objects are given new meaning and congruences. I think that the imaginative processes at play when encountering art can engender imaginative re-thinkings towards a better future.

You can view Rachel’s work at the 2024 VCA Art Grad Show on display from 22–28 November at the University of Melbourne Southbank campus. Open between 11am–5pm daily. Plan your visit.

Discover the Bachelor of Fine Art (Visual Art) at the University of Melbourne.