In 2013, conscious of the number of artists coming out of art schools uneasy about navigating the intricacies of the commercial and the wider art worlds, the Artereal Gallery Mentorship Award was inaugurated in association with Sydney College of the Arts {SCA] – then conveniently located a few hundred metres from the gallery on the picturesque Callan Park heritage site.

The year-long mentorship, granted annually to an outstanding Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) student, provided monthly counselling with members of the Artereal team, sharing information and discussion around development of artistic practice, exhibition opportunities, art prizes, residencies, pricing and presentation of works and artist profiling. Selected students could also be offered an exhibition in the Artereal Gallery Project Space enabling working with the artist on aspects of time management, budget, photography and documentation required of staging an exhibition.

“Mentoring is a reciprocal process and innately rewarding” 

– Barbara Dowse

Prominent among the talented Mentees are photo-media artists Emily Sandrussi and Kai Wasikowski and sculptor Patrizia Biondi. All three ultimately being offered either a solo exhibition or representation with Artereal.

Emily came to notice for her graduation work, Domino Theory, a poignant ‘memento mori’ created from an archive of photographic negatives taken by the artist’s stepfather during service as a conscript in the Vietnam War1962-75. The unseen negatives were found decades on when he died. The artist created a suite of digital scans from the undeveloped negatives, incorporating the spontaneous corruptions in the digital processing. Further exploiting the processing glitches and retaining the disparate organic marks of dust, scratches and fingerprints.  Acknowledging the conditions and difficult transit from a war zone, the imprint of time and a family of hands. The glitches are symbolic of breakdown and decay; the war a horrific glitch in her stepfather’s life, an event that permanently severed the boy he then was.

Kai Wasikowski also takes an experimental and innovative approach to photo-media subjects and presentation. He combines his prodigiously accomplished photographic skills with his reverence for the natural environment, conscious of the ecosystem’s fragility, while subversively integrating the unexpected.

An approach evident in his Hold series. An enthusiastic climber, he has overlaid grips used on indoor climbing walls with fragmented mountain-scapes. The images produced using a hydro dipping method where the image is transferred from film on the water’s surface onto an object submerged in the water container.

Sculptor Patrizia Biondi’s philosophy and works rail against material accumulation generated by our throw-away consumerist society and fuelled by global economics. Her sculptures metabolise the found and recovered detritus, the leftovers, the scraps, the obsolescent remnants from industry, e-commerce, home, agriculture and office; products from all aspects of everyday existence and outcomes of questionable governmental, commercial and environmental ethics.

Mentoring is a reciprocal process and innately rewarding. We greatly value the access, time spent and relationships developed with the Award recipients. They too have expressed their gratitude and appreciation for the nurturing, the ‘insider’ information and preparedness they gained from the mentoring program. We also greatly appreciate the invaluable cooperation over the years of SCA Deans, currently Andrew Lavery, who, serendipitously is an Artereal artist, and the SCA Gallery staff, led by Liam Garstang.

After 19 years, Artereal Gallery closed in March 2025. This article is part of the gallery’s ‘On Reflection’ series of essays.