Inseparable, a painting by Katie Martin of Bulli High School was chosen for ARTEXPRESS 2025. Photo: Robert Edwards.
An Illawarra art student’s HSC assessment piece – an ode to the significance of high school friendships – has been selected for a major annual exhibition of emerging student artists’ works.
Bulli High School’s Katherine (Katie) Martin made the cut for the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ ARTEXPRESS 2025, for her group of paintings titled Inseparable.
Billed as a love letter to her closest school friends, the series depicts three friends – Ava, Grace and artist Katie – captured in their school uniforms in three expressive and candid moments.
Katie says there’s no more to it than that.
“There’s was no deep conceptual meaning behind the paintings; I just love painting my friends, because they make me happy,” she says.
“My best friend, Grace, I have known her since Year 8 and hadn’t done an artwork about her yet. I wanted to save that for my final piece, so I came up with this.
“I wanted to capture the fun of our friendship, how we got along and how much we loved each other.”
But it doesn’t take much prodding to reveal the profound significance of these picture-perfect pals.
Katie says in the formative years of high school, when many parents are (often involuntarily) relegated to a spectator role, a person’s friendships can become their greatest influence, and sometimes a safety net.
“My friends were the only thing keeping me going at times,” she says. “High school can be tough; you have to find your ‘people’. My friends perhaps weren’t considered the most ‘popular’ kids at school, and I couldn’t care less – they were the people I wanted to spend my time with.”
Katie, who this year starts a Bachelor of Creative Visual Arts at the University of Wollongong and hopes one day to get into art teaching or curatorship, says the inclusion in ARTEXPRESS is a great honour.
ARTEXPRESS is the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ annual showcase of outstanding student artworks developed for the art-making component of the HSC examination in visual arts each year.
This year’s features 50 works from 2024, selected from 8858 submissions, by students from government and non-government schools in regional, remote and metropolitan areas, affirming the strength of visual arts education across the state.
The always highly anticipated exhibition offers a window into topics concerning young Australians including identity, cultural heritage, the high school experience, as well as social and political issues such as immigration, class and the environment.
Student artists work across 12 diverse expressive forms: ceramics, collection of works, designed objects, documented forms, drawing, graphic design, painting, photomedia, printmaking, sculpture, textiles and fibre and time-based forms.
Many former ARTEXPRESS exhibitors have gone on to establish successful artistic careers, including Simone Douglas (1983), Ben Quilty (1991), David Griggs (1994), Julie Fragar (1995), Jasper Knight (1997), Tom Polo (2002), Bhenji Ra (2009) and Louise Zhang (2009).
ARTEXPRESS 2025 takes place at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, kicking off with a preview on Wednesday 5 February from 6 pm and running from Thursday 6 February to Sunday 27 April.
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