The dustcovers will be ripped off some of 2009's most outrageous and colourful art in Otago on Saturday.
The annual Otago Polytechnic School of Art "Site09" exhibition showcases images, objects and installations by final-year students in the art school's eight disciplines - ceramics, digital and moving imagery, jewellery and metalsmithing, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture and textiles.
The school was established in 1870 and is New Zealand's oldest art school.
Some of the country's greatest artists have passed through its doors, including Frances Hodgkins, Colin McCahon and Ralph Hotere.
But "Site" is all about the new kids on the block.
Previous exhibitions have included inflatable whares, vinyl rocket ships, jewellery constructed of salt and even a photographic essay on Waihola residents.
"'Site09' reflects cross-disciplinary energy in the Dunedin School of Art," school head Prof Leoni Schmidt says.
"Many works combine materials and methodologies from different disciplines - all of them supported by art history and theory. This can only happen where these disciplines exist in the first instance.
"Their existence is especially important at a time in the history of the school when it is consciously restating the value of distinct disciplines and synergies between them, as opposed to a more generic visual arts education.
"Student hands-on thinking through materials is also evident, as is their involvement with socio-political issues.
"Our students have an important role in the world through their criticality and through their in-depth engagement with the world we live in.
"They refuse the obvious and the vacuous and provide a model for being energetically and reflectively engaged with issues which impact on our communities."
The projects are the culmination of a year's work and the students also have to justify their work in a 5000-word research paper.
Many use their projects to explore personal experiences and interests.
Textile artist Tenille Lategan has created a life-sized padded cell to highlight depression and mental illness.
Lategan has suffered from depression in the past and says fostering an open and honest dialogue about mental illness is a major aim of her work as an artist.
"It still seems to be a really closed topic here in New Zealand. I'm trying to generate an awareness about mental illness; what it must be like to suffer from it and, in particular, what it must be like for people who come out of an institutional setting and have to re-enter society."
The project had been a therapeutic process, she said.
"It has actually given me a lot of closure."
Painting student Emma Chalmers has explored female roles and fantasy.
"'(M)other' is a body of paintings that explore the ethereal relationships between the roles of mothers, children and toys, by engaging with the way classical fairy tales have shaped women's roles," she says.
"I am interested in the often contradictory roles women have in fairy tales, as they are frequently caught between the expectation to instruct correct social roles and entertain at the same time."
Electronic arts student Shelley Harding explores virtual space in "Suspended Animation: Between Myself and Another: An Exploration of Transcendence and Embodied Virtuality".
"Through an exploration of virtual space I have become interested in the nature of embodied virtuality and the impact of such interactions on our physical and emotional lives.
"Occupying virtual space inevitably requires an adjusting and re-forming of the structures of space, movement and time.
"Essentially virtual worlds can allow a user to transcend some barriers and borders that are less flexible outside of the virtual realm."
Jewellery student Kate Butler has used pearls to connect with her female ancestors.
"Pearls evoke for me an image of the pearl necklace worn by my great-grandmother and inherited from an aunt and plastic is suggestive of my own place in time.
"I see past, present and future as a continuum - a seamless blending from one to the other.
"There is an interconnectedness in all things that we sometimes lose track of in this day and age and there is something about the nature of family relationships that provides us with a sense of belonging."
Sculptor Rohana Weaver has combined her passion for performance art, music and the art-making process.
"I've always made art and the choice of whether or not to do this degree really came down to the fact that I didn't want to work in hotels or as a waitress for the rest of my life.
"With this qualification I can always teach, but what I really want to do is work in the film industry making props and costumes."
Printmaker Marion Wassenaar looks at recycling and reincarnation.
She has transformed fallen roadside apples into jelly, old newspapers into woven bags and paint scraped from old steel into an artwork.
"It might be extreme recycling, but the results are anything but rubbish. Rather, it's art," she says.
"Life, like art, is as much about the journey as the destination."
See it
"Site09" is open from 10am to 4pm on Saturday. The exhibition then runs from Monday to Thursday from midday to 4pm.
