LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- Analyse and interpret themes, concepts and ideas in Mia Boe’s work and discuss how she uses materials and techniques to realise her intentions.
- Apply the art elements and principles to an interpretation of Boe’s work.
- Examine Boe’s work through the Interpretative Lenses and discuss the use of collaboration in her practice.
- Identify and analyse the presentation of Boe’s work in Melbourne Now.
INTRODUCTION TO MIA BOE AND MELBOURNE NOW
Mia Boe is a Melbourne-based painter from Brisbane with Butchulla and Burmese ancestry. Her work is influenced by the inheritance and ‘disinheritance’ of these two cultures, often responding to Empire’s deliberate and violent interferences with the cultural heritages of Burma/Myanmar and K’gari (Fraser Island).
The exhibition Melbourne Now runs from March 24th to August 20th, 2023 and celebrates new and ambitious local art and design. It highlights the extraordinary work of more than 200 Victorian-based artists, designers, studios and firms and includes a range of disciplines, from fashion and jewellery to painting, sculpture, architecture, ceramics, video, performance, printmaking and publishing.
For the exhibition, the NGV commissioned Boe to create a new work: For the angels in paradise, 2023. As she tells us in the video series, ‘the works that I have made look at the contemporary relationships between First Nations People and the police and the justice system in Australia’. The work includes nine paintings and a mural, making it her largest installation to date.
INTRODUCTION TO MIA BOE VIDEOS
In the following six videos, Boe discusses her early years, including her first gallery experiences as well as the artists who have inspired her career and helped shape her practice. Boe also discusses her use of materials, techniques and processes and how she represents ideas and communicates meaning in her work. These videos can be viewed sequentially or individually and incorporated into the classroom.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- Outline the main themes and ideas in Boe’s work. What ideas does Boe want to communicate?
- Consider Boe’s creative practice. What materials and techniques does she use and how do they represent her ideas and achieve a particular style in her artworks?
- Consider the Interpretive Lenses in an analysis of Boe’s work. How might you interpret her work through the Personal or Cultural Lens?
- In Materials, Techniques and Processes, Boe tells us; ‘A lot of my canvases have about four layers of paint, of ideas’. Later adding; ‘I quite like that process of layering paint, and I find then my paintings have these sort of ghost layers behind it that you can see peeks of’. How might these ‘ghost layers’ contribute to our understanding of the meanings and messages in her work?
- Discuss Boe’s use of the art elements (such as colour, line, shape, form, tone and texture) and principles (like contrast, proportion, space and scale). How has this contributed to the distinctive aesthetic qualities in her artworks?
- What role does Boe hope the artworks might play in society? What impact do you think they might have on society?
- What have you learned from Mia Boe’s art practice that you might apply to your own creative practice?