University of Tasmania, Australia

Exhibition opening: 5.30 - 7pm Friday 16 March 2012

Guest speaker: Professor Marie Sierra, Head of School of Visual and Performing Arts, University of Tasmania

Exhibition artist: Mae Finlayson

Special Artist Talk: 5pm Friday 16 March 2012

Exhibition dates: 16 March – 27 April 2012

Woolly blankets, romance novels and gold plastic trophies are some of the materials Mae Finlayson works with to underscore our compulsion as humans to celebrate life with markers of mild achievement.

In this exhibition the magnification of inconsequential hierarchies, humdrum competition and hokey relationship gender roles are explored through the appropriation of mundane realities of everyday life. The intervention and representation of pre existing objects and imagery is not intended to abandon the objects original purpose (which is to make us feel better) but to aggrandise this; to make us feel much, much, MUCH better; to inflate our self-congratulation to unrealistic proportions.

Mae Finlayson is a Melbourne born visual artist who recently returned home to Australia after living in the UK for 15 years. She has a 1st class BA(Hons) from Goldsmiths, University of London and a Master of Constructed Textiles – Mixed Media from the Royal College of Art. For a number of years Mae worked from her East London studio producing commissioned works and free-lanced as a creative consultant. She now resides and works in Launceston and teaches contemporary textiles and visual art at the University of Tasmania.

It’s a good time okay is presented as part of the Academy Gallery Ignition exhibition program. Ignition aims to assist with the greater awareness and understanding of the artwork created by Tasmanian emerging artists, designers and craftspeople.