Ilona Jetmar, PhD, AFHEA
Ilona Jetmar is an Australian artist and academic with a multi-disciplinary approach to her studio practice. Completing her practice-led PhD in 2019, Ilona continues to teach in the School of Communication & Creative Arts at Deakin University. Ilona’s research interests include ideas of home and belonging, diaspora, the unheimlich, the sublime and the spiritual. Her work is held in private and institutional collections.
Biography: About my work:
My contemporary art practice involves an exploration of my cultural heritage as an Eastern European born child of displaced parents – a child of diaspora. Growing up in Australia I have observed the reification of cultural practices by those in the Hungarian diaspora. This acts as a key prompt in my recovery and representation of objects and memories taken from family archival data such as story-telling, transferred memory, objects and cultural practices.
Through my research I have found that a material-based contemporary art practice has enabled deep contemplation and reflection of my own cultural, ethnic and national heritage. It is the foundation for exploring culture making whilst specifically asking how the art making process, and the concentration on the archival image, can offer a deep insight into the hybrid identity of the diasporic subject.
This process enables my practice to test the validity of memory and its interaction with a new place - attempting to reconcile and connect with a lost heritage while revealing the dislocated cultural practices of this diaspora and questioning issues of identity, place, placelessness and displacement. This not only works to test my own connections to a lost culture but also interrogates my sense of home and belonging in my adopted country.
CV
Born Vienna, Austria 1969
Education
2021 | AFHEA – Associate Fellow Higher Education Academy |
2019 | Doctor of Philosophy (Visual Art) – Deakin University. |
2008 | Bachelor of Arts Honours (Visual Art), Deakin University |
2005 | Bachelor of Contemporary Arts – Visual Arts, Deakin University |
Solo Exhibitions
2018 | Making Sacred: Objects of Diaspora, exhibition 7th Nov – 2nd Dec, Tacit Galleries, Collingwood |
2018 | missing, exhibition July 17th – 27th, The Project Space, Geelong |
2018 | PUNCTUM, exhibition 5th Feb – 9th Mar 2018, Deakin University |
2014 | Refraction Exhibition May 2014, Walker Street Gallery Dandenong |
2008 | Light Chasing! Solo exhibition for Honours degree, McCulloch Gallery. 31st Oct – 16th Nov 2008. |
Selected group Exhibitions
2023 | SUBSTRATE23, group exhibition, Tacit Galleries, Collingwood |
2023 | ‘Art School Confidential’, Deakin Gallery, Deakin University, Burwood. |
2023 | ‘TACIT Still Life [Redux], group exhibition, Tacit Galleries, Collingwood |
2023 | ‘Bound Pigment Celebrating Paint’, group exhibition, Tacit Galleries, Collingwood |
2021 | People Objects Algorithms, collaborative drawing project with Katie Lee and Simon Grennan, F Project, Warrnambool, Dec 2021 – Jan 2022 |
2021 | 'Costume II' group Exhibition with Lesley Dickman, Lana de Jager, Ilona Jetmar, Marion Manifold, Marija Patterson, January 2021, Tacit Galleries, Collingwood |
2020 | 'Embedded Revisited' with TJ Bateson & Kerrilee Ninnis, '20 [2020]' group exhibition, 150+ artists, 250+ works celebrating Tacit's 20th birthday, March 2020, Tacit Galleries, Collingwood |
2016 | Still in Progress, Deakin University PhD students School of Communication and Creative Arts exhibition, Deakin University Gallery |
2014 | Whitehorse 9x5 Challenge, Whitehorse Artspace Box Hill |
2011 | Discovery Recent honours and postgraduate practice/exegesis work, Deakin University Art Gallery, 20 July to 3 September 2011 |
2007-2010 | Inspired! Heritage Hill Museum Art Prize. |
2008 | Summer Group Show, McCulloch Gallery |
2005 | The 2005 Victorian Campus Art Prize and Exhibition. |
2005 | Port Melbourne Rotary Art Show, Gasworks. |
2003 | Painting on the Hill, Heritage Hill Art Prize |
2003 | Graduate Spaces, Icon Museum of Art, Deakin University, Melbourne. |
2003 | Ryder-Cheshire Foundation Benefit Exhibition, (curated) Gardeners Gallery Hawthorn, Melbourne. |
2002 | Art and Pain, (curated) Gardeners Gallery, Melbourne |
2002 | Ryder-Cheshire Foundation Benefit Exhibition, (curated) Gardeners Gallery Melbourne. |
2002 | A Walk in St Kilda, J36 Gallery, (curated) Melbourne. |
2000 | The 2000 John Balmain National Portraiture Award, Bega Valley Regional Gallery NSW. |
Awards/Achievements
2023 | Hawkesbury Art Prize finalist, Deux Rivages (After Von Guerard). |
2022 | Tacit Still Life Prize 2022, finalist |
2022 | Finalist, 9x5 Landscape Prize, Woollahra Art School, Sydney |
2021 | Tacit Still Life Prize, finalist |
2019 | Finalist, 9x5 Landscape Prize 2019, Woollahra Art School, Sydney |
2014 | Highly Commended Best Interpretation of 9x5 Theme, Whitehorse 9x5 Challenge. |
2013 | She finalist, Walker Street Gallery Dandenong |
2010 | Emerging Artist’s Award finalist, Walker Street Gallery, Dandenong |
2009 | Vice-Chancellor’s Prize 2008, Deakin University, Honours exhibition Light Chasing! |
2008 | Inspired! 3rd Prize Heritage Hill, Dandenong |