Master’s students stage Liminal Encounters at Buxton Contemporary
When a guest artist visited Enya Hu’s high school for a painting workshop, she left a lasting impression—one artwork in particular captured her imagination.
"I just remember thinking, whoa... that’s a cool painting," said Enya.
Helen Johnson, History Problem (2013). Acrylic on canvas. Michael Buxton Collection, the University of Melbourne Art Collection. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program by Michael and Janet Buxton, 2018.
The artist was Helen Johnson, the painting was History Problem, and years later, Enya has encountered it again. As a Master of Art Curatorship student, Enya’s class has had the rare opportunity to curate an exhibition from the Michael Buxton Collection, which includes some of Australia’s most respected contemporary artists and artworks — History Problem among them.
"To be able to actually work with this painting, to see it in a space that we've curated together, it just feels exciting, and like a full-circle moment,” said Enya, in the bright Buxton foyer, visitors drifting in and out of the current exhibition the veil.
Master of Art Curatorship student Enya Hu. Image credit: Sarah Hall.
The student cohort of the subject Curating Art in Practice was divided into four small curatorial teams, each responsible for curating a focused exhibition within Liminal Encounters, to be displayed in one of Buxton Contemporary’s first-floor galleries. The process involved selecting works from the collection based on a theme devised by the group, as well as considering the technical aspects of installation and spatial design.
"It's been a really dynamic and exciting process, because it has a real outcome that will be out in the world," said student-curator Mia Kalis, who worked in the same team as Enya.
Their curatorial offering, titled Hard Liquid, focuses on the work of Laresa Kosloff and David Jolly, in a curation about transparency in the urban landscape, featuring a number of works reflecting glass, and urbanity.
One work is Kosloff’s Stock Exchange (1998). Stock Exchange is a silent black and white film shot on Super 8, depicting the inside of the Melbourne stock exchange, stealthily shot by the artist from a moving glass elevator.
“They’re all works that deal with what you can see and what you can't see... the contradiction of how glass reveals, but then also conceals,” said Mia, who was responsible for writing up the curatorial rationale for her group.
She spoke about how glass exists in an amorphous state, neither solid nor liquid... it’s a surface "frozen in time".
"It’s kind of the contradiction that ties in with the contradiction in [Stock Exchange]," said Mia.
"On the one hand we're looking through this glass and we think we can see everything that's going on. But then the question is, what are we really seeing? It’s a silent film, so the viewer is left to fill in the blanks."
Laresa Kosloff Stock Exchange (1998). Super 8 film transferred to video. Michael Buxton Collection, the University of Melbourne Art Collection. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Michael and Janet Buxton, 2018.
Gothic evocations, bold colours and dreamscapes
Before coming together to work on their collaborative curation, students explored the Buxton collection, and were given time to reflect independently. The challenge, said Dr Mimi Kelly, lecturer in the course, was to create a cohesive exhibition that maintained the integrity of individual works while presenting a unified curatorial vision. This needed to happen within the groups, and between them.
"Students met this challenge with skill and creativity, crafting thoughtful and nuanced visual and conceptual throughlines in their respective displays," she said.
"The resulting individual exhibitions are as distinct as they are dynamic, ranging from artwork selections linked through their Gothic evocations, bold colours, dreamscapes, and transparent material qualities."
Liminal Encounters is the result of a first-of-its-kind collaboration between the Masters program and Buxton Contemporary, giving Master of Art Curatorship students the opportunity to learn directly from the expert staff in Museums and Collections. The subject follows the delivery of a pilot subject by Dr Heather Gaunt and Senior Lecturer Matthew Martin at the Grainger Museum in 2024.
Primary collaborator on the project from Museums and Collections, Dr Kyla McFarlane, said the collaborative and hands-on aspects of this project is what makes it so unique.
"They’re quite literally learning how to develop an exhibition, across its many facets, under the expert guidance of curators, collections staff, exhibition managers, and public program specialists. It speaks to what’s possible when we bring our collective expertise together, in support of our students," said Dr McFarlane.
Enya echoed this sentiment.
"The collaborative process in how to communicate with your peers, how to conduct meetings, how to incorporate other people's ideas with your own [...] has been really helpful,” said Enya, also a graduate of the Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Art) at the Victorian College of the Arts.
Master of Art Curatorship student Mia Kalis. Image credit: Sarah Hall.
There were synchronicities between the four groups that brought a natural order to the broader exhibition theme Liminal Encounters, which also features the works of Tracey Moffatt AO, James Lynch and Peter Booth, to name a few.
Mia completed an Art History major 20 years ago, and is now pursuing her long-held dream to study curation. I asked her what good curation means to her.
"A great show, a great curation, will show us what most people don't ever stop to do, and that is observe life in all its beauty and gore and everything in between... especially [in times when] everyone's just too busy living their life, but not really living it deeply."
So it makes sense, that in the first major curation she’s been part of, she and her team invite us to move slowly:
Consider the lives behind these surfaces—the workers and neighbours, the voyeurs and subjects. Attend to the light on the glass, and to the quiet voices just beyond.
Liminal Encounters runs from 14 October–1 November 2025 at Buxton Contemporary.