Every artist was once an amateur and Alexandra Bruveris took her first steps toward a new career with her debut exhibition at the Moss Vale Civic Centre.
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Hidden Faces in our community explores the duality of the public and private personas of some marginalised members of the Wingecarribee Shire.
Ms Bruveris said the photographic series was a way for people to look beyond labels to see the stories of of the often forgetten members of our community.
“People are looked at so differently than who they are, they’re lumped into a category: unemployed, homeless and what have you. The whole project was about making sure they feel that they matter,” Ms Bruveris said.
“It was about reminding people that they are a part of your community – you may never see them, you may not recognise them, but they’re there and they’re valuable,” she said.
The project began as an assignment for Ms Bruveris’ course in Community Arts and Cultural Development course at TAFE St George.
Ms Bruveris worked with 12 participants to create a mask that represented how they were feeling about the world and their place in it.
“The idea came from the fact that often people say things to us and we hide our emotions about how we’re feeling and reacting to it. It wasn’t about saying: This is the mask I wear out there, it was to say: Who am I today?” she said.
After experiencing some initial collaborative setbacks, Ms Bruveris said she found great support from Sureway Employment and Training, the Creative Space initiative and photographer Tim Bauer who assisted with editing and printing the series.
“I approached Creative Space after I’d lost another opportunity and I am a client of Sureway and they sponsored the project to cover the printing costs,” Ms Bruveris said.
The exhibition has been displayed at the Moss Vale Civic Centre to make it as accessible as possible to all members of the community.
“It's not a gallery where people have to go to, it is where everyday people in the community can see it,” Ms Bruveris said.
While the project started as a class assignment, Ms Bruveris is already looking ahead to take a template of the idea to new communities.
“It’s the kind of template which can be taken to different areas. I’ve got the idea running and I’d like to take it further and see where it goes,” she said.
“I did this initially for me, to open a doorway to a new career path and I found it really fulfilling.”
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