Video transcript
ARTEXPRESS 2023 - Student interview - 04. Jasmine J. Watson

JASMINE J. WATSON: Hi, my name is Jasmine. I studied art at Norfolk Island Central School. My body of work is really about some of the feelings that I think we all go through in the final year of school, not just about HSC but also just that last year of school. Like, that's 13 years of our lives. So it was very much about what I was feeling throughout that final year and then, ultimately, how I was feeling about the exam at the end.

And I always got in trouble for drawing on my NAPLAN and drawing on my books. And so the final piece, my doodles on my exam, my kind of nightmare, my mock nightmare exam, with the art pieces being my own work, was just a lot about how I feel about exams and how I know a lot of other students feel about exams.

My original concept didn't have anything to do with an exam, actually. It was just exploring a bunch of different mental states that you might go through while making art and while being at school. And so the original concept was to do that on a series of different-- different paper, pages of a book that I was reading. I was just experimenting with different-- ink, a lot of ink was used, acrylics, pencils, anything to get the feeling.

It wasn't anything exact. And then as that came along, I then started-- I was sketching on a piece of exam paper, which is where the idea for the nightmare exam came. Each image obviously has a central autonomous figure. It's not clearly any gender or individual. It's just this blank avatar-like character.

And that was to do with, I think-- to make it more relevant to every student. When I started painting them, it was always about the central figure. They were the most important part of the painting. And then the environment was-- it's supposed to be-- the environment has happened to the person. And the person is-- and they are the central piece. And they are the same each time. It's the same figure just experiencing each different environments.

It was very deliberate not including a person in that final piece of nostalgia. It depicts a home that I had in Darwin before I moved to Norfolk Island. And that is where I'm most-- the periods of the time I'm most nostalgic. And obviously I'm not there anymore. So it was just kind of the one emotion that you weren't really experiencing directly at school or in that context.

So with the exam, that concept came about halfway through, quarter way through the year. I was sketching. I was printing out a piece of exam paper to sketch on because it was originally going to be part of the set. And when I was printing it out, I realised that I could edit it. And I started fiddling with it, started editing it. And that's when the idea to create this nightmare exam, the exam that we're all experiencing, even if it's not the actual words, the time frame, all of it, sort of came together.

In editing the questions, editing the times, it was really just, what is every single little fear or experience that you have during the exam? So you look at the time, and it's too short, or it's too long, and there's not enough words. Or there's always something that's kind of off. I consulted my teacher quite a bit. I was worried that he might think it's a bit-- a bit obnoxious maybe. I don't know. I was worried that he wouldn't--

He loved the idea. And he was very-- he was helping me twist it and from the teacher's perspective as well, put a little teacher's perspective in there. And ultimately, I wanted it-- I wanted the markers to think about the work after, not just to look at it, and to come back to it later, and be like, oh, yeah-- I don't know. I wanted them to think about it.

And then the doodling was all me. I want to doodle on an exam and not get in trouble for it. So yeah, that's what I've always done, and that's what I finally got to do for my last year.

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