T-collective comprises a group of four mature-age artists whose work is based on the lived experience of personal trauma. Each member is currently undertaking PhD studies in the School of Art at RMIT; our art practices are separate, but we work in close proximity. Besides creating a dialogue around common themes, part of the impetus for forming this collective was to activate a more rigorous discourse around trauma, one that departs from perceptions that trauma art is about catharsis and that isolate the artist as victim. 

Our interests focus on more specific areas like the complexity and mutability of memory, the inherent problems interpreting childhood experience, the transmission of affect and the identification of trajectories in the visual language of trauma in the realms of the vernacular and the artistic. A common element that applies to each of our individual practices is that we work across a variety of media. As a collective we bring four distinct perspectives of agency and resilience through our artwork and its visual discourse. 

In the contemporary gallery environment emotion is a rare commodity – it often requires an interpretative process between artist and spectator; a transaction that often acknowledges raw feeling without fully comprehending what lies underneath. Our work is about extending a sensitive and experimental dialogue to a wider audience. 

This project will be included in the Archives of Feeling exhibition at RMIT Gallery.

Image: Simon Crosbie, Trauma/ pre-Trauma.
Image courtesy of the artist.