Budding shutterbug set for big city

A BALLARAT High School student is celebrating her back-to-back exhibiting debut with her paired photographic pieces shared between the Art Gallery of Ballarat and Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria.

Currently displaying her Dora (Flora) four-tiered work as part of the local Next Gen show, year 12 student Jett Leduc’s accompanying piece called Skye (Fauna) is set to feature in the NGV’s Top Arts exhibition next month.

Leduc said both works explore her interest in ambiguity.

“Both these works are a pairing but they tell their own individual stories,” she said. “I wanted to keep both very open-ended, there are different elements and I’m hiding in both of them.

“It’s to show my connection to these works but the works are about the people centred in them without giving you a dead-set idea of who they are.

“It’s about how we perceive people and how we utilise elements of their environment to understand who they are.”

Beginning her photography journey with live music shoots when she was in year 9, Leduc’s continued interest in the art led her to study her school’s year 12 unit VCE Art Making and Exhibiting while in year 11.

She said she owes much of her development to her teacher, Scott Haskins.

“I would take photos of anything and everything and he helped me direct my energy into one pathway,” she said.

“He helped me understand how to put my influences into my artwork and he was brutally honest at times which I needed.”

Leduc’s Top Arts 2024 work will be on show at Fed Square’s Ian Potter Centre from Thursday 14 March until Sunday 14 July.