Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours), UNSW Art & Design
By Nic Narapiromkwan Foo
UNSW Galleries feels haunted. The Tuesday afternoon before The Annual Party is all but desolate. Seren Wagstaff’s Passenger Princess (2025) is hyperventilating, or panting. A white paper body bag and a hand-formed steel car seat are strewn across the floor. The “road,” a mass of bitumen, hangs from the ceiling strapped in a harness of seatbelts. Where am I? I only know I’m alive because I can smell the petroleum. The body bag tenses and releases like someone is blowing in air and sucking it back out, the endless moment before the vomit (or the climax). The Navman attached to the neck of the car seat plays footage of blue sky punctuated by traffic lights, street signs, and gum trees. I sit on the polished concrete floor to get a closer look, facing the driver’s seat like a good passenger princess would. A sexy model flashes on the screen. She looks straight out of a 2000s Fast Fours & Rotaries magazine. Her mouth is animated puppet-style and in the Google Maps voice she says, “Up and down, back and forth… are we there yet?” Maybe it’s because I can’t drive, but I don’t want to arrive yet; I’m enjoying the foreplay.
Seren Wagstaff, Passenger Princess, 2025, installation, video, steel, bitumen, paper, seat belts, electric motor, The Annual, UNSW Galleries. Photo: Jessica Maurer.
I see Zac Tomaszewski’s photographic installation, CONSTRUCTED LAND (2025) and I’m haunted by the OutKast lyric, “When I say motherfucker, I do mean motherfucker, because Mother Earth is dying and we continue to fuck her to death.” Tomaszewski photographs a post-industrial site in the Sydney suburb of Tempe that has been excavated and abandoned (presumably due to its lack of use potential). Five gelatin silver prints are stained, muddied and warped, with specks of bark and dirt eroding a once pristine surface. The only print that retains its colour and gloss is a close-up, detailed shot of debris and mechanical markings in the dirt. In front of the suite of photographs, a handmade photobook is nestled in the recess of a wooden table. The carved-out cavity mirrors the same extraction of the land depicted in the prints and the photobook. The neglect of this constructed land laid way for a rewilding of weeds and trees. Here, they form portals, antennaed gods, and shrouded monsters that compel me to kneel before them.
Zac Tomaszewski, CONSTRUCTED LAND, 2025, installation, archival inkjet print, expired silver gelatine fibre prints, soil, hand-bound artist book, contact print, The Annual, UNSW Galleries. Photo: Jessica Maurer.
Upstairs, an installation of photographs printed on tulle banners is an apparition in my periphery. Three banners are hung from clear resin rods protruding from the wall. Two of them are layered behind each other like fabric on a clothesline. I approach Jennifer Fernandez’s Untitled (2025) as if it were a baby animal, cautious and anxious that it may elude me. Two additional photographic prints in the corner clue me in. Fernandez has taken the photos on her phone in the reflections of windows in front of construction sites, apartment buildings, and the street. She is alone. Her aging face and body against the ever-changing urban space is a poignant reminder of time. The two timelines are at odds with each other: one, a staunch and graceful acceptance; the other, in denial and clawing at renewal. I stay a while in hope that Fernandez will reveal herself to me, but she is choosing to be seen on her own terms.
Jennifer Fernandez, Untitled, 2025, installation, digital inkjet print on banner mesh and dye sublimation prints on tulle, The Annual, UNSW Galleries. Photo: Jennifer Fernandez.
In a world that moves on quickly—constantly upgrading, renovating, and tightening—we feel haunted by Wagstaff, Tomaszewski, and Fernandez’s works because they compel us to slow down (or we’ll crash; but maybe we need to crash to get off the ride entirely). At their own pace, the works return to intimacy, the land, and the body. Together, they beckon us to sit down and stay there. Like a dog, I obey; there is an affection and devotion in being haunted.
Nic Narapiromkwan Foo is an artist and writer cooking and eating on Gadigal land.