Themes of home and family, human connection and mental health are among those explored by TAFE SA’s visual arts students in their graduating exhibition, Holding Space.

Twenty-seven emerging artists from the Bachelor of Creative Arts, a dual award offered by TAFE SA and Flinders University, are taking part in the exhibition at Light Square Gallery until February 4.

Artworks across a range of mediums including painting, printmaking, ceramics and sculpture reflect months of research and technical experimentation.

Ashleigh Keller’s ceramics collection - To fear, to feel, to hurt, to heal - is a deeply personal record of trauma and healing.

Gas-fired clay faces and figures with various finishes convey a range of emotions, which are also explored through accompanying poetry read by the artist on an audio loop.

“It’s all based on my experience of family and a not particularly stable childhood and making work to explore the feelings that come from that,” Ashleigh says.

“I started the year looking at monsters and exploring ideas around good and evil and the space in between and questioning if the polar opposites were actually possible, or if everyone is a mix of the two.”

After a year of pushing her creativity and technical skills, Ashleigh has produced four exhibition pieces: Pure Evil and Dirty Good; I’m Waiting for the Wind to Blow; The Man I Once Knew; and You lifted Me Up, Made Solid My Ground.

Aspiring jewellery designer Beck Johns is using her first major exhibition to raise awareness of chronic health issues, drawing on her experience as a double lung transplant recipient.

Blister packs from medication have been repurposed as the central material in two statement pieces entitled Chronic Side Effects.

“I wanted to make an armour, because I see the medication as protecting the body and it’s like you’re wearing an armour when you go into battle, so I wanted to make a long piece from neck to toe.

The piece includes a choker because “in some ways you feel like you’re choking when you have to take so many medications”.

A second piece, a layered neckpiece, has been crafted from empty capsules with notes inside that say “you don’t look sick”.

“A lot of people with chronic illness don’t look sick. So, when people say, ‘what’s wrong with you, you don’t look sick’, that’s what I’ve heard my entire life and when people say that you feel like you have to prove that you are,” she says.

Beck says creating the Chronic Side Effects collection has been both cathartic and meditative and she’s looking forward to continuing the theme in her next body of work.

Power and control are at the heart of Shani Engelbrecht’s artworks The Watcher and The Watched.

“I’ve grown up in the age of technology, with phones and computers, and knowing we can be tracked by our data,” she explains.

Shani (pictured) has channelled her ideas into a mixed media exhibition piece incorporating painting, textiles and sculpture, as well as augmented reality.

By scanning a QR code with their phone, viewers can bring The Watcher to life and reveal hidden text on the canvas – a quote from George Orwell’s 1984 which Shani has translated into binary code.

“The Watcher and The Watched is all about surveillance and who is watching us and who is controlling us, and it questions authority,” she says.

“When we use our phones to interact with the artwork, it’s a full circle, we’re using something that watches us.”

Holding Space is at Light Square Gallery, Adelaide College of the Arts, 39 Light Square, Adelaide until February 4.