University of Melbourne arts students tasked with following the briefs of Michelangelo and Frida Kahlo for campaign

A campaign for the University of Melbourne sees its arts students from its Fine Arts and Music Southbank campus briefed with creating work in response to the same historical commissions as famous artists, including Michelangelo’s task to capture a vision of human physical perfection with his David statue.

The campaign, from McCann Melbourne and Weber Shandwick, is intended to highlight the importance of education in fine arts and music education.

The briefs the students were asked to emulate also included Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Monkeys and Tschaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty. The resulting works encouraged viewers to reflect on how far society has come in its attitudes towards human perfection, social justice, mortality, sex and power.