#SAMOurPastOurFuture

We all love a look back as much as we love to dream of the future, don’t we? That’s why we’re kicking off ⁠ [ #SAMOurPastOurFuture ] from tomorrow. ⁠ Every week, we’ll share a wonderful memory of an artist we’ve worked with, past staff member, Friend of SAM, local business, and all-round #SAMbassador! ⁠ Meanwhile we can look forward to the new SAM, just imagining what incredible stories this new home will bring us all. ⁠ ⁠ If you’d like to join along, share your own SAM memories with us using #SAMOurPastOurFuture and tag @SAM_shepparton on your favourite photograph of you at SAM 💫⁠ ⁠ Image: Installation view of the #SAMCollection, c. 1980s.
Who better to start with for our #SAMOurPastOurFuture memories than the very first SAM Drawing Wall artist, Renee Cosgrave. Who remembers this wall? 🙋🏻‍♀️⁠ It was so popular, we printed 200 poster copies, and this same image was used on the cover of Victoria’s Cultural Guide in 2012 (which was also the same year SAM won Best Museum of the Year Award). ⁠ ⁠ Let’s hear Renee’s story and where she’s at now…⁠ ⁠
‘My first experience of SAM was when I came out to install the very first Drawing Wall in 2010, when I was an emerging artist.⁠ ⁠ My wall drawing for SAM in some ways has many connections to the work I am making now. At the time I was interested in pattern, colour and repetition and I decided upon a leaf motif to repeat. I liked creating rules in painting so I could easily transfer a small painting into a large mural. ⁠ ⁠ My recent abstract works now are very informed by lands and waters, particularly my tribal lands back home in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Ngāti Tūwharetoa iwi. I use sites as inspiration for colour palettes in abstract works and then the painting becomes dedicated to land, wairua/spirit or place.⁠ ⁠ So yeah for me it’s nice to see that back in the early stages of my career I was referring to nature in my abstract works, which I’m very interested in at the moment. ⁠ ⁠ Since my Drawing Wall I’ve loved coming back to SAM in particular to see the Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award, many of my peers and friends have been finalists in this fantastic exhibition.’
To find out more about Renee:⁠ www.moon-unit.org/renee-cosgrave⁠
Instagram: @reneecosgrave⁠ ⁠
Images: 1. Renee Cosgrave creates Drawing Wall #1 at SAM, 2010. Photo Amina Barolli. 2. Renee Cosgrave, Help me ancestors, 2020, courtesy the artist. 3. The 2012 Victorian Cultural Guide cover. ⁠
Most of you know that we pride ourselves on supporting talented makers through the SAM shop, locally and nation-wide, just like the ever so gorgeous @dominikayindipottery from South Australia.
‘My name is Dominika Yindi. I live in a little coastal town of Normanville on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. The first time I heard of SAM was through its beautiful shop assistant Alisha, who contacted me to ask if I would sell my pieces in SAM shop. For a largely self taught, wanna-be potter, this was so huge that I rang my mother in Prague and jumped 3m high after I googled and learned what SAM is all about. Honestly for me that felt a little like receiving an Oscar. And at the same time, petrified me!!! “Do they even know I am just a wanna be?” I kept thinking…”When they receive my pieces, surely they will realise it and never order again?” But they did and I am ever so grateful for this special connection and support of my making. I am yet to visit SAM in person and I cannot wait! Perhaps it’s meant to be just for the opening of the new SAM. Loading the caravan with my husband and 4 children and having a little pilgrimage to a very significant museum for every Australian potter seems like an amazing reason. Seeing my works at the shop will probably freak me out but hopefully make my children proud of their crazy mama who persists to save herself from trouble by creating.’
Let’s throw back to the acquisition of one of SAM’s most-loved artworks and a time of important change through rebranding the gallery to SAM, with Danny Lacy, former SAM curator. #SAMOurPastOurFuture ‘For me, Sam Jinks’ mesmerising sculpture Woman and child came to encapsulate a renewed sense of ambition and optimism for the gallery as it went through a period of exciting transformation with a new name (SAM), new galleries and energised focus on the collection. To have contemporary art on the front cover of the Shepp News was pretty important in becoming more accessible to the local community. We had an explosion of community support to purchase the sculpture, which brought thousands of new, first-time visitors to SAM, some to an art gallery/museum in their whole lifetime. Danny was curator at SAM from 2010-2012 and went on to be the director at WestSpace, Melbourne and now Artistic Director / Senior Curator at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery. Danny curated the SAM exhibition Sam Jinks: Body in Time in 2012, which also toured to Lismore and Rockhampton Galleries.
Images: 1. Danny Lacy curated a SAM collection exhibition called ‘Sign of the Times’ in 2010. 2. Danny in front of the Shepparton Art Gallery’s rebranding consultation display, 2011. 3. Front cover of Art Almanac, May 2012. 4. Front cover of the Shepparton News, 1 Oct 2010. 5. Staff present the new SAM brand for the Shepparton Adviser front page, 2012. #SAM_shepparton #SheppartonArtMuseum #SAMCollection @curtisbeans #SamJinks @samjinksart @greatershepp @visitshepp @pgav_victoria @museumsvictoria @museums_at_work @sheppartonnews @sheppartonadviser #australianmuseums #museumsandgalleries #collecting #contemporarymuseum #mindfulmuseum #ceramics #surrealsculpture