Shepparton Art Museum

The Everyday Comic
2020-09-16 17:00 - 18:30 UTC | Shepparton Art Museum, 530 Wyndham Street, Shepparton, Victoria, Australia
A series of four FREE online workshops lead by artist Aaron Billings presented on ZOOM.

August 26, 5pm to 6.30pm
September 2, 5pm to 6.30pm
September 9, 5pm to 6.30pm
September 16, 5pm to 6.30pm

Incorporating the everday, artist Aaron Billings draws on the world around him to tell his stories. Join him and other creative thinkers for this online introductory course to comic creation and learn unique methods to use in your own storytelling.

Aaron will lead you through different creative methods of comic making wach week using fun exercises that focus on the individual’s daily rituals. Participants will have the opportunity to explore their own personal style and become storytellers themselves.

Participants will require paper, pencil, a fine liner and a ruler.

Limited places available!

Please register for your free ticket below. Zoom link and event information will be sent via email after registration.

Aaron Billings is a comic and textile artist working out of Pink Ember studio in Coburg, Melbourne. He graduated with honours in Fine Arts from Monash University in 2019 and is currently the gallery and studio manager at Pink Ember. His comic drawing work has appeared in The Lifted Brow, Going Down Swinging and Scum Magazine. He is also a regular contributor of one panel comics to Meanjin Quarterly. In 2018 his comic book Mystical Boyscout 4 was published by Glom Press.

Image: Progress Bridge, Aaron Billings.

Showcase #26: Irene Grishin Selzer
2020-06-25 10:00 - 2020-11-02 16:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Victoria
In partnership with pepite.

Shepparton Art Museum is thrilled to be partnering with Melbourne based gallery pépite, to bring emerging contemporary art and design artists to the popular SAM Showcase exhibition space.

Representing more than 40 emerging contemporary artists from their Melbourne based showroom, pépite features a collection of one-of-a kind and limited edition works, predominantly ceramics, alongside sculpture, glass pieces, illustration, jewellery and accessories.

The pépite partnership consists of three showcase exhibitions. The first is Irene Grishin Selzer, an Australian artist, based in Melbourne, who works predominantly with ceramics. Her art practice engages with the notion of transience in nature, the shape of time and the sense of place.

Her practice takes two separate, but interconnected forms. The first is the clay paintings and clay drawings, the second is object-based pieces. The clay paintings can be regarded as a form of abstracted cartography-sprawling maps where scale is difficult to fathom, but we encounter pockets of energy, the movement of tides, electromagnetic waves and the build-up of deeply encrusted topographical layers.

The object-based pieces may be thought of as individual points of focus, tiny areas of exploration, sandwiched cross-sections that pierce the surface or enigmatic relics and artefacts that carry the traces of ancient forms of spiritual energy.

Grishin-Selzer’s work is available for purchase from the SAM Shop.

Irene-Grishin-Selzer-x-pepite-online-catalogueDownload

Want to hear more?

SAM Talks: Art and Designwith artist Irene Grishin Selzer and Irina Rybakov of Pepite Shop

How has the need for art resulted in a design focus in our living rooms during the physical closures of our art museums and galleries? Many art enthusiasts have turned their focus towards their own places of creativity during these times of isolation. In this SAM Talks: Art and Design podcast, join artist Irene and curator Irina as they discuss the role art, design and online platforms play in creating your own art experiences at home.

Irina Rybakov and Irene Grishin Selzer in front of SAM Showcase #26. Photo Lara Merrington

Featured image: Irene Grishin Selzer, Stormclouds (detail), 2020, photo courtesy of the artist.

SAM Little Hands (Online) - June
2020-06-17 10:30 - 11:15 (Australia/Melbourne) | Shepparton Art Museum, 530 Wyndham Street, Shepparton, Victoria, Australia
NOW ONLINE: Getting messy and having fun is what SAM Little Hands is all about! Budding artists will experience art-making through play, paint and clay.

Join SAM online to continue Little Hands fun from home! With a new video posted every Wednesday showcasing a creative idea to try with things you can find around the house.

Each session will be a hands-on experience of sensory play, exploration and messiness with carers encouraged to join in the fun! Art smocks provided.

For toddlers and pre-schoolers.

Drawing Wall #38: Jahnne Pasco-White.
2020-06-11 08:30 - 2020-12-20 14:30 (Australia/Melbourne) | Shepparton Art Museum, 530 Wyndham Street, Shepparton, Victoria, Australia
Pasco-White’s Drawing Wall, Becoming-other, responds to the environment of Greater Shepparton and the agricultural and aqua industries.

Jahnne Pasco-White with her work for Drawing Wall #38. Photo Amina Barolli

Now on to its 38th iteration, the SAM Drawing Wall has become synonymous with celebrating creative talent and connecting artists and the Greater Shepparton Community. This series of large scale commissioned artworks enliven the foyer space at the entrance to the museum.

Jahnne Pasco-White is an artist currently living and working on Dja Dja Wurrung land and waters, or Chewton, Victoria. She often works with the re-purposing of previous works, and incorporating organic materials and pigments drawn from natural matter alongside the traditional medium of acrylic paint.

Pasco-White’s Drawing Wall Becoming-other, responds to the environment of Greater Shepparton and the agricultural and aqua industries. She has sourced waste-product fruit from local suburban areas and independent fruit and vegetable farmers to extract natural dyes and pigments for use in the artwork. Using organic materials against those traditionally identified with art making, such as acrylic paint, results in swathes of rich colour and texture.

Jahnne Pasco-White is represented by STATION.

Feature Image: Jahnne Pasco-White, Messmates (detail), 2019. Image by Christo Crocker.

SAM Little Hands (Online) - May
2020-05-13 10:30 - 11:15 (Australia/Melbourne) | Shepparton Art Museum, 530 Wyndham Street, Shepparton, Victoria, Australia

SAM Local Spotlight: Madeline Wright
2020-03-13 00:00 - 2020-05-03 23:59 (Australia/Melbourne) | Shepparton Art Museum, 530 Wyndham Street, Shepparton, Victoria, Australia
The five exhibitions that make up the 2020 SAM Local exhibition are full of exciting and diverse artists and creatives that will surprise and delight visitors.

SAM Local Spotlight is an opportunity for an artist with local connections to hold a solo exhibition at SAM.

Madeline Wright’s solo exhibition of object based works in metal, ceramic and glass, is based on her upbringing near the Goulburn River in Arcadia. Inspired by the objects and colours of this landscape, A Field Guide to Utopia encourages the viewer to slow down and observe nuances in our surroundings.

Image: Madeline Wright in her studio. Photo by Lara Merrington.

SAM eduLAB: Nadia Hernández
2020-03-13 00:00 - 2020-05-03 23:59 (Australia/Melbourne) | Shepparton Art Museum, 530 Wyndham Street, Shepparton, Victoria, Australia
SAM’s Education Lab provides a diverse range of students and educators with the opportunity to work directly with an artist and create an immersive installation within SAM’s exhibition space.

The 2020 eduLAB will see educational and community groups work with artist Nadia Hernández in the transformation of SAM’s gallery into a vibrant, dynamic, story filled space over a 5 week period.

Participants work will remain in the gallery space, which will provide them with the opportunity to see their work exhibited in this studio-style display.

Hernández is an emerging artist originally from Merida, Venezuela and currently based between Melbourne and Sydney. Her art is informed specifically by the current political climate of her home country and her experience as a migrant woman living abroad. Articulated through textiles, paper constructions, painting, music, installations, sculptures and murals, her work negotiates complex political narratives through the personal, the institutional and their intersections.

Nadia holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Queensland University of Technology, has partaken in both solo and group exhibitions across Australia, and was selected as the official artist for City of Sydney’s NYE 2017. More recently, she was awarded The Churchie’s National Emerging Art Prize at the Institute of Modern Art Brisbane.

The 2020 SAM eduLAB is once again supported by La Trobe University Shepparton.

Image: Nadia Hernández, Nosotros Somos, 2019, paper cut, 71 x 90cm, framed. Courtesy of artist.

SAM Local: Best of Friends
2020-03-13 00:00 - 2020-05-03 23:59 (Australia/Melbourne) | Shepparton Art Museum, 530 Wyndham Street, Shepparton, Victoria, Australia
Best of Friends is an open access exhibition and it’s purpose is to open a window onto the creative practice of many artists working in a range of media in the Goulburn Valley. It is a great way to see what other people are creating and to gain insights into the regional arts sector.

A wonderful opening night was held on 12 March. You can view the Facebook Album here.

View the exhibition display here.

Showcase #25: Sandra Bowkett
2020-02-07 00:00 - 2020-05-03 23:59 (Australia/Melbourne) | Shepparton Art Museum, 530 Wyndham Street, Shepparton, Victoria, Australia
Showcase #25: Sandra Bowkett, Clay // Fire is a collection of ceramic vessels that explore and make visible the energy of wood-firing on earth materials.

Interestingly, these Showcase pieces were fired at Sandra’s home studio in Tallarook, in a wood-fired kiln she built herself in 2013. ⁠ ⁠

Many of you will know Sandra’s name as her work has been for sale in the SAM shop for many years. The SAM Showcase allows her to experiment further with presentation in a gallery setting. The installation includes elements from the firing process, including bricks and kiln inserts, and gives you a great insight into the creation of these beautiful vessels.⁠ ⁠Collectors of Bowkett’s work will be excited to learn the pieces in the SAM Showcase are also available to purchase. ⁠

Image: Sandra Bowkett in her studio. Photo: Lara Merrington.

A Finer Grain: Selected Works from the SAM Collection
2019-05-18 10:00 - 2020-10-25 16:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Shepparton Art Museum, 530 Wyndham Street, Shepparton, Victoria, Australia
An exhibition presenting key and lesser-known works by Australian women artists from the Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) collection.

Spanning the full breadth of SAM’s 83 year collection history, we have taken a chronological approach, loosely grouped by decade from the date of creation. Artworks span a range of medium and subject, and showcase the breadth of SAM’s material focus in works on paper, painting, and Australian ceramics. This approach offers insights into SAM’s collection and the history of its development, as pertinent then as it is today.

The exhibition includes the first work by a female artist Alice Currie acquired by the museum in 1938, with an early focus on landscapes, still-lives and portraiture. The exhibition highlights some of SAM’s collection strengths, such as the acquisition in the 1970’s of many of Australia’s now renowned early 20th century Australian Modernist women artists including Grace Cossington Smith, Margaret Preston, and many others, when their works were more affordable than their male counterparts.

From the 1970s and ’80s, ceramics became SAM’s collection strength, and one we continue to celebrate today as the most significant collection of Australian ceramics in regional Australia. The exhibition also includes the first acquisition by a female Aboriginal artist Dr Thanakupi Gloria Fletcher James, AO in 1991, and some of the number of recent acquisitions by Aboriginal artists from south-east Australia and across Australia. It reveals the importance these works have as part of SAM’s collection, enabling a fuller and more complex understanding of Australia’s culture.

The development of SAM’s contemporary collection reflects the many themes and ideas that artists explore in new and exciting ways. Ceramics remains core – a point of regional difference. There are, of course, always surprises and discoveries: a survey collection exhibition of this kind ensures that overlooked and sometimes forgotten or unfashionable artists and artworks are also celebrated. After all, it is these stories of people, artists and artworks that enable many of Australia’s great regional galleries to celebrate and rethink histories within our contemporary context in new and exciting ways.

Image: Margaret Preston, Magnolias, not dated, woodcut print. Shepparton Art Museum collection, Sir Andrew Fairley Bequest, 1975.

SAM On Tour - Craftivism: Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms
2018-11-24 00:00 - 2020-10-31 23:59 (Australia/Melbourne) | Victoria
This major collaborative, playful and immersive exhibition features the work of 18 contemporary Australian artists and artist collectives.

Dates

Shepparton Art Museum24 November 2018 – 17 February 2019

Touring to:Warnambool Art GalleryWarnambool, Victoria2 March – 5 May 2019

Mornington Peninsula Regional GalleryMornington, VIC18 May – 21 July 2019

Museum of Australian DemocracyCanberra, ACT6 September – 2 February 2020

Bega Valley Regional GalleryBega, NSW30 April – 21 June 2020

Warwick Art GalleryWarwick, QLD3 July – 15 August 2020

University of the Sunshine Coast Art GallerySunshine Coast, QLD12 September – 31 October 2020

Craftivism. Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms presents the work of 18 contemporary Australian artists who utilise craft based materialities with a political intent. Broadening our understanding of craft-making traditions, the artists in this exhibition subvert and extend these forms into the realm of activism and social change, reflecting on the world in which we live. While some respond directly to artistic or political movements, others encourage social connection between community members or require participatory activation through collective processes. Drawing on a long historical lineage, Craftivism. Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms enables viewers to rethink craft in a new light.

Artists include: Slow Art Collective, Paul Yore, Debris Facility, Kate Just, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Penny Byrne, James Tylor, Jemima Wyman, Kate Rohde, Michelle Hamer, Raquel Ormella, Hiromi Tango, Erub Arts, Catherine Bell, Tai Snaith, Karen Black, Starlie Geikie, Deborah Kelly.

Curators: Anna Briers and Rebecca Coates

A Shepparton Art Museum curated exhibition, touring nationally through NETS Victoria.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body, as well as receiving development assistance from NETS Victoria’s Exhibition Development Fund, supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.

Image: Paul Yore, What a Horrid Fucking Mess, 2016, textile wall hanging; mixed media, 210 x 342 cm (irreg.), purchased with Ararat Rural City Council acquisition allocation, 2016. Collection of Ararat Gallery TAMA.
