Accomplished author to visit Shepparton.
21 August 2019
Join author of Art for the Country: The story of Victoria’s regional art galleries, Dr Don Edgar and SAM Director Rebecca Coates as they discuss the rich histories and current challenges facing our rural galleries.
Rural galleries play an integral role in shaping Australia’s exhibition landscape and in connecting our communities. Don’s historical knowledge of the Shepparton Art Museum will prove fascinating. “Shepparton’s civic leaders started a small collection which grew to become one of Australia’s leading art galleries. It was helped by a central lobbying group (the VPGG/later RGAV) which handled funds, organised travelling exhibitions and insisted on a regional approach to the arts, with new galleries specialising rather than trying to duplicate the comprehensive collections already in the bigger centres,” Don explains.
A robust and informed conversation is likely, and is particularly relevant as we head into development of the new SAM building. “The need for a strong rural voice remains true today, for if the government truly wants to decentralise our congested cities, the arts are a key to attracting new arrivals to country towns with a rich and vibrant cultural life,” Don says.
Don Edgar is a sociologist with many years of experience in social research, policy advice and business consulting. He was foundation Director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies (1980-93), leading research and policy advice to both federal and State governments on every aspect of changing family life in Australia.
Since then he spent some years as Associate Professor at the Monash Key Centre in Industrial Relations, has been a consultant to business and welfare services, and is the author of many books, including ‘Introduction to Australian Society’, ’Child Poverty’, ‘The War Over Work: The future of work and family’ ,’Men, Mateship, Marriage’, ’The Patchwork Nation: Rethinking government, re-building community’, ‘The New Child: In search of smarter grown-ups’ (with Patricia Edgar), ‘PEAK: Reinventing middle age’ (with Patricia Edgar), and ‘ART FOR THE COUNTRY: The story of Victoria’s regional galleries’.
Date: Thursday 26 September 6 – 7.30pm
Location: Shepparton Art Museum, 70 Welsford St Shepparton.
Cost: FREE. Light refreshments provided.
Booking essential via Eventbrite.
SAM is looking for library volunteers
19 August 2019
As part of the transition to the new building, SAM is looking to audit and catalogue its library of art books and magazines to make it available to the community to access and use as a resource at the SAM Library in the new building.
SAM is working with GV Libraries on this project and is hoping to find suitable volunteers to work with us on this project.
Volunteers will need to have some experience in cataloguing or auditing and are preferably available from now until December 2020 on a part time basis.
The construction of the new Shepparton Art Museum next to Victoria Lake is well underway with completion of the project expected in December 2020.
New SAM will act as a cultural meeting place creating connectivity to indigenous and multicultural origins of the region’s heritage, while providing the opportunity to interaction through art, food, enjoyment and educational experiences.
In the meantime, the Shepparton Art Museum is business as usual as it continues to present an exciting range of exhibitions and programs that engage audiences.
If you are keen to know more, or think you might have time and skills to spare, please contact Katie Zeller at SAM on 5832 9861.
New SAM Showcase features ‘slow art’ ceramics
12 August 2019
Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) is delighted to partner with Craft Victoria to present Melbourne-based ceramicist Zhu Ohmu in its Showcase #23 from Wednesday 14 August to Wednesday 6 November 2019.
Showcase #23 will feature a completely new body of work titled Way To Your Heart.
Originally from New Zealand, Rose Wei graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) in 2012 and now works in Melbourne under the pseudonym Zhu Ohmu.
Ohmu’s works are built through stacking, folding, pressing and pulling; these actions are often dictated by the weight of moist clay. Forms emerge intuitively and seem to ebb and flow, often pushed to their structural limits. Unlike a printer, the artist can detect the slightest change in the properties of the clay body under different environmental conditions.
This embodied knowledge of plasticity and workability, only gained by spending time with the physical material, allows the artist to work with and manipulate the clay. In the absence of a mechanical process, no two vessels can be the same. This project is a celebration of the artist’s hand in the age of automation.
Ohmu’s coiled pieces investigate the resurgence of the handmade and the ethics of slowness in an age of mass production. Through the SAM Showcase, she explores the entangled relationship between human and non-human ecologies in the current geological age.
The initial concept for Zhu Ohmu’s vessels was a response to the rise in popularity of 3D printed ceramics. Corresponding to biomimicry – the imitation of systems of nature – the artist wanted to explore how forms would emerge if she used her hands to mimic the way a 3D printer operates through extrusion.
Pieces are available for purchase, as with all SAM Showcase items, or if you want to learn more and immerse yourself in art-making, Ohmu is also leading a public workshop where participants can create their own Amoebic Planter using hand-building techniques.
The Craft x SAM Showcase is a curated program of exhibitions in partnership with Craft Victoria and Shepparton Art Museum.
Showcase #23: Zhu Ohmu
Date: 13 August – 6 November 2019
Location: SAM showcase display – at the entrance to SAM
Cost: FREE, pieces available for purchase
Workshops
SAM Monthly Makers: A fine cut; Zhu Ohmu
Saturday 24 August from 10:30am to 12:00pm
Paper-cutting workshop, 7-15 yr olds
Price: $15
Bookings: Eventbrite.
Amoebic Planter Workshop for adults; Zhu Ohmu
Saturday 24 August from 3:30pm to 5:30pm
Create your own hand-built funky planter
Regular: $45
Friends of SAM: $40
Bookings: Eventbrite.