2021 Re-assemble Art Education Conference 

Online Presentions and in-person Workshops

 

22 Oct 2021 (Online) & 19 March 2022 (in-person)

 

We are so excited to announce we are re-assembling in-person and online to deliver a hybrid event. In partnership with RMIT University School of Art, the hands-on workshops will take place at the RMIT’s city campus on Saturday 19 March 2022. The online program is avilable now. Join ArtEdVic and your peers in a dynamic interactive online and in-person program rich in learning and development.

Our online program (available now) includes recordings of keynote speakers Beci Orpin and Mikala Dwyer, Future U exhibition co-curator Jonathon Duckworth and Fiona Hillary who discusses contemporary public practices in the field. There are opportunities to use our amazing Conference platform to network with peers and engage in discussion forums/tracks for focused conversations.

Our in-person program (19 March 2022) will include breakout sessions including a Think-Tank session led by Martine Corompt, Video with Sonia Leber, Augmented Reality with Troy Innocent, materials based workshops with Eckersley’s, Visual Thinking Strategies with Carly Grace, Sculpture with Fleur Summers, Drawing with Greg Creek , Gold&Silversmithing with Mark Edgoose and Artists books with Hannah Caprice. There will be opportunities to network and connect with your peers in-person.

 

Re-assemble Art Education Conference aspires to elevate your skills as Art Educators to inspire you, connect you with peers and empower you in the art-room to enhance student learning.

 

Session details are listed below:

Keynote Speaker – online
 

Beci Orpin

Beci Orpin

Beci Orpin artwork

Creativity and working outside the box
Beci Orpin – Designer, Illustrator and Maker


Beci will share her personal journey from her alternative political upbringing to uni drop out to her commercial success, and everything in between. With experimentation, sharing of ideas and realistic positivity at the forefront of her work, Beci will discuss how she balances this with both her freelance clients and personal work, and also how her creative process (and in particular the use of her sketchbooks) lends itself to both. She will also share her unique take on creativity, and how not fitting into any box has worked for her.


Beci Orpin is a creative practitioner based in Melbourne, Australia. Her work occupies a space between illustration, design and craft. Beci has run her studio for over 20 years, catering to a wide range of clients including Facebook, Disney, Google and Uniqlo. Beci also exhibits her work both locally and internationally. She has authored and illustrated four D.I.Y books and four children’s titles. Her work is described as colourful, graphic, bold, feminine and dream-like, and she has been referred to as a ‘national treasure’. Beci completed her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Textiles at RMIT University.

Keynote Speaker – online
 

Mikaela Dwyer

Mikala Dwyer

Mikala Dwyer Earthcraft 2019

A practice of not knowing and knowing
Mikala Dwyer – Artist


In this keynote presentation Mikala will discuss her own journey through various education systems and why she believes art is in itself an education, and one that has the potential to support the survival of life-forms besides our own. Known for her idiosyncratic and evocative sculptural installations, Mikala will share her personal stories including having dyslexia and how she has navigated the education system and artworld. Mikala will share insights into her early work to her most recent work showing at MUMA and how this work explores the effects of ecological change, what might be lost and the need to close the gap between Indigenous and Western knowledge systems and land management. Art can be a carrier of knowledge, mythologies and cultures across time. We see the immense and profound knowledge of kin and country carried through indigenous dance, song, painting and objects across millennia. All art can hold knowledge in ways that other things can’t.


Mikala Dwyer has pushed the limits of sculpture, painting and performance, establishing herself as one of Australia’s most important contemporary artists. She has been honoured with solo survey exhibitions at the Art Gallery of NSW, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, as well as at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, ACCA in Melbourne, and the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane. She has had many international exhibitions and several residencies and has received numerous scholarships, grants and awards. 

Breakout – Think Tank – in-person
 

Martine Corompt

Martine Corompt

Martine Corompt Art

Think-Tank
Arts industry and education – reshaping and future thinking


Join interdisciplinary artist Martine Corompt and panel in a Think-Tank breakout session exploring the role of art in our evolving society. How is our Arts Industry changing and what does this mean for education? We know that art has never been more important but how do we respond to an ever-changing landscape that is both exciting and challenging? Contribute to the conversation where you have your say and where we share the learnings beyond the conference context.
Panel members:

* Dr Martine Corompt – Program Manager Bachelor of Fine Art RMIT
* Dr Kelly Hussey Smith – Lecturer in photography and a co-leader of CAST Contemporary Art and Social
Transformation Research group


Martine Corompt is the Program Manager of the Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) in the School of Art RMIT and specializes in interdisciplinary art practices including Video, Sound, Animation and expanded media installation. Since 1995 Martine has exhibited widely in individual and group exhibitions, locally, nationally and internationally including works such as Torrent exhibited at Contemporary Art Tasmania and the Centre for Contemporary Photography 2015 and Tide exhibited at Westspace gallery 2012. Subjects such as the reductive representation of bodies of water and the natural and unnatural landscape contributed to theme of her PhD research project titled: Cartoon and the Cult of Reduction completed at the VCA Melbourne University in 2017.

Breakout – Visual Thinking Strategies – in-person
 

VTS image in Gallery

Carly Grace

 

Uncanny Valley, Beautiful the World, 2020 video still

What’s going on in Future U?
Carly Grace – Visual Thinking Strategies Facilitator


This interactive workshop will include guided practical Visual Thinking Strategies sessions in RMIT’s Gallery exhibition, Future U, where participants will gain insights into VTS methodology. This will be followed by a conversation about the power of authentic art experiences to foster our students’ flexible thinking and resilience. VTS is a powerful and exciting student-centred teaching pedagogy that promotes Visual Literacy. VTS discussions provide a space for our students to practise respectful, democratic and collaborative problem-solving. VTS nurtures emotional and social intelligence and builds students’ confidence and willingness to participate in group thinking and discussion. These skills and abilities are essential for our students in the 21st century.


Carly Grace is an artist and visual arts educator based in Melbourne, Australia. She specialises in interpretation education and has an extensive experience in designing and delivering diverse education and public programs within museums, community arts and diverse educational settings. Carly is an experienced Visual Thinking Strategies facilitator passionate about introducing Australian teachers to VTS. Carly’s philosophy for visual arts’ education is to connect people with the opportunities that art making and engagement in art culture can have in enriching their lives.

Image credit: Uncanny Valley, Beautiful the World, 2020, video still.  Acknowledgements to Julia Zemiro.

Breakout – Artist Led | Interactive AR – in-person
 

Troy Innocent

Troy Innocent

Troy Innocent

 

See through new eyes…
Troy Innocent – Artist, Game Designer & Urban Play Scholar


In this workshop participants will be introduced to ways of making urban play with augmented reality and led through an exploration and demonstration of 64 Ways of Being on location at RMIT campus. While digital games have led to a recent focus on the technology of game development in education, seeing the world through a playful lens also opens up a broader range of creative methodologies inspired by play – in the arts, in design, and in the world. Mobile technologies such as augmented reality situate people within new experiences of place and space, allowing us to remake, reimagine and reconnect with the world around us. 64 Ways of Being puts these ideas into practice, bringing together live art, game design and public art. People and place are connected at 64 locations across the city via augmented reality encounters capturing different ways of being. These experiences re-imagine Melbourne’s identity as expressed through its creative, linguistic, cultural, social and urban diversity.
Materials: please bring your fully-charged phone.


Troy Innocent is an urban play scholar and creator of 64 Ways of Being, a mobile platform for experiences blending live art, game design and public art. Based at RMIT University, his work connects digital media poetics, creative code, visual language, mixed realities and playable cities. Innocent develops augmented reality games that blend physical objects with digital interfaces to reimagine everyday urban environments in playful ways; situating his work in Melbourne, Bristol, Barcelona, Istanbul, Ogaki, Sydney, Singapore and Hong Kong. Working with the city as a material, his practice explores ways of being that reimagine, reconfigure and reconnect with the world.

 

Breakout – Artist Led | Video – in-person
 

Sonia Leber

Sonia Leber

Leber_Chesworth_Universal

 

Video installations: the non-singularity of multi-screens
Sonia Leber – Artist 


One way that video art differs fundamentally from the cinema is in its embrace of multi-screen video installations, where screens are simply placed side by side, or carefully distributed across a gallery space. In this workshop we will discover different ways of building up multi-screen projects by investigating how different moving image relationships can be established across rhythms and energies, parallel views, and conceptual mirroring. We will consider what happens when ideas and screens combine and coalesce: the potentialities and the pitfalls. We will work towards using our own mobile phones to collaboratively build up a series of thematic multi-screen video installations.
Materials: please bring your fully-charged phone.


Sonia Leber is known for her distinctive installation artworks, using video, sound, architecture and public participation. Her practice draws on cinematic methods (sonic and visual) to build up highly detailed and conceptual videoworks that emerge from the real, but exist significantly in the realm of the imaginary. In collaboration with David Chesworth, exhibitions include 56th Biennale of Venice (2015); 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014); ‘Freedom of Sleep’, Fondation Fiminco, Paris (2021); ‘What Listening Knows’, Messums Wiltshire, UK (2021); ‘The State We Are In’, Galeria Labirynt, Poland (2018); ‘And Tomorrow And’, Index, Stockholm (2018); ‘The Score’, Ian Potter Museum of Art (2017); ‘Call of the Avant-Garde’, Heide (2017); ‘Borders, Barriers, Walls’, MUMA, Melbourne (2016); and ‘Melbourne Now’, NGV (2013-14). Their survey exhibition ‘Architecture Makes Us’, curated by CCP in Melbourne (2018) toured to UNSW Galleries, Sydney (2019) and Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane (2019).

Sonia Leber is a Senior Industry Fellow in the School of Art at RMIT University.
A full project history can be found at leberandchesworth.com 

Breakout – Artist Led | Collage – in-person
Beci Orpin Collage  

Paper on Paper/Collage
Beci Orpin


Beci will give a brief presentation specifically related to her collage work and use of sketchbooks before encouraging participants to share with each other effective ways to work with students to get the most out of using collage as a medium to make art and using sketchbooks for idea generation and planning. Learn the ins and outs of collage with Beci Orpin who will guide you through her methods and processes of making art with paper collage. You will experiment in mark-making as well as learn about various papers, glues, composition and colour. Included in the workshop is a take-home copy of Beci’s Paper Collage handbook.

Breakout – Artist Led | Sculpture – in-person

   

 

 

 

 

Fleur Summers

Sculpture with sugar cubes-plaster

Sculpture: Exploring Positive + Negative Space
Fleur Summers – RMIT Sculpture Studio


This workshop will explore positive and negative space using simple casting, plaster and sugar cubes. Participants will make a small geometric plaster work to take home.


Fleur Summers is the studio leader of the Sculpture Studio at RMIT University. She has experience in hand modeling and casting bronze for public art and her work can be seen at Jewell Station in Brunswick. She is also interested in installation, video and social practice.

 

Breakout – Artist Led | Artists’ Books – in-person
 

Hannah Caprice

Hannah Caprice

Hannah Caprice Animalgamations

 

 

Artists’ Books
Hannah Caprice – Artist           


In this workshop, you will learn how to make a simple stab-bound book measuring 14cm high and 19cm wide. You will learn how to tear and fold paper using a bone folder, cut and fold a cover, and stitch your pages together using waxed thread. We will also explore ways you can experiment with layering your pages using different types of paper, and we will discuss various book cover options.


Hannah Caprice is an emerging artist and graduate of RMIT’s Fine Art Printmaking program. She adores working with all things on paper and never ceases to be amazed with its extensive versatility and material qualities.

Hannah was awarded the 2020 APW Collie Print Trust Scholarship for Emerging Victorian Printmakers. She was a 2020 Studio Sponsored Resident at Baldessin Press, and most recently she received the Emerging Artist Award from Castlemaine Art Museum’s Experimental Print Prize exhibition. When she’s not scraping away at copper plates, she works as a visual art technician at a school in Melbourne’s inner east.

Image credit: Hannah Caprice – Artist Book, Animalgamations

Breakout – Artist Led | Drawing as Discovery
 

Greg Creek

 

 

 

 

 

Dr Greg Creek

RMIT Drawing Studio

 

 

 

 

 

Drawing as Discovery
Dr Greg Creek – RMIT Drawing Studio


The ‘Drawing as Discovery’ Workshop will present attendees with a hands-on experience of creative thinking through making. A cycle of drawing activities will demonstrate iterative approaches to creativity that demonstrate how to generate visual ideas and then synthesize them into new developmental and resolved artworks. These drawing workshop ideas can be used in various settings by teachers working with a range of students. All materials will be supplied.


Greg Creek is Studio Lead Drawing & Video and a practicing artist of 30 years’ experience creating large painting, drawing and installation projects. He has held group and individual exhibitions in Australia, Asia, the U.K. and Europe, and is represented by Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne.

Breakout – Artist Led | Gold and Silversmithing
Mark Edgoose

Dr Mark Edgoose

Gold and Silversmithing Studio

Gold and Silversmithing
Dr Mark Edgoose and Sam Mertens


In this workshop, you will explore variations in pattern and colour using simple everyday accessible tools in order to make a pair of earrings for you to take/wear home. All you need to bring is your creativity and energy, we supply the materials with a touch of alchemy. A selection of students’ work will be on display.


Mark Edgoose is studio Lead of Gold and Silversmithing and a practicing artist/craftsperson working at the intersections of craft, design and architecture fueled with an interest in both traditional and hi-tech materials. Dr Mark Edgoose has made a significant contribution to Australian object-making since 1989. A global expert in titanium, Mark’s material-driven research manifests in exhibitions that explore the form and metaphor of craft objects as they exist in space and time.

Breakout – Explore Materials workshop in-person
Expanding Foam Contemporary Sculptures with Expanding Foam
Dani Scaramuzzino (Eckersley’s Art & Craft)

In this materials-based workshop we will be exploring the use of expanding foam in a sculptural form and creating an artwork protruding off canvas. Expanding Foam reveals a very volatile yet fascinating nature and can be used in many ways and across subjects like PDT, VCD, Art and Studio Arts. This fascinating material can be layered and painted. Using the material is sort of like carving something down from a block of foam, but expanding foam offers a little more flexibility. Expanding foam is the ideal product for creating Statuesque, grotesque and quirky contemporary sculptures in all its organic beauty. Dani has over 20 years’ experience working in the arts and crafts industry and is a skilled experienced demonstrator of art and graphics materials including resin casting, acrylics and mediums, marker rendering and so much more. Dani also supports students and teachers with technical support within the visual arts education sector visiting schools all through Victoria and Tasmania.
Breakout – Explore Materials workshop in-person
Painting with Gouache Painting with Gouache
Dani Scaramuzzino (Eckersley’s Art & Craft)

Is it Gouachee, Goo-Ash or Gwash? This hands-on practical workshop will introduce you to the painting medium, Gouache. As Reeves Fine Artist Gouache Paints are water-based, they offer the flexibility to re-wet and re-work dried colour. This versatile medium is ideal for layering opaque colours or simply to make colour adjustments easily. Learn to paint a colourful fish with step-by-step instructions using only 5 colours of Reeves Gouache Paints. Create a variety of colours by mixing your 5 basic colours. This medium is ideal for commercial artists, for creating posters, illustrations, comics, and other design work. Also, the perfect medium for fashion, media, film and advertising. Due to its lovely matte finish it allows for accurate vibrant photographing.

Eckersley’s Art & Craft
* Visit the Eckersley’s stand to get your goodie bag full of art and craft materials

* See examples of what you can create with various different products.
* Pick up special offers and the Eckersley’s teacher discount card to use in store.
* Choose to go into the draw for the Mixed Media prize
* See above for art materials based workshops that Eckersley’s will be presenting
 

Piper Press

Piper Press a contemporary art book publisher is supporting the conference by providing a complimentary art book to all attendees on 19 March 2022!

WooHoo and thank- you Margaret and John  : )

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Eckersley's RMIT University

 

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