Contemporary Art on the Road + Home

Contemporary Art on the Road + Home is a professional development program founded to bring artists, art educators and teachers together to exchange ideas, share creative experiences and explore contemporary art and culture. The program has been designed to introduce teachers to a range of hands-on, expertly designed strategies and resources for teaching contemporary art in their classroom.

The first part of the program consists of formal presentations by educators from Gertrude Contemporary, Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) and Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA). It will provide insight into the 2018-19 artistic programs of the three organisations, enabling a deeper knowledge of contemporary arts, art practices and exhibitions. The morning session will also provide an opportunity for teachers to discuss and share ideas about contemporary art in relation to the Victorian Curriculum.

A presentation and hands-on workshop by Gertrude Studio Artist Mark Shorter will form the second part of the program. The workshop will explore how the written word finds form in art. The first half of the workshop will involve participants composing a love letter. Without revealing anyone’s identity the letters will then be broadcast into the world through a CB radio network set up in the gallery.

Mark Shorter is head of Sculpture and Spatial Practice at the Victoria College of Arts in the Faculty of Fine Art and Music, the University of Melbourne. He makes performances and installations that pull at the strings of gendered masculinity probing the myths and desires that shape our understanding of it. While he often performs as himself he also makes art through a variety of guises such as the hollow southern-styled gent, Renny Kodgers, the quixotic journeyman Tino La Bamba, and the time-travelling landscape painting critic Schleimgurgeln. These performance investigations express a contemporary grotesque and propose an art that is guttural, visceral and not beholden to the cerebral.

Shorter has exhibited internationally and throughout Australia. Significant exhibitions and performances include: Hello Stranger, Campbelltown Art Centre, 2018; 6m of Plinth, Artspace, Sydney 2016; Mapping La Mancha, The Physics Room, New Zealand 2015; The Groker, Plato’s Cave, EIDEA House 2015, New York; 50 Ways to Kill Renny Kodgers, Contemporary Art Tasmania, Hobart, 2014; Acts of Exposure, a survey of his Schleimgurgeln performance and video series, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, 2013; and Renny Kodgers LIVE with Pee Pee, presented as part of the Biennale of Sydney’s Superdeluxe@Artspace, 2010. From 2010 to 2012 he was the host of The Renny Kodgers Quiz Hour on Sydney radio station FBi 94.5FM.

Presenters: Siobhan Sloper (Gertrude Contemporary), Melissa Bedford (Monash University Museum of Art), Kathryn Hendy-Ekers (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority) and Gertrude Studio Artist Mark Shorter.

Contemporary Art on the Road + Home is funded by the Department of Education and Training Victoria through the Strategic Partnerships Program (SPP).

No cost, but bookings are essential

Or phone Siobhan Sloper on 03 9419 3406

Image: Spiros Panigirakis, Garden States, 2013