Contemporary Art on the Road – Shepparton Art Museum

Contemporary Art on the Road is a professional development program founded to bring artists, art educators and regional teachers together to exchange ideas, share creative experiences and explore contemporary art and culture. The program has been designed to introduce regional 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), Shepparton Art Museum 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 regional 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 Esther Stewart will form the second part of the program. Artists have and continue to use models as a way of developing and exploring ideas. Models have the capacity to articulate ideas quickly and generate new ideas. The process of creating models continually presents new possibilities for reconsidering how materials inherently behave. This workshop will focus on developing an artistic practice that interrogates sculptural concepts of scale, location and material to generate a deepening of studio processes and practices. The class will focus on the exploration of materials and their transition through scale as an informative process that enables for greater understanding of space. Participants will be guided through a series of investigations and demonstrations to produce concepts for a model.

Esther Stewart lives and works between Daylesford and Melbourne, Victoria. She holds a Master of Arts and Cultural Management from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (First Class Honours) in Sculpture and Spatial Practice from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne. Her recent solo exhibitions include How to Decorate a Dump, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne (2016); Behind Closed Doors, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney (2016); Display Home, the Act of Living, Firstdraft, Sydney, (2015); Timeshare, Station, Melbourne (2015); and Endless That’s the Problem, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne (2014). Recent group exhibitions include Painting. More Painting, Australian Centre of Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2016); Spring 1883, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Hotel Windsor, Melbourne (2016); Sir John Sulman Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2016); It’s only castles burning, Station, Melbourne (2016); The Aggregate and the Algorithm, Tristian Koenig, Melbourne (2014); Art Copenhagen, Denmark (2014); A Representation of Space, Víctor Lope Arte Contemporáneo, Barcelona, Spain (2014); and Never Never Land, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney (2014). In 2016 she was the recipient of the Sir John Sulman Prize for the work Flatland Dreaming. Stewart is represented by Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney.

Contemporary Art on the Road is an initiative developed by Gertrude Contemporary in partnership with Monash University Museum of Art, the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority and three regional Victorian galleries: Latrobe Regional Gallery, Horsham Regional Art Gallery and Shepparton Art Museum.

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

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

Or phone Siobhan Sloper on 03 9419 3406

Image: Esther Stewart, Flatland Dreaming, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Cottier Gallery.