SC@M art workshop series
This year, the Student Conservators @ Melbourne (SC@M) Committee was awarded a grant by the Graduate Students Association, enabling us to hold a series of one-day workshops. Aimed at both our cohort and students from other arts-focused faculties, the workshops are designed to develop networks between fellow graduate students, as well as for us to gain confidence in handling materials, and learn from artists and industry professionals.
We’ve been lucky to learn from some of the industry’s best, with each free workshop having a theme and involving two halves: artistic and conservation focussed. Our first workshop was about ceramics. Leading artist and conservator Penny Byrne and ceramicist Chela Edmunds of Takeawei led us as students wielded clay, a hammer and Paraloid B-72 to build clay vessels and consolidate broken porcelain tiles. The painting workshop had international paintings conservator Sabine Cotte and contemporary artist Kez Hughes show us the art of infilling, inpainting and colour theory. Working with both oils and acrylics we tried our hand at these colourful and definitely tricky skills! Workshops for Paper and Textiles are planned for the remainder of 2017, with the 40 places booking out almost as soon as they are released.
The SC@M Committee will be presenting at this year’s AICCM conference in Katoomba, so we look forwards to meeting more of our future colleagues in November.
Laura Gransbury and Lisa Mansfield
President and Treasurer of SC@M
All photos by Kat Watson