Shepparton Art Museum

The Golden Age of Colour Prints: Ukiyo-e is drawn from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, one of the most significant collections of Japanese prints in the world. Focusing on what is known as the golden age of nishiki-e colour prints, the Tenmei and Kansei eras (1781-1801), it showcases 96 ukiyo-e prints and offers a rare opportunity for visitors to appreciate the gorgeous colour aesthetic that is the essence of nishiki-e, or ukiyo-e printed in multiple colours.

The exhibition focuses on the art of three master printmakers who were key innovators in the medium: Torii Kiyonaga, Kitagawa Utamaro and Toshusai Sharaku. At the time they were produced, the images were considered to be crude and unsophisticated, and for popular consumption. The superficial world of beauty and entertainment, of the pleasure quarter and the theatre were considered to be both remote from everyday life and not appropriate subjects for art. However the art form rose to great popularity in the metropolitan culture of Tokyo during the second half of the 17th century and has had a powerful and enduring influence on Western art.

Cost
Adults $12
Concession and Friends of SAM $8
Family (2 adults + 2 children) $28
Secondary and primary school group bookings $6 per student (children under 5 years free)
Greater Shepparton residents may visit free on Tuesdays

To purchase tickets, please visit the Riverlinks Box Office at the Eastbank Centre or phone (03) 5832 9511. You may also purchase tickets online here.  

EVENTS

Educators’ Preview
Joan Wright, Bettina Burr Conservator, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Wednesday 6 March 2013, 4.30pm

Visual Art, Design and the Golden Age: A Presentation for VCE Students
Wayne Crothers, Curator Asian Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Emma Shin, Artist specialising in wood block prints and Josh Durham, Freelance Designer
Wednesday 13 March 2013, 2pm

SAM Out Late! March
Dr Gary Hickey, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland
Thursday 21 March 2013, 6pm

SAM Out Late! May
Brent Harris, Artist
Thursday 16 May 2013, 6pm

The Golden Age Dinner by Tony Twitchett, Executive Chef, Taxi Restaurant Melbourne

Following the opening party of The Golden Age of Colour Prints: Ukiyo-e from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, SAM in partnership with Eastbank Food is offering an exclusive opportunity to enjoy the incredible food of Tony Twitchett; Executive Chef of Japanese Restaurant Taxi in Melbourne. You can walk straight from the cocktail party/exhibition opening to your table in the Eastbank Centre. Tony will present a five-course menu inspired by Tokyo in the prosperous Edo period, the time which saw the emergence of Ukiyo-e multi-colour printmaking. For a night of art and food you will never forget, book now as seats are limited. Click here for more information on this event, including details of the five course menu.

Image: The Chofu Jewel River (Chofu no Tamagawa), Utagawa Toyokuni I (Japanese, 1769–1825), publisher: Izumiya Ichibei (Kansendo) (Japanese), Japanese, Edo period, about 1795–1801 (late Kansei era), woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper. William Sturgis Bigelow Collection 11.24991, image 2012 © Museum Fine Arts, Boston

Curated by Tina Lee

This exhibition chronicles the significant influence of Japanese ceramics on Australian studio potters throughout the 20th century. The works demonstrate a plethora of responses to traditional Japanese ceramic art through the interpretation of the Japanese tea ceremony, folk craft (Mingei), aesthetics, design, historical glazes and wood firing techniques. The works reflect the tremendous influence of Bernard Leach's The Potters Book, published in 1940, which introduced Australian ceramicists to Japanese ceramics and a new way of thinking about their craft. In addition, the works in this exhibition explore major influential developments including wood firing techniques, Raku, stoneware glazes, porcelain and the Japanese avant-garde collective, The Sodeisha Group.

Event
SAM Out Late! Thursday 18 April 2013, 6pm
Tina Lee, Curator, presents a floor talk about the exhibition

Image: Shigeo Shiga
Bottle 1976
porcelain, 24.2 x 26 cm
Shepparton Art Museum, gift of the Victorian Ministry for the Arts, 1987
photograph: Amina Barolli © the artist

Michael Camakaris is a Melbourne-based artist, who draws inspiration from safari animals, ornithology and portraiture in his strongly coloured and dramatic paintings and drawings.
Art Projects Australia is a not-for-profit Melbourne organisation founded in 1974 that supports artists with intellectual disabilities, promoting their work and advocating for inclusion within contemporary art practice.
The Drawing Wall #11 will run open on Friday 3 May and run until Sunday 28 July in the Eastbank Centre Foyer. It will be installed by the artist from Monday 29 April to Friday 3 May.

Occasional Miracles presents new work by contemporary artists in response to Shepparton Art Museum's vast collection of Australian and international ceramics. Begun in 1965 with the acquisition of a simple coil pot, the museum's ceramic collection is rich and idiosyncratic, including convict-era pottery, an archive of commercially produced domestic ware, studio ceramics from the 1920s onward and contemporary art.

Occasional Miracles pairs contemporary artists working in painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, installation, video art and pottery with ceramic objects and art from the collection. The exhibition raises critical questions about how and why a museum collects, negotiates conceptual boundaries between art, craft and artefact, and provides new contexts, readings and possibilities for ceramic practice, and the objects, histories and traditions represented in the SAM collection.

Event
SAM Out Late! Thursday 18 February 2013, 6pm
In conversation with Curator Elise Routledge

Image: Emma White
Still Life with Objects 2011
archival inkjet print on Eterna Elite paper, 93 x 113 cm
image courtesy the artist and BREENSPACE, Sydney © the artist

Speaking in Colour showcases for the first time the beautiful collection of indigenous Australian art put together by Carrillo and Ziyin Gantner. The exhibition features paintings from the Central Desert, barks from Arnhem Land, and works from the north of Western Australia and Queensland. In addition, two special rooms focusing on particular passions: watercolour works by Albert Namatjira, his children and others in the Hermannsburg school, and paintings by Western Australian artist Julie Dowling.

The exhibition provides a wonderful insight into a wide range of approaches to the use of colour in the expression of connection to country and in telling the important stories that emanate from the land. Carrillo Gantner began his personal collection in the 1970s. In the mid 1990s he and his uncle Baillieu Myer AC put together an important collection of indigenous art that toured in 1999 to three major United States galleries including the de Young Museum, San Francisco, and subsequently to Japan and China. This collection was published in the book Spirit Country (1999) by Jennifer Isaacs and was subsequently donated to Museum Victoria, Melbourne.

Event
SAM Out Late! Thursday 20 June 2013, 6pm
In conversation with Carrillo Gantner

Image: Harry J. Wedge
The Coming of the Serpent (detail) 2000
acrylic on watercolour paper, 70 x 99 cm
Collection of Carrillo and Ziyin Gantner
photograph: Andrew Curtis © the artist

Elfin porcelain ladders, a gigantic monstrous eye, miniature ceramic music boxes, sculptural maquettes and pocketsized paintings sit side-by-side in this fantastical journey through the SAM collection.

Tall Tales unearths the curiously small and enormous artworks from the museum's extensive collection of ceramics, paintings, works on paper, sculpture and contemporary art. Inspired by the ideas of Susan Stewart in her critical text On
Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (1993), Tall Tales examines how we relate to big things and little things, and reflects upon the fascinating and absurd relationships we build with objects through stories and imagination.

Featuring work by Brook Andrew, Benjamin Armstrong, Stanislav Halpern, Lorraine Jenyns, Sir John Longstaff, Caroline Rothwell, Alexandra Standen, Stefan Szonyi and more.

Event
SAM Out Late! Thursday 18 July 2013, 6pm
Curator Elise Routledge presents Tall Tales

Image: Benjamin Armstrong
Hold Everything Dear III 2009
fabric, blown-glass, wax and wood, 83 x 99 x 302 cm
Shepparton Art Museum, purchased 2011
image courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne © the artist

Following on from the success of Sam Jinks: Body in Time in 2012, SAM continues to present survey exhibitions by some of Australia's most exciting young artists. Kate Murphy is a Sydney-based artist working in the medium of video. Employing documentary traditions, Kate Murphy's ambitious video installations reveal the fragile, complex, tragic and humorous inner-lives of her subjects. Kate Murphy: Probable Portraits traces the artist's interest in private thought versus public revelation, the validity of pop culture and the significance of family in our lives.

Installed across the ground floor exhibition space at SAM, this exhibition presents a series of video works including the artist's moving portrait of a mother's relationship with her children in Prayers of a Mother (1999); Britney Love (2000 and 2007) documenting an aspiring child pop star's journey into adulthood, and the bleakly funny and moving self portrait, Cry Me a Future (Dublin) (2006).

Event
SAM Out Late! Thursday 20 September 2013, 6pm
Curator's talk by Elise Routledge

Image: Kate Murphy
Prayers of a Mother 1999
digital video still (detail), five channel video installation, single channel sound, 14 mins 27 sec
Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) Collection
image courtesy of the artist and BREENSPACE, Sydney © the artist

Since its reopening, SAM has acquired a large number of artworks through purchase and gift by private donors and collectors. SAM's collection is developing rapidly in strength, significance and value and it is our goal to provide as much access to the collection within the confines of our current building as possible.

This exhibition is an opportunity to celebrate the extraordinary generosity of our donors, the dedication of SAM's Collection Advisory Committee and the wonderful and thought provoking work of artists whose work is entering the collection for the first time.

Collection Injection provides an opportunity for reflection on the direction and focus areas of SAM's collection and will be utilised in the creation of education resources for school teachers and students.

Event
SAM Out Late! Thursday 21 November 2013, 6pm
Director Kirsten Paisley speaks about SAM’s collection

Image: Brent Harris
The Prophet 2012
oil on canvas, 240 x 160 cm
Shepparton Art Museum, purchased with assistance from the Robert Salzer Foundation Acquisition Fund, 2012
image courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne © the artist

Friends Forever
Every year the Friends of the Shepparton Art Museum are celebrated with a special group exhibition of work made across all artistic media by individual members, showcasing the strength, diversity and commitment of local artists and supporters of SAM.

The Art Room
The Art Room showcases student works by secondary school students in the Goulburn Valley. The exhibition is the result of SAM education projects delivered in partnership with The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.

Image: Glenda Cornell
Very Bright in Autumn 2012
watercolour on canvas, 100 x 90 cm
photograph: Amina Barolli © the artist

SAM Permanent Collection

The redevelopment of the Art Museum included the construction of six new collection galleries across the first floor. The new spaces have been specifically designed to showcase the strengths of the collection and provide themed rooms that highlight the breadth and depth of SAM's holdings while allowing a far greater proportion of the collection to be displayed at any one time.

Historically SAM's collections have been exhibited separately, with ceramics on the ground floor and important paintings on the first. Conversely, the new hang integrates the collections, enabling them to provide context to each other and
for ideas to be explored across mediums. For example, John Perceval and Arthur Boyd's painting and works on paper are exhibited alongside their ceramics for the first time, providing insight into the intersections between the development
of ceramic art forms and Australian art more broadly. The Collection exhibition also features historical paintings (including work by Fred Williams, Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin), contemporary art in all media (including work by Aleks Danko, Patricia Piccinini, Tracey Moffatt and Sam Jinks), together with a display focussing on highlights of 100 years of Australian ceramics.