Workshops

The Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) has a two stage enrolment process. In stage one, you enrol via Enrolment Online into our courses for semesters one and two. Please check stage one is complete before proceeding. In stage two, you select your semester 1 classes for  Workshop via a preferencing process system.

This page will assist you with stage two of the enrolment process. Here you will find a list of potential semester 1 Workshop classes.

(Note: There is a separate page for Fine Art Studio classes and a separate page for ART: History+Theory+Cultures classes.)

You will only take one Workshop class in semester 1, but you need to list three (3) preferences. These workshops will be for both second and third year students and will be offered under the following course codes:

Workshop 3 VART 3651 (2nd year students)
Workshop 5 VART 3653 (3rd year students)

These are the course codes you enrolled into in stage one of the process.

Read the list below carefully and select three (3) Workshop classes you would be happy to take for semester 1. The 2021 preferencing process has been communicated to you by email.

The link to the preferencing form is here. The preference system is now open and will close at midnight on Sunday 13th December. You MUST be logged in to your student email only - ensure you are not logged in to any other email accounts when completing the form.

Late Preferencing: not completing the form by the due date and time will limit your choice to only classes with spaces available when myTimetable opens for changes on 16th February.

These Workshop classes are 12 credit point courses and will require 3 contact hours per week plus associated learner directed hours.

Please find link to the course guide VART3651 or VART3653.

IMPORTANT PLEASE NOTE: You must not repeat any class in your preference lists. Every effort will be made to place you in your first preference classes.

Although we would like to offer all of the Workshop options below, classes are subject to viability and may not run if numbers are too low.

Course Information

  • Course Coordinator
  • Teacher
  • Contact hours
  • Location
  • Open to all students

Offering Studio & Studio Lead/Coordinator

  • AHTC – Tammy Wong Hulbert
  • Ceramics – Kris Coad
  • Drawing – Greg Creek
  • Gold & Silversmithing – Nicholas Bastin
  • Painting – Peter Ellis
  • Photography (BP117) course – Alan Hill
  • Print – Richard Harding
  • Sculpture – Fleur Summers
  • Video – Greg Creek
  • Program Course – Martine Corompt

Jean-François Brochu, “Au bout du tunnel infini”

Animation - From Hand to Screen 

  • Greg Creek
  • Isobel Knowles, Madeleine Griffith
  • Tuesday 9.30am – 12.30pm
  • 04.02.06
  • Open to all students
Explore handmade animation processes incorporating drawing, mixed materials and found objects, with digital outcomes such as gif animation, 360 panoramas and short animated videos. Using traditional specialist animation tools such as frame by frame capturing, cameras, and the multiplane and silhouette animation bench, you will explore animation for the small screen, the big screen and everything in-between. 

Book as Art Object

  • Jazmina Cininas
  • Jazmina Cininas
  • Wednesday 1.30pm – 4.30pm
  • 100% Online with materials pickup/post out
  • Open to all students
The Book as Art Object Workshop has been designed to provide Fine Art students with an expanded understanding of the book as a vehicle for artistic expression, through exploring the relationship between binding method and content. In this class, you will explore the possibilities offered by the artist’s book for the presentation of visual information and ideas through expanded notions of the book. A broad range of book binding techniques incorporating both adhesive and non-adhesive book binding methods will be introduced in the workshop, supplemented by lectures, excursions and peer-to-peer learning that will help to advance concepts and content as you create your own original book-based art objects. 

Sarah Sze, Untitled (portable planetarium) 2009  
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Untitled_(Xe_Biennale_de_Lyon)_(4103279111).jpg) 

Collapsible Structures, Frames and Skins 

  • Fleur Summers
  • Fleur Summers
  • Tuesday 9.30am – 12.30pm
  • 37.01.07
  • Open to all students
In this course, students will explore processes and concepts surrounding open form sculpture and how these relate to construction, architecture and the natural world. Students will explore a range of materials for constructing sculptural frameworks with a focus initially on creating collapsible sculptural forms that can be dismantled and rebuilt. In the second part of the course, students will explore how temporary or permanent skins can be added to frameworks using a range of sculptural materials. 

Katherine Hubble, Jewel Beetle 2014

Colour on Surface and Object

  • Kirsten Haydon
  • Kirsten Haydon
  • Tuesday 1.30pm – 4.30pm
  • 2.1.03 & 2.1.04
  • Open to all students
In this workshop, students will focus on the concepts of applying colour to metal. This course is for all fine art students and looks at exploring how heat and metal can be utilised to create new enamel surfaces in fine art. Vitreous enamel are created using heat to fuse glass on metal and this outcome can provide jewel-like qualities and lustrous and layered colours and patterns over copper, silver and steel. Students will design and apply their own personal iconography to metal and enamel. Students will explore how to translate their ideas and drawings using vitreous enamels materials with processes such as stencilling, sifting, drawing, painting, foiling and graffito.  

Painting: Contemporary Figuration

  • Steven Rendall
  • Steven Rendall, Nadine Christensen
  • Tuesday 9.30am – 12.30pm
  • 02.04.04
  • Open to all students
In this studio based workshop you will investigate a diverse range of conceptual and technical aspects of figuration. Through a series of projects you will experience the human image and the broader framework of the real, the landscape, the natural world and the body. Using strategies such as observation, models, reproductions and film as source material you will develop an individual approach to contemporary figuration. 
You will investigate ideas of narrative, distortion, movement, emptiness, and trace as form and content, in a way that explores the unique place of figuration in contemporary art. This workshop will enable you to explore the relationship between painting, drawing, photography, social media and film. 
Research and experimentation is a core strategy of the workshop leading to a group of individual resolved artworks. 
This course is studio based and complemented by online learning,visual lectures, individual and group tutorials, field trips, and demonstrations complement this workshop. 

Karel Appel Moonbird, 1956. (Detail)

Oil on canvas 96.8 x 130.1 cm

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Felton Bequest, 1961

Photo – Peter Ellis

Contemporary Practices

  • Peter Ellis
  • Safron Newy
  • Tuesday 1.30pm – 4:30pm
  • 02.03.04
  • Open to all students

In this workshop, you will experience painting’s vital energy through a range of projects that investigate the concepts, strategies and processes used by painters to generate work. You will experience research methods to discover content including visual images and associated literature to inform your work. You will develop advanced strategies to identify and evaluate content and material practices leading to a sustainable individual studio practice. 

You will further explore the relationship and importance of research to inform resolved work. 

A wide variety of conceptual and material process complement this workshop. 

The importance of experimentation, play, and chance will be explored to assist in generating your pictorial language. You will engage with process where the outcomes are not fully predetermined in advance. You will explore new and established material processes including the relationship of painting to photography, the painterly sublime, pop culture, and digital practices. 

Both abstract and figurative outcomes will focus on – composition, scale, use of colour, collage, surface, texture, gesture, opacity and transparency. 

You will experience a range of process and media including oil, acrylic, watercolour, gouache, works on paper and a variety of supports. This course is studio based, complemented by online learning, student presentations, demonstrations, visual lectures, individual and group tutorials and feedback in a supportive and stimulating environment. 

RUTH O’LEARY, FUCK DRESS, 2018, AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, INSTALLATION VIEW

Drawing & Body

  • Greg Creek
  • Irene Barberis-Page
  • Tuesday 1.30pm – 4.30pm
  • 04.05.05
  • Open to all students

In this workshop course you will explore drawing techniques of the body and approaches to perceiving and expressing the body in space, the body as political action, as vessel, sign and as site of meaning. 

You will investigate thematic and self-directed projects addressing self and personal vision within your emerging art practice through drawing and related practices that are relevant to a range of areas of study. 

MARLENE GILSON, WHAT IF, 2017

Drawing Concepts

  • Greg Creek
  • Ben Sheppard
  • Tuesday 1.30pm – 4.30pm
  • Online
  • Open to all students

Eplore uses of drawing relevant in contemporary art practice ranging across picture making, narrative and meaning, embodied and situated knowing and social practices. 

You will investigate thematic and self-directed projects that extend the consequences of drawing for your emerging practice developing your formal and conceptual understanding of drawing as a mode and tool of enquiry, research, collaboration and expression. 

Anni Hagberg 2020

Experimental Ceramics

  • Kris Coad
  • Jennifer Conroy
  • Tuesday 9.30am – 12.30pm
  • 06.02.01
  • Open to all students
In this course you will explore non-traditional approaches to working with clay as a way of generating ideas and concepts. You will explore a variety of clay bodies, with techniques and approaches spanning sculpture, site specific, installation, and ephemeral art practice. Projects will engage you through experimenting, exploring, and investigating, with a focus on practice and enquiry. You will research and test materials and techniques to guide your learning, observing, and documenting your explorations. A series of projects will guide your investigations, exploring unconventional approaches and develop your conceptual thinking, leading to an autonomous theoretical project to focus your practice.

Student on site, Tammy Hulbert

Internship

  • Philip Samartzis
  • Philip Samartzis
  • Variable Tuesdays 10:00am – 12:00pm, Weeks 1,2,3,6,12
  • Online
  • Open to all students

In this course, you will participate in an internship or artist in residence program in an arts or cultural organisation, company, festival, gallery, museum or studio, through dual negotiation with the industry and the School of Art. You will be expected to work as directed by the host organisation, to address and solve real issues in an arts industry workplace environment.

Ko-Jou Tiffany Chen, 2019

Metal Malleability and Form

  • Kirsten Haydon
  • Nicole Polentas
  • Tuesday 9:30am – 12:30pm
  • 2.1.03 & 2.1.04
  • Open to all students
In this workshop you will focus on the fabrication of jewellery and small metal objects. You will investigate ways to ideate and create art objects and jewellery in precious, semi-precious and metal alloys. Metals have remarkable properties and can be worked in various ways, depending on the type of metal and alloy. You will work with materials such as brass, copper, silver and steel which will be hammered, folded, cut, formed and joined, to learn and explore how you can expand on the conventional use of these materials in jewellery. Techniques will include small scale metal fabrication, such as sawing, filing, doming, soldering, metal borders, folding, curving, wire construction. To parallel and inform studio production, you will explore a conceptual and experimental approach to form making through collage and assemblage processes. 
Image credit: Max Klinger, 1920, Cast of artist’s hands, plaster, NGV Collection.

Image credit: Max Klinger, 1920, Cast of artist’s hands, plaster, NGV Collection.

Modelling and Casting

  • Simon Perry
  • Simon Perry
  • Tuesday 1.30pm – 4.30pm
  • 37.01.07
  • Open to all students
In this workshop, you will learn the techniques involved in modeling plastic sculptural materials such as clay, plasticine and wax. Alongside these skills, you will learn the fundamentals of mold making as a simple means of reproducing original work and found objects using plaster piece molds and flexible molds. You will also learn how to apply these skills to cast directly off the body and other larger objects in the constructed and natural environment in situ. Modeling and casting has a long history both in art and design and has many industrial applications. It facilitates the production of one-off original works and identical multiples. You will develop skills in this workshop that will enable you to produce editions of cast objects. This course will consist of demonstrations followed by individual instruction for each student. You will be asked to respond to a series of guided projects which will both help you to develop sculptural skills as well as make work that is relevant to your own interests.

Photographic Etching: From unique to multiple

  • Andrew Gunnell
  • Deborah Williams
  • Tuesday 2.30pm – 5.30pm
  • 49.02.18
  • Open to all students

In this course, you will further develop your understanding of analogue and digital technologies focusing on intaglio etching, with an emphasis on incorporating photographic imagery and processes. Lectures and workshops will provide a mixture of theory and technical skills enabling you to produce works and reflect on the role of traditional and electronic print media in contemporary art. This will help you to expand the aesthetic and conceptual possibilities of your art practice.

Jessica Lyons 2018

The Ceramic Surface

  • Kris Coad
  • Jennifer Conroy
  • Tuesdays 1.30pm – 4.30pm
  • 04.01.01
  • Open to all students
An experimental approach to key ceramic materials and techniques and their role in the development of unique surfaces. How extraneous factors such as found materials, glaze formulation, kiln atmosphere, clay bodies and methods of application can promote unexpected outcomes.