Workshop Preferences

Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) has a two stage enrolment process for Workshops 2 - 5.

  • Stage 1: Students enrol via Enrolment Online into Workshop course codes.
  • Stage 2: Students submit Workshop preferences through myTimetable. 

Workshops for second and third year are are offered under the following course codes in semester 1:

  • Workshop 3 VART 3651 - 2nd year students
  • Workshop 5 VART 3653 - 3rd year students

Important Notes:

  • Workshop classes are 12 credit point courses and require 3 contact hours per week + associated learner directed hours.
  • You cannot repeat any class in your preference lists.
  • 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.
  • Refer to RMIT Timetable website for deadlines and details around preference process.

Course Information

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

Offering Studio & Studio Lead/Coordinator

  • AHTC – Clare McCracken
  • Ceramics – Kris Coad
  • Drawing – Greg Creek
  • Gold & Silversmithing – Mark Edgoose
  • Painting – Peter Ellis
  • Photography (BP117) course – Alan Hill
  • Print – Richard Harding
  • Sculpture – Fleur Summers
  • Video – Greg Creek
  • Program Course – Martine Corompt

Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison, What we saw out walking (I) 2021, Digital Zine

Artist's Books

  • Jazmina Cininas
  • Louise Jennison
  • Friday 9.30am-12.30pm
  • Online
This course will be delivered entirely online. Classes will consist of lectures as well as live and pre-recorded demonstrations, workshops, peer-to-peer learning, individual tutorials and independent study. You will be introduced to a range of bookbinding techniques from simple folded zines through to stab binding and multiple-signature hard cover binding. Projects are designed to develop your technical skills and also to expand your understanding of the possibilities for the book as a vehicle for artistic expression. As such, each project will require you to develop content for your book and consider its relationship to the construction of your book. 

RICK AMOR RUNNING MAN, 1989, NGV COLLECTION MARGARET STEWART ENDOWMENT, 1991
© RICK AMOR/LICENSED BY COPYRIGHT AGENCY, AUSTRALIA

Bronze Foundry

  • Simon Perry
  • Simon Perry
  • Friday 9.30am-12.30pm
  • 37.01.07

In this course you will develop practical skills across a range of processes and materials commonly used in sculptural practice in the bronze foundry. You will be introduced to methods and materials involved in lost wax casting in order to make small bronze works. This method involves the completion of a series of steps from wax modelling, plaster and sand investments, melting and pouring bronze, finishing and patination. You will undertake these steps in sequence and as a group and this will require hands-on attendance at all classes. The course is mainly practical but with appropriate tutorial presentations covering theoretical and relevant historical background.

Christina Ramberg, Glamour Guide, 1973, Acrylic on Masonite

Contemporary Figuration

  • Peter Ellis
  • Steven Rendall
  • Friday 9:30am – 12:30pm
  • 02.04.04
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. Visual lectures, individual and group tutorials, field trips, and demonstrations complement this workshop. 

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

Drawing & Body

  • Irene Barberis
  • Irene Barberis
  • Friday 1.30pm – 4.30pm
  • 04.05.05

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 vessel, sign and as site of meaning. It includes life drawing and general drawing approaches, as well as ideas of embodiment and experience. 

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 & Fieldwork

  • Ben Sheppard
  • Ben Sheppard
  • Friday 1:30pm – 4:30pm
  • 04.05.05

In this workshop course you will explore uses of drawing relevant in contemporary art practice ranging across picture making and narrative, fieldwork and environment, embodied, 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. 

Artist: Erin Bussell / Photographer: Michael Quinlan.

Experimental Clay Materiality

  • Kris Coad
  • Jennifer Conroy Smith
  • Friday 9.30am-12.30pm
  • 06.02.01

An experimental approach to key ceramic materials in glaze formulation and their role in the development of unique surfaces. How extraneous factors such as found materials, kiln atmosphere, clay bodies and methods of application can promote unexpected outcomes.

KO-JOU TIFFANY CHEN, Year 3 2019

Metal Malleability and Form 

  • Mark Edgoose
  • Mark Edgoose
  • Friday: 1.30pm – 4.30pm
  • TBC
In this workshop you will focus on the fabrication of small metal objects and jewellery. You will investigate ways to work with semi-precious metal alloys. Metal has remarkable properties that can be worked with various methods and tools. You will work with metals such as brass, copper, silver and steel which will be hammered, folded, cut, formed and joined, to learn and explore metal forms. Techniques will include small scale metal fabrication, such as sawing, filing, sinking, doming, soldering, folding, curving and construction. To parallel and inform studio production, you will explore a conceptual and experimental approach to form making through drawing and model making.

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

Painting: Contemporary Practices

  • Peter Ellis
  • Saffron Newry
  • Friday 1:30pm – 4:30pm
  • 02.03.04
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.

Justene Williams, The Worker (Costume from Victory Over the Sun), 2016, Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney

Performance Art

  • Mikala Dwyer
  • Mikala Dwyer & Guest Teachers
  • Friday 9.30am – 12.30pm
  • TBC
  • Open to all students
Have you ever wanted to experiment with the possibilities of Performance? In what ways can the elements of liveness, time, physical movement, or impermanence be incorporated into your art practice? How can the actions of artists and/or their audience be considered as a creative tool? Performance can be understood as a way of engaging directly with the social world, the audience, the specifics of a space, and the politics of identity. Through a series of lectures, provocations, group discussions and collaborative activities, this workshop will guide you through different strategies (interventions, body as sculpture, performed mark making for example) to help you build confidence and understanding of a performative practice and its documentation. 

Deborah Williams, Sudden disturbance, 2021, photographic etching and roulette, dimensions 14.5 x 14.5, edition 6. Image courtesy of Artist

Photographic Etching: From unique to multiple

  • Richard Harding
  • Deborah Williams
  • Friday 1.30pm – 4.30pm
  • 49.02.04
  • Open to all students
In this course, you will deepen your understanding of analogue and digital technologies focusing on intaglio etching, with an emphasis on incorporating imagery photographically employing various processes. Lectures and workshops will provide a mixture of theory and technical skills enabling you to produce artworks 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. 

OLAFUR ELIASSON, BEAUTY, 1993 SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART,

Projection Light and Optics 

  • Greg Creek
  • Greg Creek
  • Friday 1.30pm – 4.30pm
  • 04.02.03
In this course you will explore the possibilities of light, lighting and projection, experimenting with old and new projection technologies such as the Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida, overhead projection, contemporary digital projection and film/video lighting kits both as a developmental tool for making art and a mode of display. 

Rosslynd Piggott, High bed 1998 (NGA)

Soft Sculpture

  • Fleur Summers
  • Fleur Summers
  • Friday 1:30pm – 4:30pm
  • 37.01.07
This course focuses on the possibilities of making soft sculpture within a contemporary art framework. Students will undertake a series of short workshops which introduce a variety of conceptual and technical skills including basic pattern making, working with scale, hand and machine sewing, armature construction and the use of ready-mades. These skills will be contextualised by the works of a range of artists from Louise Bourgeois and Yayoi Kusama to Australian artists Brooke Andrew and Kate Just. Students will develop their own works using a range of pliable materials and are expected to develop new experimental approaches and definitions in the production of soft sculpture. 

Amanda Wolf, Psst, Video still (detail), 2020. Image courtesy of the artist.

Video & Sound Workshop 1

  • Greg Creek
  • Greg Creek
  • Friday 9.30am – 12.30pm
  • 04.02.06

This is a first year workshop open to second and third year students. This course will introduce you to the techniques of Video & Sound. You will engage with processes, tools, technologies and materials and focus on acquiring the skills required to make time-based art works. This workshop will inform your practical studio investigations through a series of projects. You will also develop capacities to critically reflect upon, analyse and apply the technologies and processes within your specialised studio by considering the fundamental principles and elements of art. 

Course covers:
Digital Editing 
Camera operation 
Sound recording/editing 
Post-production 
Animation