1. Materials matter Engaging with the collection
Encounters
Materials matter
Engaging with the collection

2. The museum is an interactive space containing objects that offer emotional, aesthetic and educational experiences. Contemporary artists have used these collections in a multitude of ways, from invitations by the museum to unearth and animate objects in the collection, to drawing and cultural research. Through weekly visits to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery students will research and explore the knowledge that an object can contain. How is it framed? What story does it tell? What inspires or excites us? Critical and formal analysis skills will be developed to assist in learning to see beyond the obvious and the literal. Key instances of artwork and art writing will be explored to deepen an understanding of what a collection reveals about a culture. In this module students will choose an object for investigation to learn how to develop imagery and explore the potential of materials.
The module will also emphasise materiality as an integral aspect to consider when making art. What role does matter play in the meaning of an artwork? Does matter have agency in the making of an artwork and later in its presentation? Material engagement will be explored in studio work with students taken through processes of engaging with different materials and how this shifts or contributes to the meaning of an artwork.

3. Week 5: Focus Topic
Welcome to country
Start at Art School
Introduction to the broader concept:
You will encounter cultural artefacts,
materials, ideas and other cultures.
Go to TMAG
Encountering Tasmanian Aboriginal
culture through artefacts
Aboriginal artists working on their
own cultural materials
The issue of collections: what stories do they tell? Colonisation and renewal
Week 5 Workshop: understanding an object through drawing –slow observation- taking notes
Iterative process in drawing, taking an image through process, encountering materials, formal analysis, affective mark making

4. Week 6: Topic – New Materialism
textual analysis –Form, content, context – how describing arrives at meaning
Workshop (in TMAG): Observation: Write out from the artefact. Sit down and write about a chosen object – describe it – what are you learning from these descriptions? What type of writing are you doing? What job do you want it to do?
‘Compare and contrast works of art and design according to their form, content and context.’
Afternoon: ‘Drawing’ exercises: Discuss, analyse and use the key approaches of material, spatial, temporal practice in relation to your own work
Researching the object: Library and website skills – beyond google towards bibliography
‘Demonstrate an understanding of academic integrity and competency in academic referencing’

5. Week 7 Topic: Nature Culture
What does the museum reveal about
our attitudes to nature?
Where do we position ourselves,
as separate or integrated in a system
as part of nature?
Janet Laurence; Deep Breathing
(Resuscitation for the Reef)
Foraging and gathering: seek out 5 contextual links to the chosen artefact. ‘Context’ here is understood broadly – not just art. Why have these links been chosen? How are they relevant to the artefact?
Workshop: how to document the contextual links and why do it? i.e. the information required for someone else (or yourself at a later date) to be able to find the thing again.
Workshop: Going through translations through drawing to printmaking – what do new materials, new mark making systems have on the image and its reading?

6. Week 8 Topic: Innovating on History
How artists have researched the history contained within a museum and told a new story with it.
Brooke Andrews
Narelle Jubelin
Torres Strait Islanders
Hossein Valamanesh
Workshops: Writing as drawing: writing on paper including diagrams, collage, photographs…
Write a 600-word (max) description of an artefact.
Collect the description, 5 contextual links and rationale for the links in an ePortfolio presentation and submit for feedback