About this education resource This resource has been designed by Heide Education to complement the Visual Arts curriculum for middle to senior secondary years. The lesson plans included are structured to support: The Australian Curriculum; The Arts, and the Victorian Certificate of Education; Art, Studio Arts and Visual Communication Design. It has relevance to content descriptions in the Making and Responding strands that emphasise consideration of the broader contexts of artworks, such as the social, cultural and historical contexts and the role of the artist and audience. It presents a range of contemporary artworks that can be explored through applying the skills of analysis and aesthetic understanding. Year levels: 5 to 12 Topics: Contemporary Art, Sculpture and Photography Teachers are encouraged to use this resource as a guide, and adapt material as necessary to suit their individual students learning requirements. The PowerPoint slides include images and key information for display on an interactive whiteboard or via a laptop and data projector. In the notes section you will find information that provides background and greater context to support your teaching and for student learning in relation to the exhibition 21st Century Heide: The Collection Since 2000. Associated lesson plans and student worksheets to accompany this resource are available from the Heide website: www.heide.com.au/education/resources Look for: Heide Education - 21st Century Heide - Learning Materials.pdf

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About the exhibition 21st Century Heide: The Collection Since 2000 Saturday 28 March 2015 to Monday 14 June 2015 Curator: Linda Michael, Lesley Harding & Kendrah Morgan Venue: Heide I, II, III, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne Over 1500 artworks have been acquired by Heide since the turn of the century, from a small gem of a painting by Frank Hinder from the 1950s to a monumental installation by contemporary artist Kathy Temin. Becoming part of the museum’s collection largely through gift, bequest and donated funds, they demonstrate the generosity of donors and a positive response to Heide’s integration of modernist and contemporary art. Some acquisitions have entered the collection in response to recent Heide exhibitions, while others have been inspired by Heide's history and environment, as well as its renewed contemporary focus, including Siri Hayes’s and Kim Donaldson’s works, a site-specific painting by Mirka Mora and Callum Morton’s sculpture One to One. Think about What is a collection? What is the purpose of Heide’s collection? When acquiring work for the collection, the curators at Heide consider: • The artist’s representation in the collection • Condition, maintenance and storage requirements of the artwork • Current collecting priorities • The source of the artwork, including ownership, cultural significance and copyright status Acquisitions are objects such as artworks or archival materials that are purchased or obtained by the museum to add to the collection. Heide’s current collecting priorities are to expand the representation of living Australian artists, in the spirit of the Reeds’ support of the latest advances in contemporary art; to fill gaps in the representation of modernist art history, particularly as practised in Melbourne; and to commission new works for the sculpture park.

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While works from the collection are regularly shown in changing exhibitions in Heide I and Heide II, 21st Century Heide offers an opportunity across the entire Heide site to display a wider range of contemporary art, the focus of today’s collecting as it was in the time of the museum’s founders, John and Sunday Reed. Explore the history of Heide http://www.heide.com.au/about/the-heide-story/ How did John and Sunday Reed contribute to Australian art culture? Make a list of their achievements. Examine the collection http://www.heide.com.au/collection/about-the-collection/ What are Heide’s current collecting priorities?

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Discuss What is Contemporary Art and what is Modern Art? Are they the same? What are the differences? Define What is Modern Art? Write a definition using the information on the website: http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/what-is-modern-art Contemporary Art is art made and produced by artists living today. It is art that is happening now. Art movements of the past can be described and defined by the style, materials, ideas and subject matter that artists were exploring at the time. Contemporary artists often comment on modern day society and create artworks that engage with current issues, topics and concerns of a global environment. Our world is culturally diverse and technology is advancing rapidly and contemporary art reflects the multifaceted and changing world. Curiosity, openness and dialogue are important tools for engaging with Contemporary Art. Asking questions about Contemporary Art will further your understanding of what it could be. Ask yourself, does this work of art challenge, interest, engage me? Consider the relationship between works of art and their audience. Create a poster about Contemporary Art or Modern Art. Include information and examples: ⥤ your definition ⥤ images of artworks ⥤ materials and tools that artists ⥤ where do artists find inspiration to create art Discuss Does art need to be beautiful? Why? Why not?

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Heide’s increasing collection of photographs, acknowledges the importance of photography to contemporary art, as seen in works by Micky Allen, Daniel Crooks, Siri Hayes, Jacky Redgate and David Thomas. Portrait #2 (Chris) forms part of Daniel Crooks’s ‘Time Slice’ project (1999–), a series of moving image works and prints made using digital collage techniques. This involves digitally slicing images then reassembling them sequentially, across the screen or picture plane, to create rhythmic and spatial effects through which Crooks seeks to explore ideas and themes related to our understandings of time and motion. Look carefully at this image. What objects do you notice around the figure in this work? What might this indicate to us, as viewers of the artwork about this person? His personality or character? What is the figure wearing? What might his clothing represent? Can we be certain? Do you think this portrait really tells us very much about this man or his identity? Try to explain why. Would you categorise this artwork as a collage? Why? Why not? Do you think this digital print challenges any preconceptions we might have about what collage is? Research View Daniel Crooks video artworks on YouTube and find out more about the artist danielcrooks.com For student tasks go to www.heide.com.au/education/resource Look for: Heide Education – 21st Century Heide - Learning Materials.pdf See: Contemporary Photography

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Jacky Redgate makes mysterious beautiful images of objects and their shadows that make the viewer question what they are seeing. Her photographs investigate our perception of the material world and the meaning and importance we give to the world around us. The layers of light and shadow that hover over the objects make it hard to tell how the photograph has been constructed. Perception is the ability to see, hear or become aware of something through the senses. The way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted. It is our intuitive understanding and insights Visual Perception is the awareness or processing of visual information Find out more http://www.slideshare.net/stephaniemcguinness1/perception-2649406 Evaluate How interesting is the subject matter of the photograph? Does it have strong contrast of light and dark tones? Are repeated shapes and patterns an important element? Has the photographer taken the photo from an unusual angle? Does this add to its success? Is the image tightly cropped or is there empty space around the subject matter? Do you think that this cropping is effective? Why? Jacky Redgate’s photograph is one of the most recently acquired artworks in the Heide Collection. For student tasks go to www.heide.com.au/education/resource Look for: Heide Education – 21st Century Heide - Learning Materials.pdf See: Contemporary Photography

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David Thomas’s ‘Photopaintings’ blur the boundaries between art forms. He combines abstract painting with photography that challenges our perception - how we look at a photograph is different to how we read a painting. There is a tension between the painted shape and the printed surface. The geometric flat shape activates the negative space of the photograph, it is a playful, surprising way to investigate an image. The reflective surface of the painting involves the viewer in the space. Write a narrative of your experience of looking. Where does your eye move? What do you wonder about this image? For student tasks go to www.heide.com.au/education/resource Look for: Heide Education – 21st Century Heide - Learning Materials.pdf See: Contemporary Photography

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Installation Art is three-dimensional artwork in any media that incorporates features of the space in which it is shown. Often Installation Art is site specific in that it is created for a particular gallery, architectural space or outdoor site.

Indoor Monument: Hard Dis-play 1995 – 2009 is a sculptural realisation of a hard-edge, abstract

painting by Frank Stella from 1959, one of a series of works collectively known as Black Paintings.

Stella’s painted maze of black lines on raw canvas is transformed by Temin into a knee-high maze, a

shift from two to three dimensions changes our perception of the work. Instead of a purely visual

perception we are able to enter the work and experience it physically.

Temin’s reason for making this sculpture was to draw attention to the disconnection between the

seemingly pure abstraction of Stella’s painting and the metaphoric content implied by its German

language title Arbeit Macht Frei, which translates as ‘work makes you free’, the slogan infamously

inscribed over the entrance to Auschwitz. Stella explicitly rejected the idea of any content in his

paintings aside from the paint on the canvas. ‘My painting is based on the fact that only what can be

seen is there … What you see is what you get’, he famously said. Temin’s work does not reference the

infamous Nazis slogan in any overt way, but her version of Stella’s maze is an attempt to gauge how a

translation from two to three dimensions might shift its meaning.

Discuss Does this artwork force you to re-examine your opinions about what art is? In what ways does Temin involve the viewer in her artwork? Can you name any other artists who have communicated political and social ideas through their artwork? Create Temin is influenced by the art movement Minimalism, particularly artist Donald Judd and Frank Stella. Using a series of geometric shapes, dissect and rearrange the shapes, to create a series of interesting compositions to be used as the basis of a sculptural piece or painting referencing artworks from the Minimalist movement.

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Rosalie Gascoigne’s refined installations of natural and weathered materials extend the landscape tradition in Australian art. Using minimal means, and with an eye for the effect of space, her works evoke the elusive qualities of air, light and time on particular places. Gascoigne described Takeover Bid as ‘weeds invading the cottage as one sees out in the country—the weeds are moving in and the cows are moving through. The thistle stalks are just propped up against the window frames—grey and pink’. Grey was one of her favourite colours in the Australian landscape, though she noted it was ‘very hard to get good weathered material to go in grey pieces because most things have been burnt deliberately or by bushfires’. — Rosalie Gascoigne, 1985 Discuss How is the landscape suggested or evoked in this artwork? Consider Gascoigne’s use of materials and composition and art elements such as line, texture and form. Respond Does this artwork resonate with your own personal experiences of the Australian landscape?

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Ken Whisson lives and works in Perugia, Italy, and has become one of Australia’s most respected and enduring senior contemporary artists. Emerging out of the expressionist school of Melbourne painting and best known for his intuitive and graphic images, Ken Whisson began painting in the mid-1940s under the guidance of émigré artist Danila Vassileff. In Vassilieff he found an artist who used local subjects and a rapid, immediate technique, but who had also enjoyed direct contact with progressive art overseas. The older artist taught Whisson to work from the left to the right of the picture, as if he were writing, and then to put the picture to the wall, so that any further strikes at it might not be tainted by over analysis. Imagine that you are walking through this landscape. Describe the environment and your surroundings.

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Equipped with a do-it-yourself guide to making natural plant dyes, Hayes, with the help of

Heide’s gardeners, spent over twelve months gathering plant material from the gardens that

was suitable for making dyes to hand-colour wool. She was interested in the potential of

using the dyes to construct a record or description of the places where the plants grow,

observing parallels with photographing a landscape. Eucalyptus leaves, Osage orange

heartwood, hollyhock flowers and elderberries are among the plants the artist experimented

with to create a colourful spectrum of wools, which she then used to make gentle

interventions in the garden, or to entangle herself in its sights, sounds and smells. ‘I love the

idea of being tangled in nature and of nature having its own way in the end’, she said of the

process we see recorded in these photographs. – Siri Hayes

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Responding to nature Siri Hayes is a photographer and craft artist. In 2012 she created a body of work that responded to the Heide parklands and gardens. While spending time in the environment at Heide, the artists collected flowers, herbs and plants that she used to make her own dyes. From the dyed wools Hayes then wove textile pieces which reflected her interactions with the environment. Some pieces she returned to the landscape and then documented her experiences with photographs. How do you see the landscape? Create a three-dimensional artwork inspired by a natural environment that you have experienced. This might be the bush, the beach, a rocky mountainous area, the desert or a rain forest. Document your thinking and working processes with sketches and photographs. Your artwork could be an installation like Gascoigne’s, a photograph like Siri Hayes’s or a painting like Whisson’s.

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This sculpture is identical to the fireplace in John and Sunday Reed’s home Heide II, to the

north of this gallery, where they lived from 1967 to 1980. Designed by architect David

McGlashan, this house connects to a stream of architectural modernity that is reworked

across Morton’s oeuvre. With the appearance of a tomb and the function of a crematorium,

it is one of a family of monuments by the artist—monuments to various outmoded or ignored

urban structures, to personal losses, or to the death of capital or modernist ideals.

In this work the sound emanates from the fireplace at the heart of Heide II, often referred to

as the ‘conversation pit’. This particular soundtrack has been extracted from an interview

with John and Sunday Reed in the last year they lived in the house, a year before their deaths

in 1981.

Consider What does the museum need to consider when preparing and presenting an artwork such as Callum Morton’s One to One? How can placing an object in a museum change its meaning? Explore how contemporary artistic practices present new challenges for museums and cu For student tasks go to www.heide.com.au/education/resource. Look for: Heide Education – 21st Century Heide - Learning Materials.pdf See: Installing Contemporary Art

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Abstraction, arguably the hallmark of twentieth-century modernist art and continuing

strongly in contemporary art, is the focus of this display of paintings and prints from the

1960s to today. The works grouped here demonstrate a variety of influences, representing

modes of abstraction that vary from the minimal to the expressionist, the flat and decorative

to the materially dense.

Abstraction (and Abstract Art) is sometimes also described as non-figurative, non-objective or non-representational art. Minimalist Art uses the smallest range of art elements and materials possible. Expressionism is a style of art that seeks to express emotional experience rather than realistic impressions of the external world. Investigate Research these art movements to create a visual glossary from the images you find. At Heide In the exhibition look closely at the artworks on display in Heide II, find examples of the

different styles to create a visual glossary with your own sketches.

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Heide I is invigorated by several large contemporary sculptures, creating an element of surprise that visitors in the early years would have experienced when seeing new art in the Reeds’ home. Jan Nelson’s Listening to Music Played Backwards (Hazelwood) 2006 meshes together two areas of concern to the artist: youth culture and environmental politics, with the idea of perpetual forward and backward motion as a connecting point. The tree trunk and bird forms of the cast sculpture refer to the Hazelwood Power Station, an outdated coal-fired station near Morewell that produces 2.8% of Australia’s carbon emissions. The record is a compilation of songs accused by conservative right wing or religious groups of containing hidden satanic messages when played backwards, which are damaging to impressionable youth. As with all of Nelson’s work the sculpture is handmade: she made a cast from an actual tree from the area around Hazelwood and a real compilation record. The artist imagined standing at the edge of a forest and throwing the record like a frisbee into the woods until it hit a tree, imitating a saw blade cutting through. Respond What evidence can you see of Jan Nelson using materials in an innovative way? How does her use of materials and techniques to create this sculpture suggest powerful meanings? For student tasks go to www.heide.com.au/education/resource Look for: Heide Education – 21st Century Heide - Learning Materials.pdf See: Contemporary Sculpture

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Louise Paramor By exaggerating the scale of small fold-out paper decorations, Louise Paramor creates surreal and opulent objects. The basis for these works are usually random items that the artist has seen or found. foam-born 2000 has two components: a honeycomb snake and an elegant vertical form derived from a depiction of a naked woman on beach towel, which resembled the central figure in Botticelli’s celebrated Renaissance masterpiece The Birth of Venus 1484 – 1486 . Research Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus, do you think that there is a link between this artwork and Louise Paramor’s contemporary sculpture? At Heide Explore the exhibition in Heide I to find another sculpture by Louise Paramor. What are the similarities and differences between these two artworks? Sarah Contos This sculpture was first shown in 2013 in the exhibition Ladies and Gentlemen, Sarah Contos Presents: The Muses and The Folly. The installation incorporated Greek statues transformed into androgynous tribal sculptures, which Contos described as ‘folksy glam rock with classical Greek overtones’. Drawing on her family history and a background in stage and costume design, the artist here transforms a statue of Hermes by mashing up the disparate elements of her world: masks, beads, erotic bodies, and makeup, to create her own authentic artefact. As she describes: I fetishise the object I have created through embellishing it or embroidering onto it—or applying plaster over the faces of the Greek gods or dressing them up—transforming each entity to one that resonates more with who I am, or with my past. For student tasks go to www.heide.com.au/education/resource. Look for: Heide Education – 21st Century Heide - Learning Materials.pdf See: Contemporary Sculpture 16

This work is a characteristically high-key take on the Wunderkammer of old—cabinets of curiosities that often contained unusual specimens of flora and fauna. This work exemplifies Rohde’s strong interest in natural history and the decorative art of the Rococo period, which she has continued more recently in the fields of jewellery and design. Heide’s natural setting provides an interesting contrast to the Rohde’s interpretation of the highly manipulated gardening traditions of Europe, which she had seen during a studio residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2007. During this time she also visited some of Europe’s private museums, and their elaborate displays are echoed in this fanciful and decorative vitrine. Rohde owns a large collection of natural history books, and likes particularly the engravings of animals and plants where ‘they look a bit wacky and wrong, like the artists are having the thing described to them, rather than ever having seen them for themselves’.

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Further reading The Heide Collection, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2011. Linda Short, Siri Hayes: Back to Nature Scene, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2013. http://www.heide.com.au/assets/files/Exhibitions/234.Siricataloguescreen.pdf Sue Cramer, Colour Bazaar: Nine Contemporary Works, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2011. http://www.heide.com.au/assets/files/Exhibitions/72.CBcataloguescreen.pdf Linda Michael, Callum Morton: In Memoriam, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2011. Watch the education resource Heide Fun Fair High with artist Callum Morton.

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Heide Education is committed to providing high quality educational services. We welcome any suggestions and feedback teachers have that will help us to continually improve our education resources and services we provide to you. Please send your comments to education@heide.com.au. © 2015 Heide Museum of Modern Art. This material may be downloaded, copied, used and communicated free of charge for non-commercial educational purposes, provided all acknowledgements are retained.

20 © Heide Museum of Modern Art 2015 www.heide.com.au/education/resources