Melbourne Modern - Education Kit

ARCHITECTURE AND INTERIOR DESIGNFrederick Sterne(1900-1951)

INDUSTRY DESIGN | Gerard Herbst (19112011) GOLD AND SILVERSMITHING | Vaclav (Victor) Vodicka GOLD AND SILVERSMITHING | Wolfram Wennrich (1922-1991) GRAPHIC DESIGN | Gus van der Heyde (1937SCULPTURE

Education Kit Introduction

Melbourne Modern: European art and design at RMIT since 1945

Melbourne Modern: European art and design at RMIT since 1945, opening at RMIT Gallery on 21 June, traces this legacy of European intervention and interdisciplinarity through successive genera tions of RMIT teachers and students to the present day.

The exhibition features art works from the RMIT Art Collection, RMIT Design Archives, and public and private collections. Many have never been publicly exhibited.

Melbourne Modern tells a fascinating and complicated story of the impact of emigré educators at RMIT.

European migrants were vital to Melbourne’s post-war modernist transformation. They were re sponsible for many mid-century modernist buildings; contributed to debates around town planning and designed notable abstract public artworks – from fountains to murals.

They also introduced the latest German and Scandinavian design in gold and silversmithing, as well as fne European tailoring in the fashion industry, and a range of modernist approaches to fne art.

The Melbourne Modern education kit has been designed specifcally for VCE Art and Studio Arts students completing units 1 – 4. It highlights the relevance of the exhibition to key objectives and learning outcomes of the curriculum.

Through providing an in-depth analysis and context for many exhibition art works and artists in the exhibition, this kit will assist students in formulating their skills of critical inquiry and visual analysis.

These broad frameworks serve as a source of inspiration for students to begin thinking about their own artistic practice and creative ideas while simultaneously highlighting the depth of analysis and research required by students studying VCE and tertiary subjects.

Discussion of the RMIT Art Collection and RMIT Design Archives at RMIT Gallery in the education kit will broaden students’ understandings of contemporary art contexts and the inner workings of the art industry.

Melbourne Modern is a valuable exhibition for high school, VCE and tertiary students. To make a booking please contact RMIT Gallery on (03) 9925 1717.

Melbourne Modern: European art and design at RMIT since 1945 runs at RMIT Gallery from 21 June – 17 August 2019. The exhibition features a range of public program.

Curatorial Statement

Jane Eckett

In the wake of World War Two, amid mass migration out of Europe, hundreds of artists, architects and designers arrived in Melbourne and profoundly changed the cultural landscape. Arguably their profoundest impact was at the grass-roots level of education. Émigrés brought with them a diverse range of approaches and educational philosophies garnered in the art academies, ateliers, technical universities and vocational schools of Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Britain.

Melbourne Modern surveys the contribution of European émigrés who taught at RMIT after 1945 and traces the legacy of their teaching to the present day.

Substantial existing literature highlights émigré achievements in Australian art and design, and Mel bourne Modern co-curator Harriet Edquist’s many publications and exhibitions on émigré architects and designers, drawn from the rich holdings of the RMIT Design Archives, have added depth to these surveys.

More recently attention has turned to émigré involvement in art and design education. Melbourne Modern contributes to this emerging feld of research by exploring in exhibition format the nature of European art education through one key institution: the former Melbourne Technical College (MTC), known since 1960 as RMIT.

The term ‘émigré’ encompasses a wide range of circumstances associated with diferent waves of migration. It includes religious and political exiles who fed the rise of fascism in the 1930s, internees deported from Britain at the outbreak of war owing to their nationality, refugees who arrived on the cusp of and during the war, ‘displaced persons’ (DPs) unable to return home owing to the post-war redrawing of borders and the Sovietisation of Eastern Europe and the Baltic countries, and migrants who arrived after the war under assisted passage schemes or as the spouse of an Australian national.

DPs account for the greatest number of artists and designers in the present exhibition, refecting their greater numbers overall. Between 1949 and 1950 approximately 100,000 DPs arrived in Australia, generating intense debate as to how these ‘New Australians’ could best assimilate to the predomi nantly Anglo-Irish culture.

Melbourne Modern also includes artists who transcend the category of émigré but are more generally termed ‘European’. While our primary focus is on artists and designers born and educated in Europe and who arrived in Australia as practitioners, we also consider those who left Europe at a young age, as well as the Australian-born children of migrants, on the basis of their family’s cultural heritage.

More broadly still we include a number of Australians who studied for extended periods in Britain and Europe. The inclusion of Britain within this broad defnition of ‘European’ is a conscious refection of Australia’s strong Commonwealth ties in the post-war decades (albeit increasingly problematic with the impending Brexit). Throughout these decades staf at RMIT referred chiefy to British education al models, while the Royal College of Art in London attracted several top students for postgraduate studies.

If the term ‘European’ seems stretched to capacity, equally it disguises a multitude of national and regional diferences. ‘European’ remains simply a shorthand notation; wherever possible we specify nationalities or regional afliations.

Likewise we are concerned not with a monolithic concept of modernism, but rather multiple modernisms that refect the myriad possibilities open to artists in the inter-war and post-war years. These multiple modernisms are often geographically based and stem from diferent historical and cultural factors. For instance, in the sculpture department Hermann Hohaus’s archaised fgures are typical of those made in the immediate post-war years in Munich when sculptors rapidly distanced themselves from the sort of classical fguration deemed acceptable under the Nazis.

Teisutis Zikaras, on the other hand, responded to Picasso, Rouault and cubist sculpture, which he studied frst-hand in French-occupied Freiburg, fnding it a viable alternative to the intense cultural nationalism of the exiled Lithuanian community with whom he lived and worked. Similarly in interior design we see a range of modernist propositions: from Sterne’s expression of pre-war Wiener Wohn raumkultur (‘Viennese living room culture’), with its fexible furniture arrangements, to Kral’s ‘sophisticated exemplars of high modernism’.

Students at MTC in the post-war years therefore encountered a range of diferent modernist ap proaches among the teaching staf. This was enhanced by MTC’s traditional structure of learning, which allowed students to choose a broad range of subjects. Students took a selected major and elective minor subjects as well as a common core of liberal studies, including art history, history of the selected major subject, music, theatre, literature, flm, social science, sociology, philosophy and psychology. Architects, designers, painters, printmakers and sculptors alike therefore shared many of the same instructors. This was particularly the case in drawing as it was at the basis of all courses in the Applied Art and Architecture Division (which included fne art). While divisions between difer ent departments remained quite rigid during the post-war decades, and interdisciplinarity scarcely encouraged, as students progressed through their studies they nonetheless encountered a variety of teaching approaches and a range of diferent conceptions as to what modernism is. There is therefore no house style, or singular look to the works in Melbourne Modern. Instead, the exhibition refects the rich variety of émigré experience coupled with student response to and remixing of these various modernist ideals.

Public Program

Fri 12 July > 12:30-1:30pm

European Infuence in Design

Fri 21 June >12:30-1:30pm

Curator’s Floor Talk

Jane Eckett & Harriet Edquist

Join curators Dr Jane Eckett and Profes sor Harriet Edquist as they discuss the fasci nating and complicated story of Melbourne Modern: European art and design at RMIT since 1945. The exhibition traces the legacy of European intervention and interdisciplin arity through successive generations of RMIT teachers and students to the present day.

Melbourne Modern features many works from the RMIT Art Collection and RMIT Design Archives that have never been public ly exhibited, including amazing examples of gold and silversmithing and examples of ki netic jewellery, as well as rarely seen archi val material in the form of documentary photographs, posters and teaching materials.

Robert Pataki & Phillip Zmood in conversation with Lan Wong

Hear how RMIT changed the face of design, with infuential industrial designers Robert Pataki & Phillip Zmood in conversation with Ian Wong.

Thur 1 August > 1:30-2:30pm

A Bauhaus Impact at RMIT

Jane Eckett, Harriet Edquist, Emily Floyd, Rob ert Owen

To mark the centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus school of art and design in Germany, we ask: to what extent have Bau haus principles impacted the teaching of art, architecture and design at RMIT?

Fri 28 June > 12:30-1:30pm

The émigré legacy at RMIT

Robert Baines, Geofrey Bartlett, Jenny Zimme

Three eminent alumni discuss the impact of the émigré teachers they encountered while students at RMIT in the 1960s and ‘70s. With their collective experience of Victor Vodicka and Wolf Wennrich’s teaching in gold and sil versmithing, and Vincas Jomantas, Teisutis Zi karas and Herman Hohaus’s in sculpture, they each have a unique perspective on their student years and on the émigré legacy at RMIT.

Fri 9 August > 12:30-1:30pm

Artists’ Talk

Antonia Sellbach & Fleur Summers

Two graduates of the RMIT sculpture program, Antonia Sellbach and Fleur Summers, discuss their respective artistic practices. Both employ concepts of play and audience interaction in their work, and both interrogate earlier modernist models of art as an agent of social change.

MEDIA RELEASE

Melbourne Modern: the legacy of European artists and designers at RMIT

In the wake of World War II hundreds of exiled and displaced European artists, architects and designers arrived in Melbourne. Many found employment at RMIT, in what was then Melbourne Technical College, bringing with them their rigorous training and bold philosophical ideas about modernism.

Melbourne Modern :

Melbourne Modern: European art and design at RMIT since 1945, opening at RMIT Gallery on 21 June, traces this legacy of European intervention and interdisciplinarity through successive generations of RMIT teachers and students to the present day.

The exhibition features art works from the RMIT Art Collection, RMIT Design Archives, and public and private collections. Many have never been publicly exhibited.

Curated by Dr Jane Eckett, 2018 Ursula Hof Fellow at the University of Melbourne, and Harriet Edquist, Professor of architectural history at RMIT University and Director of the RMIT Design Ar chives, the exhibition tells a fascinating and complicated story of the impact of emigré educators.

“European migrants were vital to Melbourne’s post-war modernist transformation. They were re sponsible for many mid-century modernist buildings; contributed to debates around town planning and designed notable abstract public artworks – from fountains to murals.

“They also introduced the latest German and Scandinavian design in gold and silversmithing, as well as fne European tailoring in the fashion industry, and a range of modernist approaches to fne art,” Eckett said.

These emigré educators include architects Ernest Fooks, Frederick Romberg and Frederick Sterne; artists Tate Adams, Richard Beck, Gus van der Heyde, Hermann Hohaus, Vincas Joman tas, Inge King, Hertha Kluge-Pott, Udo Sellbach, Teisutis Zikaras and Klaus Zimmer; and versatile designers such as Gerard Herbst, Adrianus Janssens, George Kral and Miloslav Zika, who worked variously in graphic design, fashion, industrial design, stained glass and art history.

The impact of gold and silversmiths Hendrik Forster, Ernst Fries, Johannes Kuhnen, Tor Schwanck, Victor Vodicka and Wolf Wennrich was far reaching. German trained Wennrich became the most

infuential jewellery lecturer of the 1960s and 70s in the RMIT Gold and Silversmithing studio, encouraging students to think of themselves as artists and pursue their own designs.

“These artists and designers did not bring with them one single monolithic modernism, but rath er a constellation of ideas and philosophies that refected their individual experiences as well as a long European lineage of technical education and design reform,” Eckett said.

This approach to modernism in architecture suited Australia, as it advocated informality and fexibility, said Edquist.

Common to most was the desire for an interdisciplinary approach to education, whereby architects studied sculpture, sculptors studied design, and designers studied painting.

Refecting this interdisciplinary cross-pollination, the exhibition features works in a wide variety of media including painting, sculpture, prints, stained glass, silver, textiles, photography and flm, as well as posters, architectural presentation drawings, student experiments in material studies, product prototypes and rare archival material.

The impact and signifcance of emigré educators can be seen in t he works of subsequent gen erations of artists and designers such as Philip Zmood, Geofrey Bartlett, Su san Cohn, Jock Clutterbuck, Augustine Dall’Ava, John Davis, Emily Floyd, Robert Jacks, Sanné Mestrom, Antho ny Pryor and Normana Wight, whose works are also represented in the exhibition.

One of RMIT University’s most acclaimed alumni, automotive designer Phillip Zmood had a hand in designing iconic Australian cars like the Holden Monaro, Commodore and Kingswood in his role as Australian Director of Design of GM Holden.

ARCHITECTURE AND INTERIOR DESIGN

Frederick Sterne (1900–1951)

IMAGE: Frederick Sterne (1900-1951)

Interior Design: Melbourne Technical College Corre spondence School, c. 1948 Printed course notes

RMIT Design Archives, Frederick Sterne collection, Gift of Estate of Emden-Snook, 2009

Frederick Stern was born in Linz, Austria, and while he claimed to have attended the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna; no record of his at tendance has survived, suggesting he may have been an informal student.

Further studies in the technical college in Gies sen and the Czech Technical University in Prague were probably in architecture. In 1930 he en rolled at TUWien taking two courses in econom ics and administrative law.

One of his interior design projects was also published that year, so he clearly had established a practice. In 1938 Sternschein and his Czechborn wife Maria migrated to Australia, via En gland, arriving in Melbourne in September 1938. His immigration papers give his occupation as ‘carpenter and architect’.

Frederick’s brothers Leo and Kurt joined them in Melbourne shortly afterwards. On arrival Freder ick abbreviated his name to Sterne and entered the architecture ofce of Leighton Irwin, remaining there for the duration of the war. In 1946 he collaborated with journalist Mary Jane Seymour of the Australian Home Beautiful on a series of important articles on modern interior design and a year later began lecturing part-time at the Mel bourne Technical College in architecture, interior design, furniture design and building construc tion.

In 1948 he was employed full-time at the MTC and set about upgrading the three-year Interior Decoration course to Australia’s frst four-year Interior Design Diploma. Sterne also wrote the Correspondence Course in Interior Design for the College’s external students. He died on 28 August 1951; his obituary appeared in that year’s issue of the MTC magazine Jargon.

INDUSTRIAL DESIGN

Gerard Herbst (1911-2011)

B orn in Dresden, Herbst is thought to have attended Preußische Höhere Fachschule für Textilindustrie (Prussian Secondary School for the Textile Industry) in Cottbus after which he spent some years in the early 1930s working on window displays in towns across Germany including Stettin and Berlin.

By the mid-1930s Herbst was in Munich employed as a ‘window dresser’ (as he described himself on his immigration papers) by Musikhaus Odeon, a multi-storey music store on Sonnenstrasse owned by the Jewish Jacob family. When the store was targeted on Kristallnacht, in November 1938, Herbst assisted the Jacobs with whom he was on friendly terms and, having thus attracted the notice of the Nazis, was forced to leave the country. He headed for Australia, sponsored by the Jacob’s son Kurt who had already established a branch of the family music business in Sydney. The families were to remain in contact throughout Herbst’s life and, in 1995, Herbst was honoured by Yad Vash em as one of the Righteous Among the Nations for his help in saving the lives of the Jacob family.

On arrival in Melbourne, Herbst was appointed display manager and assistant to the advertising manager at Prestige, in Brunswick, a position apparently organised by Jacob. In 1942 he enlisted in the AIF and saw out the war in the 2nd Employment Company. After demobilization, in 1945, he rejoined Prestige as art director for Prestige Fabrics, under the progressive George Foletta. Herbst led a studio of young designers, created a design studio with an ethos of experimenta tion and collaboration and devised novel publicity including innovative flm and photography. In 1948 he was brought into Melbourne Teachers College (MTC) to teach evening classes in two-dimensional design and he was probably a sessional teacher at the College for the following de cade. After Edward Hefernan, lecturer in Industrial Design, left MTC in 1959 Herbst replaced him and taught design to the senior students and his approach was infuenced by his wide read ing in sociology, urbanism and design and developing trends in contemporary design pedagogy.

He retired from RMIT in 1976. Over the years Herbst had formed a large and important collec tion of almost 3000 posters, representing a selection of international design over fve decades from the 1950s to the 1990s, which he donated to the University of Melbourne. Herbst was awarded the RMIT Centenary Medallion in 1987 and is an inductee into the DIA Hall of Fame.

IMAGE: Gerard Herbst (1911-2011)

Prestige Fabrics Ltd. designer and MTC graduate Susanne Copolov (nee` Tandler), from Vienna, with miniature mannequins draped in Prestige Fabrics Ltd for ‘ Exposition in Textile International’ display in Lille, France, 1951. Photograph. RMIT Design Archives.Image: Stephanie Bradford, courtesy RMIT Design Archives.

GOLD AND SILVERSMITHING

Vaclav (Victor) Vodicka (1921-1992)

Vaclav Victor Vodicka was born in Modrany, a suburb of Prague, the son of Josef and Frantiska Vodicka. He worked as a goldsmith in Modřany from 1936 to 1941, in which year he gradu ated from Prague Technical College of Applied Arts and Crafts, specialising in gold and silver design and manufacture.

In 1943 he completed a course at Turnov’s famous jewellery school. At the time of the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia, in 1948, he was the national manager of the Robert Scholtz jewellery company near Jablonec in the country’s north.

Vodicka fed to Berlin in late 1949 and migrated to Australia as a displaced person under the International Refugee Organisation program, arriving in April 1950. After a feeting stay at Bonegilla migrant camp he came to Melbourne and worked as a silversmith with frms such as Stokes, Phoenix and Albion.

In 1955 Victor Greenhalgh, the new head of Art and Applied Art at RMTC, appointed Vodicka to the position of lecturer in gold and silversmithing, replacing English jeweller Alfred Simm who had returned home. Under Simm, the gold and silversmithing course had transitioned out of the old-fashioned, Arts and Crafts inspired ‘art metalwork’ to the more professionally focused ‘gold and silversmithing’. The new course produced capable graduates, and from there, Vodicka built the most successful and infuential gold and silversmithing program in post-war Australia.

While Vodicka had trained as a goldsmith and a jeweller and taught both in his early years at the College, he was instrumental in the appointment of expert German jeweller Wolf Wennrich to oversee the development of the jewellery component which soon became the most popular part of the gold and silversmithing program.

Throughout the 1960s Vodicka expanded the course, greatly increasing the number of students, and introducing more specialised subjects: design in 1963 and history of gold and silversmithing in 1964. In 1969 a subject ‘research in methods of production’ was introduced in third year. At the same time he undertook additional training, obtaining a Tertiary Technical Teachers Certifcate in 1963 and a Fellowship of RMIT in 1966.

Always interested in the pedagogical implications of his work, in 1972 Vodicka published a report into craft industries in Australia and in 1973 was admitted as a member of the Austra lian College of Education. He retired from RMIT in 1983 and in 1987 was awarded an AM for services to the craft of gold and silversmithing, however, there are none of his works in the Melbourne Modern exhibition.

GOLD AND SILVERSMITHING

Wolfram Wennrich (1922-1991)

Wolf Wennrich Object , 1974. Silver, stainless steel, 18ct gold. W.E. McMillan Collection, RMIT Univer sity Art Collection. Photo: Margund Sallows ky, courtesy RMIT University Art Collection.

Wolfram Wennrich was born in 1922 in Schwenten, now part of Poland. According to family his tory he served on the Russian front as a teenager, the experience of which he reprised in a metal enamel and resin wall panel WWII - memories, panel, 1975 in the NGV collection.

After the war he studied at the Academy of Arts in Hamburg, gaining his Lehrbrief (apprenticeship certifcate, equivalent to a diploma) in 1952. He subsequently worked for prominent Hamburg jew ellers Erwinn Winkler, J. Friedrich Goldemann, Cartier and Ferdinand R. Wilm. In 1953, sponsored by Melbourne jeweller Max Hurwitz, also Hamburg-trained, Wennrich migrated with his wife Aneliese and son Michael to Australia under the Australian German Migration Agreement.

According to Hurwitz, Wennrich – unlike most trade jewellers who tended to specialize in mount -making, setting or fnishing –, ‘could do anything’ and was particularly skilled at enamelling.

In 1960 Victor Vodicka, lecturer in charge of gold and silversmithing at RMIT, persuaded Victor Greenhalgh, Head of the Art Division, to employ Wennrich as a part-time teacher in the evening jewellery classes, a role which became full time in 1963.

Wennrich was a skilled and inspirational teacher and in a few years jewellery was the most pop ular component of the gold and silversmithing program and his infuence marked a generation of jewellery graduates.

Wennrich’s training in Hamburg had been traditional but his encounters as a teacher with the contemporary jewellery movements of Scandinavia and Germany inspired new approaches in his own work and he became a prominent exponent of contemporary jewellery in the 1960s and 1970s. He retired from RMIT in 1980 and due to ill health discontinued his work in the late 1980s.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Gus van der Heyde (1937-)

Gustaaf Paul van der Heyde was born in Amsterdam but soon after his birth his parents moved to Indonesia where his father had a senior position as fnance administrator in an Indonesian sugar refn ery. After the Japanese invaded Indonesia in 1942 he and his mother were interned in concentration camps, where they remained until 1945. His father enlisted in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army in Indonesia, was captured by the Japanese and dispatched to detention camps in Sumatra and Borneo.

The family was reunited in 1945 and, after a year in Singapore, returned to the Netherlands. Van der Heyde graduated with a diploma of Advertising Art/Illustration from the Academy of Arts Arnhem. After working in the printing industry in the Netherlands, England and Switzerland, he migrated to Australia in 1960 under the Netherlands Australia Migration Agreement.

He soon found work at the World Record Club (WRC) in Melbourne designing 12-inch record covers. After leaving WRC in 1963 he and his wife Roberta established their own freelance and photography business with local and international clients including the AntiCancer Council, RMIT University, Mobil Oil, St Vincent’s Hospital, Sigma Pharmaceuticals, Victoria Institute of Colleges, Kraft Australia, Kodak (Australasia) and the Council of Adult Education.

In 1981, the ‘International Year of Disabled’ van der Heyde won the International United Nation’s stamp competition. In 1965 van der Heyde joined the sessional staf of the Department of Art at RMIT where he taught graphic design until the early 1990s. After retiring from teaching he and Roberta established Infnite Resources Consultancy (Aust.) Pty. Ltd. in 1996 marketing Australian tertiary education in Asia, Canada, USA and Europe with RMIT a major client.

In the early 1970s van der Heyde had established the photography program at the CAE; photography was one of his majors at Arnhem and he was an exhibiting photographer for many years. Since 2005 van der Heyde has been a volunteer tour guide at McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery and Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery and continues his commercial graphic design consultancy.

Since 2005 van der Heyde has been a volunteer tour guide at McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery and Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery and continues his commercial graphic design consultancy.

Gus Van Der HeyDe (b.1937)

Mendelssohn and Bruch Violin Concertos, c.1960-63

Album cover, ink, cardboard, letterpress printing, 37x37 cm Melbourne, World Record Club RMIT Design Archive

Signifcance of work

Gus van der Heyde’s record covers, such as Tchaikowsky: Piano Concerto No 1 (c. 1960–3), with its riveting, musically inspired calligraphic brushstroke, reveal the infuence of RMIT painting lecturer Leonard Crawford. This contiguity of art and music as espoused by Crawford is evident in many RMIT staf and students’ work throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

Leonard Crawford (1920–96) joined the Fine Art Department in 1962 and was a magnetic fgure to both older and younger artists within and out side the art school. A passionately knowledge able man on the history of art and music of all periods, Crawford had also been taught by Mary Cockburn-Mercer, Lina Bryans and Edith Holmes. In the early 1940s he had worked as an extra with the Ballet Russes Company, stranded in Mel bourne by the war, and in this he found the spec tacle of art, dance and music enthralling. Stage backdrops painted by the European modernists De Chirico, Derrain, Rouault and the Russian avant-garde painters Natalia Gonchorova and Mi chel Larinov, went hand in hand with Stravinsky, Debussy and Boccherini. This agency between music and art dramatically infused his abstract compositions with a contrapuntal aesthetic beat that doubled the pictorial intention of his work.

SCULPTURE

H ermann Hohaus (1920-1990) stated that he began carving in wood when he was only 10 years old and received informal schooling in art from the priest in his town.

He started his training at the School of Applied Art in Bad Warmbrunn, but his studies were interrupted by service in the army. After World War II he studied at the University of Fine Art in Munich, 1946 until 1952.

Unable to return to his hometown in Silesia, which had become part of Poland during the war, he accepted his wife’s suggestion and migrated to Australia. On arrival in Melbourne in 1954 he worked as a stonemason, was a modeler in a terracotta factory and worked in the design department of a car manufacturer. He was naturalised in 1959, and became a lecturer in sculpture at the RMIT School of Art from 1961 until 1972.

Hohaus’ works are held in the collections of the NGV, AGNSW, AGSA, QAG, AGWA, McClelland Gallery & Sculpture Park, La Trobe University, University of Western Australia, and the Munster Landesmuseum, Germany.

Hohaus worked in a restrained, early modernist, fgurative style. The greater portion of his commercial work comprised ecclesiastical commissions in both wood and bronze for churches in Melbourne. However, he produced he produced a great number of small bronze fgures and numerous depictions of animals, as well as several series of larger fgurative works (almost exclusively women), though these were seldom exhibited for sale.

Hermann Hohaus: a diferent take on Modernism

Signifcance of Work

Hermann Hohaus’s archaised fgures are typical of those made in the immediate post-war years in Munich when sculptors rapidly distanced them selves from the sort of classical fguration deemed acceptable under the Nazis.

Seated Woman is typical of Hohaus’ mature oue vre: an extended female fgure, not quite of bal ance, not quite counter-poised, head upturned. The work has a strength and clarity to the features, though, and the seated posture is unusual.

The work is a strong example that displays infu ences of Classical Greek sculpture, as well as the work of post WWII Italian artists like Giacometti –although Hohaus’ forms never showed the same level of elongation and emaciation as the latter.

Hohaus represents another key fgure in the postwar diaspora of artists that arrived in Melbourne and began teaching at RMIT, disseminating European Modernist ideas that if not altered then at least sped up the development of Australian art, and whose infuence was felt for generations to come (such as Normana Wight).

Hohaus had a distinctly diferent take on Modernism from the more abstract Centre Five group; stylistically, his works are cognate with expres sionistic works on paper by German artists like Klaus Vogelgesang, Max Kaminski, and Marwan Kassab Bachi, which were all part of a donation from the Goethe-Institut in 2010, and provide context for the infuences and traditions that un derlie this later generation.

Hermann Hohaus Seated woman. Bronze. RMIT Collection. Images credit: Stephanie Bradford 108X

PRINTMAKING

Udo Sellbach (1927 – 2006)

German artist Udo Sellbach was born in Cologne in 1927. He studied at the Kölner Werkschulen under Alfred Will from 1947, graduating in 1952 as a Meister Schuler. He established the Kölner Presse in 1952 in association with the Gallerie der Spiegel, where he editioned artists’ lithographs. In 1955 he emigrated to Australia as a trained master printmaker with his wife, printmaker Karin Schepers.

Sellbach had already set up a print studio at the South Australian School of Art before taking up a po sition at RMIT during May 1965. He joined Tate Adams, who had established a Diploma of Printmaking at RMIT in 1960.

Sellbach was instrumental in setting up the postgraduate printmaking course in 1966, and in the same year he worked with Grahame King and curator Ursula Hof to establish the Print Council of Australia.

Humanist themes were prominent in Sellbach’s fgurative work, referencing his harrowing experience of war as a teenager in Germany. His series of twelve prints entitled The Target is Man was exhibited at Leveson Street Gallery in Melbourne 1966 and is an important early response to the Vietnam confict as well as a sophisticated response to the artistic environment Sellbach found himself in.

This series displays a sophisticated and unusual melding of current developments in hard-edge ab straction combined with fguration, and demonstrates how Sellbach played an important role in the rise of printmaking that occurred in Australia, and particularly in Melbourne, during the 1960s.

In 1966 Sellbach was instrumental in setting up the postgraduate printmaking course at RMIT and, in the same year, worked with Grahame King and curator Ursula Hof to establish the Print Council of Australia.

Sellbach explored colour and abstraction as printmaker and painter and his painting practice ran par allel to his print practice during the mid to late 1960s and the early 70s. He participated in The Field exhibition in 1968, and was granted second place in the George’s Prize that year, which was judged by American art theorist Clement Greenburg and Australian art critic Alan McCulloch.

During his time as a lecturer at RMIT Sellbach remained socially active within his practice whilst at the same time responding to the developments heralded by colour-feld painting.

Signifcance of Work

The Target is Man series demonstrates how Sellbach played an important role in the rise of printmak ing that occurred in Australia, particularly in Melbourne, during the 1960s. The Target is Man series remains an important early response to the Vietnam confict as well as sophisticated responses to the artistic environment Sellbach found himself in.

During his time as a lecturer at RMIT Sellbach remained socially active within his practice whilst at the same time responding to the developments heralded by colour-feld painting. He continued to create work – mainly small-scale drawings – in his later years, and his paintings, alongside his prints, make a signifcant contribution to Australian art of the 1960s and 70s.

Udo Sellbach ( 1927-2006)

To Execute (from The Target is Man portfolio ), 1965

Aquaint adn etching, ed. of 25 25 x19.8 cm (plate) 46.8x34.2 cm (sheet) Private Collection

PAINTING

George Johnson (1926 -)

Born in Nelson, New Zealand, George Johnson studied painting both privately and at Wellington Tech nical College, 1943-47.

While in Wellington he shared a fat near the university with his brother, poet Louis Johnson, and mixed with the local literary and artistic avant-garde. Friends met during these years include the Dutch émigré artist Theo Schoon (1915-85), from whom he learnt about the Bauhaus as well as de Stijl, Constructivism and Suprematism, and the young Gordon Walters. Both Johnson and Walters were impressed by Schoon’s study of Maori art; for Johnson this led to a life-long engagement with the art of other world cultures.

In 1951 Johnson moved to Melbourne, and soon became acquainted with vanguard abstractionists such as Leonard French, with whom he shared a studio in Parkville, Leonard Crawford and Roger Kemp. His work in the early ffties retained vestiges of imagery – birds and insects – transformed into totemic icons but increasingly focused purely on the communicative potential of line.

From c. 1954 until 1963 Johnson taught art at Footscray Technical School, his experimental teaching methods attracting visits from other technical schoolteachers from across Victoria. He completed a certifcate in art at RMIT, 1955-56, and held his frst Australian solo exhibition of abstract paintings in 1956 at the Tasmanian Government Tourist Bureau Gallery.

Further solo shows followed throughout the 1960s at the Argus Gallery (1962, ‘65) and Pinacoteca (1968), and, in Sydney, with Terry Clune (1962) and Barry Sterne Galleries (1966, 1967).

Works during these years were usually painted in earthy brown colours, often on hessian, and featured a crenelated pattern. He obtained his Trained Technical Teachers certifcate Melbourne Teachers Col lege, c. 1964, and a Diploma of Art, painting, at RMIT, in 1968.

Throughout the 1960s he was fully occupied with teaching: at Moorabbin Technical School, 1964-66, Caulfeld Institute of Technology, 1966-68, and again at Footscray as Acting Head of the Art Department, 1969-70.

In 1970 he reduced his teaching load, teaching part-time, 1970-75, at Box Hill Technical School and RMIT. He also travelled to Europe and North and South America in 1971 – particularly to Peru, resulting in a signifcant series based on the stone buildings at Machu Picchu.

He returned to part-time teaching at RMIT, 1978-84, leading the art students’ European study tour in 1979. He also served as exhibitions ofcer for RMIT Gallery and the Faculty of Art Gallery, 1982-87, working closely with Jenny Zimmer on exhibitions concerning animism, Papunya Tula dot painting, and abstract art in Australia. Since the 1980s he has produced a long series of abstracts deploying diferent arrangements of coloured rectangles, triangles and circles, which he has used, in his words, ‘to express ideas about human existence’.

Signifcance of Work

Structures 9, 1983, is a large, fully resolved non-objective composition typical of the work that John son has produced since the early 1980s. The work consists of an arrangement of rectangles and thin bars against a white ground. Black predominates, balanced by a palette of maroon, grey and varying shades of blue, heightened with warm accents of yellow, orange and red.

Johnson’s earlier trademark earth-coloured tones are also incorporated in crisp bands of browned stained canvas, which create a sense of depth in the otherwise fat opaque paint surface. The composition seems almost architectural, resembling the cross-section of a three-storey house with seven short pylons for foundations and numerous diagonal crossbeams acting as supportive struts.

Energy seems to thrust upwards, from the foundations, and ricochet across and up through the structure. Equally, there is the suggestion of an organisational hierarchy with a precarious system of checks and balances needed to hold the many diferent entities – represented by solid rectangles and a single small blue square – in harmony.

Regardless of the literalness of the interpretation it is signifcant that none of the forms oppress the others; rather everything (or everyone) is interconnected in a tight web of balanced forms and con tained energy. Structures 9 was painted during a period of new-found stability in Johnson’s career when regular employment at RMIT enabled him to purchase the historic ‘Shamrock’ at Lancefeld, approximately 70 km north of Melbourne, and when his solo exhibition at Realities Gallery (his frst in fve years) was greeted with unanimous critical acclaim. Something of this stability and sense of order is communicated in Structures 9, which represents an afrmation of the artist’s long engage ment with abstraction.

Structures 9, 1983. Acrylic paint on canvas, 122 x 107 cm. Purchased by the RMIT School of Art, 1983. RMIT Univer sity Art Collection.

George Johnson

INDUSTRIAL DESIGN

Philip Zmood: Driven by iconic design

One of RMIT University’s most acclaimed alumni, automotive designer Phillip Zmood had a hand in designing iconic Australian cars like the Holden Monaro, Commodore and Kingswood in his role as Australian Director of Design of GM Holden. A young Phillip Zmood was studying industrial design in RMIT’s Building 2 in the early 1960s when he entered a cartridge drawing into the Brit ish Carriage and Automobile Manufacturer’s Au tomobile Body Design Competition. The original drawing of the Gannet 1000, which won the international competition and helped launch his career.

“When I was young, I developed a passion for cars. I tried to copy pictures of cars out of beautiful magazines, this picture is typical of my draw ings as a teenager. A relative was a very promi nent commercial artist who had a lot of freelance contracts doing car illustrations. He’d show me a little bit about drawing and give me feedback and ideas. I learned from him how to do compositions.

“I got a place in the RMIT Industrial Design course, supported by a scholarship. I entered a drawing into the British Carriage and Automobile Manufacturer’s Automobile Body Design Compe tition. It won the competition and helped launch my career – I got a job in the design team with GM Holden.”

After graduating from RMIT, Phillip Zmood started working at GM Holden in Melbourne in 1965 as a staf designer. He was promoted to assistant chief designer in 1966 and made signifcant contribu tions to the HQ sedan, wagon and coupe (Monaro), and was chief designer of the Torana studio from 1969 until 1978.

“About a year after graduation, Holden thought I was worthy of further training. They sent me to Detroit in the US to intern and design for the brands of General Motors. I spent some time as part of the team at Cadillac, where you might have to do four or fve of drawings like this before lunch time. This drawing has all the brand char acteristics of the Cadillac, the big grill, tomb stone top, their emblem, swoopy side graphics.

“Senior management would come through in the early afternoon and all the designers would put up their four or fve drawings, and they’d pick themes and designs from the submissions. You could do these drawings quickly and they were efective. I loved it; you got so absorbed in it you had no time to think about anything else. There were a lot of people there who very talented and I learned an enormous amount I took back to Aus tralia.

“In the 70s I got the opportunity to work at Opel in Germany as chief designer. Then I returned to Melbourne in 1983 and was appointed as the frst Australian Director of Design at GM Holden. After retiring, I ran a consultancy, Euro Design Associates, encouraging manufacturers to in volve designers early in the life cycle of projects.

“A lot of younger people now aspire to get a Torana and the Monaro and do them up, as a unique piece of Australian sculptural design. These cars were a mark in time. The thing that’s unique about Australian design – is that they’re innovative, practical, and they’re trying to get the most out of the least.”

After working in Germany at Opel as chief de signer, Mr Zmood returned to Melbourne and, in 1983, was appointed as the frst Australian Di rector of Design at GM Holden.

“After returning to Australia I was promoted to assistant chief designer in 1966 and then chief designer from 1969 until 1978. I worked on cars like the Commodore, Torana and Monaro. This Monaro GTS wheel cover was the frst three-di mension pressed wheel made in Australia – it was innovative for its time.

“To me, good design is about having a theme. I’m passionate about detail, ft, fnish in design. The form and line work has to be in harmony and working together, and the theme has to be logical. Drawing is still an essential skill for in dustrial designers, because you still need to get your initial ideas out and be able do a thumbnail image to start.”

In his 37 years at Holden, Mr Zmood was directly involved in the design of Holden’s iconic muscle cars, including Toranas, Monaros and Commo dores

When appointed Head of Design at Holden, Mr Zmood established the GMH award to support industrial design education at RMIT. He also served on the industrial design program advisory committee. His consultancy, Euro Design Asso ciates, encourages manufacturers to involve de signers early in the life-cycle of projects.

“Success to me means having the ability to have a balanced lifestyle with family, get some things in your career noted, and help other people. Ev eryone can be a critic, but if you’re passionate about design, or what you do, you’ll be okay.

“A few years ago, I was going through my garage and I came across piles of sketches and designs from my 37 years with Holden. Honestly, I was about to put them in a skip, when a friend men tioned that I could actually donate them to the RMIT Design Archive.

“I met Harriet Edquist from the Archive and I was blown over with what they’re doing there. They explained that by donating the materials I would help students, as both learning examples and as part of Australia’s design history.”

Philip Zmood

Two seater open sports car, British Carriage and Au tomobile Manufactures Automobile Body Design Competition (rendering)’, 1962-1963, ink, pencil, paper. RMIT Design Archives, Phillip Zmood Collec tion. Photograph courtesy of Stephanie Bradford

PAINTING

Normana Wight: A Fresh Perspective

N ormana Wight was born in Melbourne in 1936 and is one of three women artists to have work included in The Field, at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1968. She originally trained as a painter before studying printmaking and making textiles.

Wight frst studied painting at RMIT, and af ter short time as a fabric designer, worked as a high school art teacher. In 1962 she trav elled to Europe where she studied printmak ing at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts. On her return to Australia in 1964 she moved to Sydney, and then rural Mittagong, the hub of an active arts and crafts community.

In 1968, she enrolled once more at RMIT to take a fellowship diploma in printmaking. By that stage the print had commenced its “re naissance” and the art school’s staf included Udo Sellbach, George Baldessin and Grahame

Normana Wight United 1, 1970, 1970 ,gouache on paper, RMIT Collection

King. Although screenprinting was regarded suspiciously by many, who saw it as being linked to commercial art and design, the stalwarts of etching and lithography were soon forced to concede its youthfulness and vigour.

A colourist at heart, Wight increasingly turned from painting to make editions of screenprints. The technique required a minimum of equipment but, more importantly, printmaking in general appealed to her because it embodied the idea of the repeatable image and was perceived as a “democratic” art, an ideal that coincided with a time of great change and utopian optimism. This relocation, and the fresh perspectives that had come from her international experience meant that she came to the attention of John Stringer and Brian Finemore who were the curators of The Field exhibition which was the frst temporary exhibition at the new National Gallery of Victoria building in 1968.

In 1970, Wight held a solo show of three huge screenprints on canvas at Crossley Gallery. This venture of Tate Adams. In 1981 Wight was appointed lecturer in printmaking at the University of Southern Queensland at Toowoomba and moved to Brisbane.

In 1986 she undertook a residency at the Peacock Printmakers at Aberdeen in Scotland. Her con tinuing interest in textiles led to her being commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to make a tapestry portrait of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch (with fowers). Workshop to explore the potential of tapestry and digital media. Wight’s work resides in the collections of the NGA, NGV, AGNSW, QA GOMA, Newcastle Art Gallery, Shepparton Art Gallery, and RMIT, Monash and Grifth universities.

Signifcance of Work

Formally and stylistically, Wight’s work is very much in keeping with the geometric abstract, minimalist and colour feld works that are a strength of the Collection: works by Robert Hunter, Robert Jacks, the early work of Paul Zika and the recently acquired collages by Inge King are ready examples of counterparts.

Wight’s paintings and prints of the 60s and 70s demonstrate the distinct infuence of European modernism (in this infuence, that of the Bauhaus) that was prevalent in Melbourne, and heavily rooted at RMIT, during these decades.

They also make an interesting point of comparison to works we own by roughly contemporary German artists such as Bernd Damke and Siegfried Kischko, who play on and develop similar themes in an Op/Pop context. RMIT owns no other works by Wight.

Normana Wight United 2, 1970, 1970 ,gouache on paper, RMIT Collec tion

While they are both exploratory sketches, these acquisitions of Wight’s work are highly indicative of her painting and printmaking practice around the time of infuential NGV exhibition The Field, 1968, in which she was one of three women represented. Despite being recognised at the time as one of the more important artists to have been operating at the avant-garde of contemporary art in the 1960s and 70s, along with a great many other female artists of the period, Wight has been largely sidelined by art history.

Wight’s work usually comprises minimalist hard-edged abstractions, akin to those of many of her contemporaries who, infuenced by the writings of Clement Greenberg, began creating highly re fned works of reductive formalism, or ‘post painterly abstraction’ in the 1960s.

Additionally, Wight has always been highly infuenced by the colour theorists of the Bauhaus, par ticularly Itten and Albers. Both pieces are excellent examples of ‘halation experiments’ - investigations on the interactions of hue, and how gradients can be manipulated that combined both the science of vision and the psychology of interpretation - that were being taught by Albers.

PRINTMAKING

Fran Van

a novel take on biography and portraiture

Fran Van Riemsdyk

Parts 1, 2018. RMIT Collection. Images credit: Stephanie Bradford

Fran Van Riemsdyk is an RMIT alumnus, completing a Fellow ship Diploma in 1975, and an MA (Fine Art) in 1997.

She has also been a sessional lecturer at the university, com mencing in 1977 until 2013. Her early practice was characterised by watercolours and prints, depicting tiled bridges, ladders, riv ers and ravines, which had a dream-like quality.

For the past 15 years she has concentrated on the relationship of digital technology to traditional studio practice as a means of generating or enhancing imagery. Her creative practice inves tigates how visual strategies used in areas such as science or business can be applied to fne art to create readings that tra verse both felds.

Her work is held by the collections of the NGA, NGV, QAGOMA, Artbank, and the universities of Melbourne, Adelaide and Vilnius Lithuania.

Riemsdyk:

Signifcance of Work

This artwork, comprising a series of six unique state prints, was generated by shredding twenty years of accumulated documents. These original documents included: wills, utility bills, tax returns, receipts, bank statements, enrolment forms, academic results, curriculum vitae, interactions with lawyers, artist state ments, employment documents and medical information – all documents one is required to keep to legally identify and substantiate diferent aspects of your life, at diferent times in your life.

The various shredded documents form uniform strips rearranged and inter spersed with one another to hint at events and activities through partial words and colours.

The strips have been reassembled to create new, digitised documents that take into account both complex and simple patterns, whilst still maintaining the vestiges of their legal, academic or business origins.

The work becomes a puzzle of sorts, in which a single document may be spread over the six panels. Whilst attempting to mentally piece together biographical data from the various parts of these documents, the viewer is encouraged to make their own personal connections to the information provided.

This work is the most recent piece in the artist’s corpus, as she approach es her late career, and efectively bookends her practice. While they refect a very diferent methodology and subject matter from her early work though, they maintain the subtle treatment of colour and an abiding interest in reception and viewer response that have been mainstays of Van Riemsdyk’s practice.

As a while, the series forms a novel take on biography and portraiture in the abstract, and bears an interesting resonance with colour feld practice and ab straction.

SCULPTURE

Fleur Summers: Getting people moving and thinking

Fleur Summers can see the thread that runs across generations of art teach ing at RMIT, particularly the legacy of the emigre European art teachers. Currently, Summers is a lecturer in sculpture at RMIT and is completing her PhD in ‘The Sculptural Encounter as an Embodied Neurocognitive Experience’.

When Summers undertook her Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT in the late 1990s, although she wasn’t taught by emigre teachers, she felt their impact having studied their works and heard their stories from talking to other women artists who were infuenced by the European teachers.

“While art has changed a lot, it’s important to keep moving forward but to look back and see the connectivity to the past.”

After studying science in the early 1980s, but feeling drawn to galleries and the artworld, Summers fnally decided to undertake an Associate Diploma in Visual Arts in 1993, followed by a Bachelor in Fine Art (Honors) at RMIT (199698, 2001-02). Summers has maintained her fascination for science, using her interest in neuroscience to explore how people interact with space and sculpture through her works.

“The European approach was more focused on crafts and techniques, where as when I started my degree, it was a more conceptual style of teaching,” Summers said.

“As an academic now myself, I can see my students are interested in focus sing on a return to skills.”

Aware of the advancement of 3D printers, Summers wants her students to be hands-on artists, along with having a conceptual approach to their work.

The Supreme Red Rods sculpture in Melbourne Modern is part of Summers’ project-based PhD. The work focuses on how humans use their bodies to explore and learn about their surroundings. To Summers, sculptors don’t just sculpt, they make their work out of whatever the idea needs, and this can mean for than just materials.

In The Supreme Red Rods the space and the interaction of participants, mov ing the materials around, putting them together, is an important part of the work. For Summers the connection between the artwork, the artist and the participants is at the centre of her interest.

“I want to get people moving and thinking at the same time,’ she said.

Image: (video still) Fleur Summers, The Supreme Red Rods.

Glossary of Terms

Bauhaus: The school of art and design founded in Germany by Walter Gropius in 1919, and shut down by the Nazis in 1933. The faculty brought together artists, architects, and designers, and developed an experimental pedagogy that focused on materials and functions rather than traditional art school methodologies.

Centre Five sculptors: refers to a group of mainly émigré sculptors infuential in Melbourne in the 1950s and 1960s, who are widely regarded as having played a key role in the advancement of modernist sculpture in Australia. The centre fve sculptors are Vincas Jomantas, Julius Kane, Inge King , Cliford Last and Teisutis Zikaras.

Colour painting: the term colour feld painting is applied to the work of abstract painters working in the 1950s and 1960s characterised by large areas of a more or less fat single colour. Cosmopolitanism: is the ideology that all human beings belong to a single community, based on a shared morality.

Displaced persons (DPs): refers to a person who is forced to leave their home country because of war or persecution; a refugee.

Émigré: is a person who has emigrated, often with a connotation of political or social self-exile. The word is the past participle of the French émigrer, “to emigrate”.

Formalism: is the study of art based solely on an analysis of its form – the way it is made and what it looks like, rather than its narrative content and its relationship to the visible world. Formgestaltung: is a Germany word means form design in English.

Geometric abstraction: is a form of abstract art based on the use of geometric forms sometimes, though not always, placed in non-illusionistic space and combined into non-objective (non-represen tational) compositions.

Industrial design: is a process of design applied to products that are to be manufactured through techniques of mass production.

Lyrical abstraction: is a descriptive term characterizing a type of abstract painting related to Abstract Expressionism; in use since the 1940s.

Modernism: refers to a global movement in society and culture that from the early decades of the twentieth century sought a new alignment with the experience and values of modern industrial life. Building on late nineteenth-century precedents, artists around the world used new imagery, materials and techniques to create artworks that they felt better refected the realities and hopes of modern societies.

Studio One printmakers: A group formed in Melbourne, Victoria in 1961, based at the Print Studio inthe Art School of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology [RMIT].

Technical Terms:

champlevé: is an enamelling technique in the decorative arts, or an object made by that process, in which troughs or cells are carved, etched, die struck, or cast into the surface of a metal object, and flled with vitreous enamel.

ciment fondu: is a type of quick-hardening refractory concrete product with many uses, but quite popular in the manufacture of artifcial pots and trays for use in bonsai.

holloware: is metal tableware such as sugar bowls, creamers, cofee pots, teapots, soup tureens, hot food covers, water jugs, platters, butter pat plates, and other items that accompany dishware on a table.

oxyacetylene welding: are processes that use fuel gases and oxygen to weld.

Melbourne Modern Exhibition Design

The exhibition design for Melbourne Modern is based on a thematic exploration of the impact that exiled and displaced European artists, architects and designers had on generations of students at RMIT, across the disciplines and practices of painting, sculpture, printmaking, architecture, textiles, ceramics, silverware, jewellery, photography, flm, graphic design and industrial design. This impact is explored in the fve gallery spaces.

• In the main gallery (gallery one), art and Gold and Silversmithing from 1945-1960s are show cased.

• Adjacent, in gallery four, the space is devoted to Applied Art.

• Architecture and Interior Design have been placed in gallery fve.

• The impact and infuence of émigré artists and teachers is displayed in gallery two (Contem porary art and Gold and Silversmithing) and in nearby gallery 3 (art from the 1960s – 1980s).

RMIT University Art Collection

Besides being a showcase for the work of alumni and staf, who rank among the most highly-regarded artists the country has produced, the intended purpose of the RMIT art collection is to tell the story of the university, its ideals and aspirations.

The RMIT Collection began in 1887, the core of which was initiated in the 1970s by the Art Department, and has been added to through institutional amalgamations with Phillip Institute of Technology, Coburg Teachers College and Emily Macpherson.

The RMIT University Art Collection holds approximately 2500 fne artworks in a wide array of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, prints and drawings, gold and silversmithing, and works in new media. Many of the works are on display throughout RMIT’s campuses, and form an important component in exhibitions at RMIT Gallery.

RMIT Art Collection also is seen as “a window into the university’s unconscious - its aspirations, inspi rations and creativity; but also its ego, its neuroses, its bitter disputes and rivalries.”

The development of the Collection is understood as an afrmation and investment in RMIT’s collective cultural capital, continuing the values frst identifed and adopted at the founding of RMIT University as the Working Men’s College “a skilled hand, a cultivated mind” and which continue to resonate.

A commitment to quality and innovation in art practice is a primary focus for the RMIT University Art Collection as is the capacity to refect and elaborate on the creative strengths of RMIT.

RMIT DESIGN ARCHIVES

Founded in 2007 the RMIT Design Archives holds a unique place among Australia’s collecting institu tions for its exclusive focus on design practice across all disciplines. From automotive to fashion and architecture the Archives holds exemplary collections of some of Melbourne’s most important and infuential post-war designers and it is through their records that we can begin to reveal the archaeology of a creative city.

The Archives and its staf support research into Melbourne’s designed environments, design profes sions and practices by providing scholars with access to a diverse range of digital and analogue re cords. It contributes to the cultural life of the city by hosting public events and lending items from its collections to other institutions for exhibitions.

The RMIT Design Archives is a research hub and it facilitates and produces research in and through its collections, which are accessible online. The Archives supports PhD research (and students), with recent dissertations focussing on graphic design and automotive design.

Researchers are also encouraged to view the collections by appointment.

The Archives produces research through competitive Commonwealth grants, doctoral research and publications including books. The biannual RMIT Design Archives Journal, the only peer-reviewed de sign journal in Australia, publishes the scholarly research of RMIT staf from all design schools. The Archives also hosts international and local design workshops and exhibitions. Each year it opens its doors for the public during Design Week, Rare Books Week and Open House Melbourne.

RMIT Gallery

• Intentions as a gallery space

RMIT Gallery is the University’s premier exhibition space. It presents an engaging and thought-provoking program of exhibitions and events; featuring emerging and established Australian and international artists working across visual art, new media, sonic art, design, fashion, technology and popular culture.

RMIT Gallery is committed to showcasing RMIT research outcomes and cultural stories, and to presenting exhibitions and events that are relevant to the student population and experience.

• Exhibition design

The exhibition design process starts with a concept development, an assessment of available space, the amount of works to be displayed, how the audiences will move through the space, and the safety of the artworks and requirements such as noise isolation. The curator and exhibition coordinator work closely with the exhibition installation manager to assess the technical requirements and practical aspects of putting the exhibition concept into the physical space. This phase assesses resources available and lighting requirements, as well as budget, visitor experience narrative and trafc fow. Considering the visitor perspective is a vital part of modern exhibition design. How people use the space is very important, making allowance for activities such as public programs which include artist talks and panel discussions, often with large numbers of audiences who need to be accommodated comfortably and safely around the artworks.

PROFESSIONAL ROLES IN THE GALLERY

RMIT Gallery has a small team of permanent staf who work collaboratively to run the gallery, main tain the RMIT art collection and provide students and the public with an engaging exhibition pro gram. There are also casual staf, volunteers and interns that support the gallery staf in a variety of gallery operations.

• Curator, Galleries

Provides leadership and guidance for gallery staf, guides gallery strategy and manages the gallery budget (including sponsorship and fundraising). Provides curatorial oversight for exhibitions and plans the annual exhibition program.

• Exhibitions Assistant

Assists the Director to coordinate gallery programming. Manages logistics (including freight and insurance) and works with the installation manager to coordinate exhibitions. Liaises with artists to ensure that works are realised according to their vision in the exhibition context.

• Curator, Collections

Looks after the university’s art collection and acquires new work for the collection. Manages dis plays and distribution of art across the university. Manages access to the collection through exhibi tions, research and online.

• Engagement Manager

Plans how the public and the university community can engage with the galley and the RMIT Art Collection. They coordinate the gallery’s publicity, managing public programming, social media and education tours.

• Operations Coordinator

Deals with the day to day management of the gallery and budget, supporting all staf to ensure exhibitions run smoothly. Manages front of house operations and coordinates volunteers and casual staf.

• Exhibitions Installation Coordinator

Responsible for the design and installation of exhibitions. Ensures artworks are installed safely and securely.

PREPARATION AND PRESENTATION OF THE EXHIBITION

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Lighting

We use ERCO gallery track lighting which is a fexible lighting system that allows us to add and remove lights, manipulate their positions and strengths.

https://www.erco.com/products/indoor/track-system/erco-track-104/en/

OH&S issues

RMIT Gallery encounters OH&S issues, but they vary depending on the exhibition and the environ ments. Our priority lies with the safety of the artworks and the visitors. We ensure that exhibition spaces are accessible for large groups, wheelchair users and prams; monitor low lighting levels for people with low vision, and ensure the foors are stable and dry. Some contemporary artworks have particular challenges involved, like strobe lighting, water or heat.

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Temperature, humidity and pest control

RMIT Gallery maintains the gallery environment at a temperature between 18-22’C. A stable temperature is very important to maintaining the condition of artworks, particularly if the works are old or in a fragile condition. We also have IPMS (Integrated Pest Management Systems) that monitors pests and hygrothermagraphs monitoring the relative humidity of the gallery spaces.

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Transportation of art works

We use specialist artwork transport companies to transport artworks, whether that be locally, nationally or internationally. By using specialist freight companies, we are ensured that our artworks will be cared for. These companies use humidity controlled trucks, have qualifed art handlers as staf, and take extra special care of the cargo.

International Art Services: https://www.iasdas.com.au/ Artwork Transport: https://www.artworktransport.com.au/

King and Wilson Essential Art Services: https://art.kingandwilson.com.au/

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Storage of art works

Artworks are wrapped in specialist materials (tyvek, glassine, bubble wrap) and stored so that we can rest assured that their condition is stable. Our collections storage sites are temperature con trolled; the 2D works are hung on storage racks and 3D works are usually stored in crates.

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Conservation and Preservation

RMIT Gallery works to international museum standards of best practice. All our artworks are stored in specially designed artwork storage spaces and are handled by trained technicians. If an artwork needs repairs or conservation, we will send it to a conservation specialist. https://commercial.unimelb.edu.au/gccmc-conservation-services

King and Wilson Essential Art Services: https://art.kingandwilson.com.au/

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Exhibition promotion

RMIT Gallery utilises owned, earned, bought and shared media across all platforms – print/ digital/ online

Owned – our own rmitgallery.com website; RMIT Gallery university website; RMIT Gallery, YouTube Channel, RMIT Gallery soundcloud; EDMs (Electronic Direct Mailouts); printed invitations and public program list on postcards distributed around tourism and cultural venues by DrawCard. Earned – response from media via sending out media releases, approach to media and reviewers Bought – paid advertising in art magazines, online listings, radio ads Shared media – active in social media: Instagram/Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Weibo

Education Kit Credits

Editor and Design: Evelyn Tsitas

Research: Jon Buckingham, Jane Eckett, Evelyn Tsitas, Harriet Edquist, Ann Carew, Ellie Collins, Amy (Jiajing) Wu, Quang Nguyen and RMIT Gallery

Layout: Amy (Jiajing) Wu.