Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery

Lisa Walker and Brendan Huntley talk to curator Dunja Rmandić about the exhibition News from Nowhere at MPRG. Lisa Walker’s vast body of work is a career-length conversation with the question of ‘what is jewellery?’ As well as being the frontman for the Melbourne punk rock band Eddie Current Suppression Ring, Brendan Huntley’s paintings, objects and works on paper depict faces and explore the emot...

MPRG Director Danny Lacy and artist and co-curator Rosie Weiss take us through Surreal Landscapes - a group exhibition that explores the way artists position subtle and strange, absurd and dreamlike interventions within the landscape, abstracting and shifting our reading of the landscape. Find out more about works in the show, including artists Hayley Millar Baker, Nadine Christensen, Peta Clancy,...

Kate Gorringe-Smith sees migratory birds as a metaphor embodying human migration and the search for home and safety. She reveals how she learnt printmaking on Fred Williams’ printing press at school and went on to study printmaking at RMIT. Discover how working at BirdLife Australia influenced her art and the genesis for the Overwintering Project. Kate also discusses how the AGL proposal at Wester...

As artists, how can we fill in the gaps of knowledge about our cultural histories? How can nature and country act as a connector? How can collaboration help strengthen our practice? Tai Snaith kicks off this new series by speaking with Gundijmara/ Italian/ Torres Strait islander artist LISA WAUP about her powerfully personal, shield-like work on paper from the MPRG collection called ‘Admit to Care...

What does it mean to push past perfectionism? How can feeling powerless create more power for us in the end? How do we strike a balance between depicting the absurdity of life and the serious nature of compulsion? In this episode Tai Snaith and Lily Mae Martin start by deciphering her work on paper from the MPRG collection called ‘Wrestling.’ They go on to unpack a series of ideas around how we se...

How can the way in which something is painted affect the way we read it? How is the self-discipline involved in painting similar to the self-discipline of an athlete? How can we forget the cost of our materials in order to paint freely? In this episode Tai Snaith converses with Fiona McMonagle about her watercolour painting ‘Wonky’ from the MPRG collection. This work is just the tip of the iceberg...

How can the overload of images in daily life be seen as a positive thing? How can we keep ideas alive over decades of practice? How do you KEEP EVERYTHING and not become a hoarder? In this conversation Tai Snaith and Elizabeth Gower discuss an early work of hers on paper called ‘Precious Life’ from the MPRG collection. They explore the practice of collecting and sorting both actual materials and s...

As artists, how we can learn to use our megaphones to create a world we can bear to live in? Can a knife have a mind of it’s own? Can desire be an animating force? In this conversation Tai Snaith converses with Deborah Kelly about her animated paper work ‘LYING WOMEN’ from the MPRG collection and the process of making it. They talk of freeing the female figures from white man’s HIStory and letting...

How do our gestures and bodies become part of our work? And how is the act of cutting a feminist action? Tai Snaith and Sally Smart talk about female identity and archetypes of women such as pirates, witches and more- ideas which have been present in Sally’s life and imagination since she was a child. We talk about the act of cutting and how the female identity is both fragile and sturdy, but ulti...

How do we access our True Selves? Tai Snaith and Katherine Hattam discuss how making and depicting space can merge the inside (mental) world with the outside (public) world of politics and ideas. Reflecting on Katherine’s interest in psychoanalysis and unconscious time vs real time and how family life can be political. Presented as part of ‘A World of One’s Own’ a podcast and exhibition at Morning...

Annika Romeyn, the winner of the 2020 National Works on Paper, talks about her award-winning work 'Endurance 5'. After growing up in Canberra, Annika decided against studying medicine and began studying art at the ANU. Through her softball and academic achievements, she received a full scholarship to the Morgan State University, historically a black college, in Baltimore in the US to do a liberal...

Artist Tara Gilbee has a multidisciplinary approach to art making that incorporates solograph and pin hole photography techniques. Her work will be displayed in MPRG’s upcoming exhibition ‘Surreal Landscapes’ as well as an online exhibition of her works resulting from her time spent at the Police Point Artist in Residency, on the Mornington Peninsula, in 2018 and 2019. Discover more about Tara’s b...

Curator Danny Lacy talks to Mornington Peninsula based artist Sophie Perez about studying at the Royal College of Art in London, her inspirations and her love of colour. Sophie shares how she captures the essence of the Mornington Peninsula landscape in paint and discusses her new studio, her 9 x 10 inch commission paintings and how she promotes herself on social media.

Artist and avid collector Patrick Pound talks about his MPRG exhibition 'A Collection of Stranger Things'. Pound delved into the MPRG Collection and drew out works that he recontexualised alongside his own collections of found photographs and objects. Patrick Pound is well known for his collections-based artworks, where he collects thousands of photographs that he themes together as museums. Disco...

Three generations of artists from the same family - Christine Lloyd, Michael Favaloro and Merryn Lloyd - talk to curator Danny Lacy about their work in a recent exhibition at MPRG. In the Valley was an exhibition that highlighted the beauty and fragility of our natural environment and was presented as part of CLIMARTE’s ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2019 festival. Discover how three generations from one fami...

Juan Ford examines the human figure and its relationship to the environment. He has consistently been engaged with opening up new possibilities for realism in painting. Find out more about how exhibiting in artist-run spaces helped develop his practice. He also talks about his artistic process and still life constructions and why his work is often a multifaceted, but sometimes contradictory affair...

A special episode of practical and inspirational advice for artists by artists featured in MPRG's 2018 exhibition program and podcast series. We asked artists what they wish they knew when they were just starting out. Hear advice from 14 Australian artists, including Raafat Ishak, Jon Campbell, Andrew Hazewinkel, Kylie Stillman, James Tylor, Laura Wills, Rosie Weiss, Katherine Hattam, Danica Chapp...

Christian Capurro's 'Another Misspent Portrait of Etienne de Silhouette' is a September 1986 issue of Vogue Hommes magazine that has been carefully erased by over 260 people. The participants inscribed the time taken to erase the page with its monetary value according to their current income. Discover how Capurro is interested in the idea of how erasure is manifested and how image making is simult...

Chris Bond’s practice involves the invention and embodiment of fictional artists and writers. In his painting practice, this is often realised in imagined books, magazines and correspondence. Bond’s new series of four small watercolours for the Obsession: Devil in the detail exhibition continue his chimerical alter-ego of Martin Meeks, a Boston-based artist possessing species dysphoria, who identi...

Vipoo Srivilasa is a ceramic artist who was born in Thailand. He creates contemporary porcelain sculptures and vessels that transmit a universal message about cross-cultural experiences. In this podcast, Vipoo talks about how he works with artisans around the world to make his iconic creatures and how his patience series was a reaction to the distraction of social media. Discover more about his ar...

Natasha Bieniek’s works shrink the everyday down into microcosms. Her tiniest paintings are only 4 x 5 centimetres. Natasha talks about how she is reviving the tradition of miniature painting and why she has shifted from portraiture to landscape painting. A conversation with MPRG curator Danny Lacy. Our 2018 podcast program is supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation. Introduction by Nathan Schr...

Artist Catherine Truman talks about her JamFactory touring exhibition No Surface Holds. Truman's practice incorporates contemporary jewellery, objects, digital image and film installation with a focus upon the parallels between artistic process and scientific method. Discover how Truman co-founded the Gray Street Workshop, about her residencies overseas and her collaborative work with neuroscienti...

Danica Chappell explores the malleability of analogue photography to create unique abstract works. Hear about the process and challenges behind the work she makes and her defining research at the Bauhaus museum after receiving a Jim Marks Postgraduate Scholarship. A conversation with MPRG curator Danny Lacy. Our 2018 podcast program is supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation. Introduction by Na...

Katherine Hattam who has been a finalist in the National Works on Paper eleven times. Katherine talks about her two stage process of making work, her repeating motif of the table covered in everyday objects and why she is fascinated by the William Buckley story, featured in her 2018 National Works on Paper work He Forgot How To Speak English. A conversation with MPRG curator Danny Lacy. Our 2018 p...

Rosie Weiss is a Mornington Peninsula based artist and educator. In 1992 she won the Moet & Chandon Australian art Fellowship. Rosie's work Two Banksias Holding On was acquired for the MPRG collection in the 2018 National Works on Paper. Rosie talks about her diaristic approach to her work, her interest in the environment and how she makes sense of the world through her art. Hear about her first t...