Celebrate the opening of the 2024 Len Fox Painting Award exhibition, with the announcement of the $50,000 acquisitive award by judges John Wolseley and Emma Busowsky.

Join us for the opening on Friday 27 September, 6:30pm, with speeches and the award announcement from 7pm.

Thank you to our major sponsors, local winemaking co-operative Boomtown Wine, and local bar and brewery Love Shack Brewing Company for supporting CAM events and providing local beer and wine. Light refreshments also provided.

The Len Fox Painting Award is a biennial acquisitive painting prize and is awarded to a living Australian artist to commemorate the life and work of Emanuel Phillips Fox (1865–1915), the uncle of Len Fox, partner of benefactor Mona Fox. The Len Fox Painting Award and generous acquisitive cash prize of $50,000 is funded through a bequest from Mona Fox. The Len Fox Painting Award recognises and promotes the work of Australian artists pursuing the artistic interests and qualities of E. P. Fox. These include engagement with colour and light; ambitious connections with international developments in art; and an interest in travel and an engagement with the cultures of diverse regions and peoples.

As part of the 2024 Melbourne Art Book Fair, Castlemaine Art Museum presents a two-day regional art book fair held throughout its 1931 heritage Art Deco building.

From 10am to 3pm across 1–2 June, CAM will host a dynamic art book fair showcasing work by central Victorian artists, writers and publishers, alongside a series of special events including artist talks, workshops, a book launch, and panel conversations on artists publishing their work. A unique design installation will also be presented to coincide with Melbourne Design Week.

With a vast range of stallholders from central Victoria, this is an extraordinary opportunity to meet regional artists, designers, writers and publishers, and support Castlemaine’s vibrant creative community on Dja Dja Wurrung Country.

Celebrate the launch of Sphere 5-8 with co-editors Justin Andrews and Jacqueline Stojanović in conversation at CAM. Sphere is an image archive project concerning itself with Abstraction. Sphere collects and presents material from the practices of those who employ modes of Abstraction in some way. With no editorial content, it is a graphic project, constituted only by the original submissions of its contributors.

As an archive, Sphere exists in two forms: as an online index of documented submissions, and as a printed and collated artist book. Sphere aims to bring an international community of artists and their work together into a shared space of experimentation and reflection. It engages with the notion of the archive as a collection of images based upon the present, recorded in printed form and combined into a historical index. Sphere was made possible by the Australian Government Regional Arts Fund, which supports the arts in regional and remote Australia.

Chaired by CAM Director, Naomi Cass, this conversation with co-editors Justin Andrews and Jacqueline Stojanović will consider the notion of the archive, and explore the way in which Sphere is an evolving project, mapping an artistic community with an aim include, expand, collect and re-present in perpetuity.

Presented as part of CAM Art Book Fair, in conjunction with the 2024 Melbourne Art Book Fair.

Speakers

Justin Andrews
Justin Andrews is a professional artist who works with abstraction in the form of painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking and sound. His visual and conceptual language references early 20th century avant-garde art movements such as Constructivism and Suprematism, but in doing so extends on their currency and ability to engage the viewer. Andrews sees his practice as part of an expanding network of contemporary artists. His ongoing commitment to communication allows him to contribute to the development of abstraction on an international level. Over a 20 year period, Andrews has held solo shows and participated in group exhibitions both locally and internationally. He also maintains a curatorial and independent publishing practice. He has work in institutional collections and regional museums. He lives and works in Castlemaine, Victoria. Justin is represented by Charles Nodrum Gallery in Naarm Melbourne, Australia.

Jacqueline Stojanović
Jacqueline Stojanović is a multidisciplinary artist living and working on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the eastern Kulin Nation. She is an artist, weaver and educator who works with historic and contemporary textile processes. The impetus of Stojanović’s expanded practice is grafted to her belief in weaving as an ancient carrier of culture, with traditions of the handmade superseding geographical borders as tools for mapping. She continues the tradition of hand weaving within a contemporary framework to memorialise the cultural practice of her parents respective homelands in former-Yugoslavia and Vietnam. Her works borrow the vocabulary of Abstraction and assemble a host of materials from the industrial to the domestic, collaging time scapes, memories, translations, built environments, and folk traditions, to navigate shifts in collective social and material values.
Jacqueline has held group and solo exhibitions nationally and in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her works are held in public and private collections including The Justin Art House Museum, The Australian National University, along with a series of works made in collaboration with her mentor John Nixon, at the National Gallery of Victoria. Jacqueline currently teaches Woven Textile Design at RMIT University and Tapestry Workshops for new settlers at Foundation House in Naarm Melbourne, where she is based. Jacqueline is represented by Haydens in Naarm Melbourne, Australia.

The art form of paper marbling takes its name from the stone it resembles, which is prized for its characteristic veins and ripples. In the West, marbling originated in 15th century Turkey as ebru or ‘cloud art’. Paints were spread and manipulated on a gum-thickened tank of water to create embellishments for calligraphy and manuscripts, and to frame drawings and paintings.

Presented by Beck Sutton of The Harebrained Press, this workshop will provide participants with an introduction to the history, materials, equipment and processes of western paper marbling. Since 2016, Beck Sutton has learned the traditional art of bookmaking and techniques such as hand typesetting, letterpress printing, paper marbling and bookbinding. The Harebrained Press was born from this enterprise, along with its first edition, Closer than Breathing.

The workshop includes all materials and welcomes all levels of skill and ability. Participants will be given the opportunity to learn how to set up paper marbling at home, to try their hand at the art form, and to take their results away.

Bookings essential. Limited spaces available. Purchase tickets here.

Presented as part of CAM Art Book Fair, in conjunction with the 2024 Melbourne Art Book Fair.

Presenter

Beck Sutton of The Harebrained Press
Beck Sutton (R.I. Sutton) is a local writer and book artist who, in 2016, set out to produce her 136-page short story collection using only traditional bookmaking techniques. She dubbed this endeavor ‘The Harebrained Press Project’. Over the seven years that followed, Beck learnt hand typesetting, letterpress printing, paper marbling and bookbinding, to complete her project in 2023. The Harebrained Press was born from this enterprise.

How do artists make a space for their work in publishing? Can self-publishing provide artists with a new form of agency in reaching audiences in constrained financial times?

This panel conversation will delve into these questions and investigate the role of self-publishing for artists. Hear from a range of self-publishers including illustrator and writer Lorena Carrington of Pardalote Press, artist Deborah Klein, and artist Clayton Tremlett, and discover practical insight into the self-publishing process – from high production artist books through to limited edition zines.

Presented as part of CAM Art Book Fair, in conjunction with the 2024 Melbourne Art Book Fair.

Speakers

Lorena Carrington
Lorena Carrington is an illustrator and writer whose books have been published in Australia and internationally. She is known in Australia for her illustration work in the field of fairy tales and picture books, and she also writes for older children. She designed and jointly coordinated the anthology South of the Sun: Australian Fairy Tales for the 21st Century; and runs Pardalote Press, an independent publishing house, with author Sophie Masson. She was the recipient of the 2020 Australian Fairy Tale Society award, and a 2023 May Gibbs Creative Time Fellowship. Her picture book Satin, written by Sophie Masson, is a Children’s Book Council of Australia Notable Book for 2024.

Deborah Klein
Deborah Klein was born in Melbourne and grew up in the coastal suburb of St Kilda. From 1973 she lived and worked in London, returning to Melbourne in 1980. In 2011, she began dividing her practice between Melbourne and Ballarat, moving permanently to the latter in late 2019. The artist gained degree and post-degree qualifications from Chisholm Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Gippsland School of Advanced Education and a Research MA from Monash University, Gippsland. Since 1987 she has regularly held solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Australia and internationally. Klein's practice encompasses painting, drawing, printmaking and book art. Her work has received numerous awards and is held in public and university collections throughout Australia. In 2009 she founded Moth Woman Press, through which she publishes her artist books and zines. MWP publications are held in the permanent collections of the National Library of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, State Library of Victoria, State Library of Queensland, Melbourne Athenaeum Library, Monash University, Bank Street Arts, Sheffield, UK and the Baillieu Library, Melbourne University.

Clayton Tremlett
Clayton Tremlett was born in 1964, he studied Painting and Printmaking at Charles Sturt University between 1980 and 1984. His works draw explicitly from Australian history and culture, following sustained periods of research. He is renowned for his linocut portraiture; however, he also works with etching and screen printing to produce wallpapers, artist’s books, installations, editioned and unique state prints. He is represented in the Australian National Gallery, Bendigo, Geelong, Castlemaine, Hamilton, Mornington Peninsula, Wangaratta and State Library of Victoria collections.

Now showing at Castlemaine Art Museum, Julie Millowick: Surrounding features a selection of work from 36 years of documenting the Central Victorian post goldrush environment around the home of the artist, including a new series seen for the first time. In this exhibition, Millowick captures the beauty of her surrounding in tumult and recovery. This strangely poignant landscape has been turned upside down through violent extraction – but it remains resilient and offers capacity for renewal.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition, Surrounding by Julie Millowick is a publication that extends her photographic documentation. The publication features an introduction by the artist, an essay by exhibition curator Jenny Long, full-colour photographs, and an interactive map. The publication showcases Millowick’s diverse explorations of her environment, using film, pinhole camera, photogram, lumen, cyanotype and digital capture.

In this panel conversation, hear from artist Julie Millowick and the team behind the publication: Jac DiBlasi, Designer; Jessie DiBlasi, Producer; Rob Gale, Image Editor; and Stephanie Holt, Editor. Chaired by CAM Director, Naomi Cass, the conversation will explore the publishing process, considering artistic and design sensibilities from concept to completion, collaborating as a publishing team, and realising the publication in tandem with a major exhibition.

Presented as part of CAM Art Book Fair, in conjunction with the 2024 Melbourne Art Book Fair.

Speakers

Julie Millowick
Julie Millowick began her photographic career working in the darkroom of Athol Shmith, John Cato and Peter Barr. After completing her studies at Prahran College of Advanced Education, she worked as a press and public relations photographer, after which the direction of her commercial folio changed and she worked as a corporate industrial photographer. Julie achieved early recognition for her photojournalism when she exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria and Australian Centre for Photography in 1977 in Australian New Work. She has exhibited and published regularly since then, with work held in major photography collections in Australia and internationally. In 1993 she exhibited work in the exhibition Intimate Lives with Sally Mann, Nan Goldin and Jaques Henri Lartigue at the International Fotofeis in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Jac DiBlasi
Jac DiBlasi is a graphic designer with a passion for publication design with a Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Communication Design from Swinburne University of Technology. She has a demonstrated history of working in the events services industry across Melbourne festivals and institutions including Fed Square and the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre (MCEC). Her superpower is her keen ability to collaborate with clients and artists, identifying the perfect format and style to enhance a published narrative for print outputs of 250 to 200K. Jac employs design elements that add to the reader experience, such as the fold out guiding map included in Surrounding or the section for readers to document their own family recipes in Nonna to Nana.

Jessie DiBlasi
Jessie DiBlasi is a multidisciplinary artist and writer with a proven track record of socially engaged practice. Her work explores and celebrates tradition, history, and connection through visual and practical application, often employing the photobook along with interactive programming to engage audiences. Her work has been awarded and recognised nationally and internationally through awards, residencies and collections that include the State Library of Victoria and National Library of Australia and has been selected for art prizes including The Blake Prize, the Muswellbrook Art Prize, Maggie Diaz Photography Prize for Women, MAMA Art Foundation National Photography Prize, and Iris Award.

Rob Gale
Born in Melbourne, Australia, Rob Gale is a graduate of Prahran college who has worked as a freelance commercial photographer nationally and internationally for over 35 years. Currently, he teaches photography at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), where he has taught photography and digital postproduction to vocational students for more than 16 years. Outside of teaching, Rob continues to work on independent projects, most recently completing pre-press production for Michael Coyne’s internationally award-winning book about village life around the world Villages: Hearing the Grass Grow’. Rob has had work exhibited at the Ballarat International Photo Biennale and as a finalist in the Moran Photographic prize, Aussie Street Awards, Head on Awards and The Blake Prize.

Stephanie Holt
Stephanie Holt is a Fryerstown-based editor, who specialises in arts and culture publishing. She is current Chair of the Institute of Professional Editors, Australia and New Zealand, and works part-time with Overland journal and the History Council of Victoria, as well as maintaining a freelance editing practice.

Based in Castlemaine, Digital Mould Design (DMD) are the leading digital mould and formwork designers in Australia. Following the first design installation with Like Butter in 2023 as part of Melbourne Design Week and Melbourne Art Book Fair at CAM, this year DMD have created a distinct steel GFRC mould installation to activate the gallery space. With many years of experience in concrete and GFRC (Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete) moulding, DMD specialise in solving the complex forms found in contemporary Australian architectural projects.

Tim Preston and Sholto Turner of DMD will be in conversation with CAM Director, Naomi Cass, discussing their design installation and offering insight into their process. Hear how DMD use 3D computer modelling to digitise the concrete form based on architectural drawings, CAD files, sketches or briefs, to design and develop mould and formwork systems suitable for a range of fabrication methods.

Presented as part of CAM Art Book Fair, in conjunction with the 2024 Melbourne Art Book Fair.

Speakers

Digital Mould Design
Digital Mould Design (DMD) offer world leading concrete formwork, mould design and fabrication technologies. DMD specialise in the design and supply of in-situ formwork and precast moulds for commercial builders, large scale domestic developments, landscaping and urban development. DMD apply leading edge technologies to suit any shape, finish and budget. These technologies include laser cut steel, CNC machined polystyrene foam (EPS), fibreglass and 3D printing. Projects include MONA Hobart, Park Hyatt Sydney, University of Melbourne, Jewel Tower Gold Coast, MCG Melbourne, Melbourne Metro Tunnel, Sea World Atlantis Queensland, Curtin University Perth, Mildura Riverfront Precinct, Melbourne Quarter, Idée Fix Winery Margaret River.

Join us for a floor talk with artist Jonathan Nichols, discussing his exhibition The inside of painting, on Saturday 25 May, 2pm.

Jonathan Nichols is known for making figurative paintings that evoke a sense of intimacy, while still reaching outward into the exterior world around us.

In this exhibition, he presents two loose groupings of paintings made 20 years apart. By staging this marked temporal gap of 20 years between the two groupings, Nichols invites us to focus on how paintings extend beyond the specific contexts of individual works.

Hear directly from Jonathan Nichols, with CAM Director, Naomi Cass, as he discusses his exhibition in more detail, delving into the aspects of painting within his work and his interest in a painting’s painterly character, and its passage in time.

Jonathan Nichols is an artist and curator born and raised in Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country/Canberra. He is based in Naarm/Melbourne and Dja Dja Wurrung Country/Bendigo. Nichols began painting in the early 1990s after studying sculpture at the ANU and the University of NSW. In 2023, he completed a PhD at the VCA, University of Melbourne.

Early in his career, Nichols co-founded artist-run galleries Stripp (1996–98), Lovers (1998–99 and 2014) and The Green Door (2005). Curatorial projects include Feeling machines (Stripp, 1997), Mac (Centre for Contemporary Photography, 2009) and Learning to leave (VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery, 2014). Nichols has been invited to curate an exhibition of international contemporary painters at PICA, Perth, in 2025. Over a period of 12 months in 2012–13, he was artist-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan, Kuala Lumpur, and for 6 years until the end of 2019, he lived and worked in Singapore.

In 2022, Nichols published a book of interviews titled Walking with ghosts: six conversations about painting — John Spiteri, Boedi Widjaja, Christoph Preussmann, Noor Mahnun Mohamed, Moya McKenna and David Jolly. The book follows Nichols’s biographical pathway through the art world since the 1990s and pursues long-held artist friendships to explore a 'horizontal culture' of painting.

Jonathan Nichols has participated in group exhibitions in Australia at the NGV, ACCA, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, National Portrait Gallery, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Karen Woodbury Gallery, Geelong Gallery and Bendigo Art Gallery, among others. He has held solo exhibitions in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney.

Join exhibiting artist Michael Wolfe for a conversation with producer Suzanne Donisthorpe, artist Phil Elson and CAM Director, Naomi Cass at Castlemaine Art Museum on Sunday 19 May, 1:30pm.

Through photographic portraits featuring 21 visual artists over age 70 from Mount Alexander Shire, Michael Wolfe's 20/70 explores how an artist’s practice is both dynamic and in constant evolution. It asks just what does creativity, character and commitment count for across a lifetime as an artist?

This conversation will delve into Wolfe's current Terrace Projection, discussing this new series of work, including the process of collaboration with the vast array of artists featured within the series, as well as the broader themes the work explores such as artistic expression, creative freedom and the impact of arts practice.

Speakers
Michael Wolfe
Michael Wolfe has had over 30 solo exhibitions and numerous group shows, such as being included in the 2019 Castlemaine State Festival with the exhibition ‘Shimmer’, the 2020 contemporary landscape survey show (Con)textural Landscapes at Bendigo Art Gallery, 2021 Ballarat International Foto Biennale open program, and collaborated with renowned Australian author Alex Miller in the international collab project and exhibition 'Now&Them' in Shanghai China. Michael has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally and his work is included in public, corporate and private collections. These include Bendigo Art Gallery; La Trobe University; Capital Theatre, Bendigo; Old Fire Station Arts Centre, Bendigo; La Trobe Building Society.

Suzanne Donisthorpe
Suzanne Donisthorpe was a producer/reporter on every incarnation of the Books and Arts program on ABC Radio National for over 20 years. She curated the well received show at Lot 19, Castlemaine, Signs of the Times in 2022. Her novel Getting Up was published by Pan Macmillan in 2013. She currently hosts The Retronauts program on Castlemaine public radio MAINfm.

Phil Elson
Phil Elson's ceramics art practice over the past 35 years has been strongly informed by the ceramics of South East Asia; in particular the art of Japan, China and Korea. Phil has undertaken an Australia Council studio residency in Barcelona, and has travelled to Berlin, the rural areas of India and Nepal and beyond, inviting his arts practice to be challenged by these environments. Their influence has influenced Phil's work in a strong change in the colour palette of glazes that was subsequently used and are still engaged with a changing practice. The significance of place, both culturally and artistically, has become important to the artist, which commenced in Barcelona. The powerful role of place has developed in his work and continues today.

Celebrate the exhibition opening of Jonathan Nichols: The inside of painting on Friday 10 May, 6pm.

Thank you to major sponsors, local winemaking co-operative Boomtown Wine, and local bar and brewery Love Shack Brewing Company for sponsoring wine and beer, alongside support from StrangeLove with non-alc beverages.

Free event. Please RSVP here.

Jonathan Nichols: The inside of painting

Jonathan Nichols is known for making figurative paintings that evoke a sense of intimacy, while still reaching outward into the exterior world around us.

In this exhibition, he presents two loose groupings of paintings made 20 years apart. The first six works, dated between 1998 and 2001, were painted directly from the screen of one of the early commercially available laptop computers – a 1997 Apple PowerBook 1400cs. The second group uses mannequins and figurative shapes from the history of art. These paintings were completed between 2021 and 2022, after Nichols returned to Australia following several years living in Singapore and Malaysia.

By staging this marked temporal gap of 20 years between the two groupings, Nichols invites us to focus on how paintings extend beyond the specific contexts of individual works. He is interested in a painting’s painterly character and its passage in time. It is the aspects of painting that leap across the gaps between individual works that Nichols suggests are internal to painting and key to how it operates.

Experience the wonder of Flinders Quartet with a special gallery performance at Castlemaine Art Museum on Friday 22 March.

Legacy is a special hour-long concert (no interval) featuring: WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART String Quartet No. 19 in C major, K. 465 ‘Dissonance’
GORDON KERRY String Quartet No. 6 *

“Why do some string quartets become favourites?”
– Elizabeth Sellars, Violin

Music marks history in a unique and poignant way. Mozart’s legacy is epitomised in the Dissonance Quartet, which is revered for its daring harmony that broke all the rules, as well as its soaring melodies and sense of humour. Gordon Kerry’s legacy is already evident in ensuring the essence of 21st century Australia is chronicled through sound in his timbres and driving rhythms while drawing inspiration from ancient plainchant.

*Commissioned by Flinders Quartet with support from Siobhan Lenihan, for Dolores and Denis Lenihan.

Purchase tickets here.

Flinders Quartet
Flinders Quartet is instantly recognisable as one of Australia’s most loved chamber music ensembles. They are a quartet for the 21st century and a highly respected force in Australian chamber music, entering their third decade with acknowledged musical skill and maturity.

Over twenty years, Flinders Quartet has followed a unique path and lives up to their motto of “caring for tradition, daring to be different” through a busy schedule encompassing live and online performances, commissioning, recording, education and mentorship programs, including the successful composer development programs ‘Ascend’ and ‘Emerge’, and outreach activities through their artistic patronage of John Noble’s Itet regional quartet program, Resonance String Orchestra, and Musica Viva’s Strike a Chord championship.

Join renowned photographic artist Julie Millowick, and curator and writer, Kyla McFarlane in conversation at Castlemaine Art Museum on Sunday 10 March, 11:30am.

Delving into the underlying themes of Millowick’s new exhibition, Surrounding, the conversation will traverse ecological and feminist photography, renewal and regeneration, and examine Millowick’s practice and new series of work through a lens that is both intrinsically local and environmentally global.

Free event, all welcome.
No RSVP required.

This event is presented as part of PHOTO 2024 International Festival of Photography.

Julie Millowick
Julie Millowick began her photographic career working in the darkroom of Athol Shmith, John Cato and Peter Barr. After completing her studies at Prahran College of Advanced Education, she worked as a press and public relations photographer, after which the direction of her commercial folio changed and she worked as a corporate industrial photographer. Julie achieved early recognition for her photojournalism when she exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria and Australian Centre for Photography in 1977 in Australian New Work. She has exhibited and published regularly since then, with work held in major photography collections in Australia and internationally. In 1993 she exhibited work in the exhibition Intimate Lives with Sally Mann, Nan Goldin and Jaques Henri Lartigue at the International Fotofeis in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Kyla McFarlane
Dr Kyla McFarlane is a curator and writer from Aotearoa New Zealand, living and working in Naarm Melbourne. She is currently Academic Engagement Manager in the Museums and Collections Department at the University of Melbourne. Kyla has held key curatorial positions at the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; the Centre for Contemporary Photography; and Monash University Museum of Art in Melbourne. Over two decades, her curating and art writing has focussed primarily on lens-based, feminist, performative and emerging art practices in her region. An experienced public speaker, Kyla has presented conference papers, participated in and chaired panels, opened exhibitions and presented guest lectures at numerous venues in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Celebrate the launch of the latest Terrace Projection: Michael Wolfe 20/70 and the exhibition opening of Wildflowers – The First Ladies of Castlemaine Art Museum on Friday 8 March, 6:30pm.

Thank you to major sponsors, local winemaking co-operative Boomtown Wine, and local bar and brewery Love Shack Brewing Company for sponsoring wine and beer, alongside support from StrangeLove with non-alc beverages.

Free event. Please RSVP here.

Wildflowers – The First Ladies of Castlemaine Art Museum

Opening on International Women’s Day, Wildflowers pays homage to the group of women whose vision and entrepreneurial spirit was pivotal to the establishment of Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum (now known as CAM). The origin story of this museum is one of defiance and solidarity, of educated young women using their privilege for the advancement of their community and forging life-long friendships in the process.

This origin story inspired a series of community workshops run in conjunction with the National Trust’s Australian Heritage Festival 2023. Participants were invited to contribute a fabric motif symbolising the stories of these seven women. These were then sewn together into a single artefact, or storycloth. Devised and curated by Sarah Frazer, this storycloth forms the exhibition’s centrepiece and represents the combined effort of 24 artists, mostly from Castlemaine. It speaks to the materiality of the era and the sewing skills that each of CAM’s First Ladies possessed.

Terrace Projection: Michael Wolfe 20/70

In the 1970s they were in their 20s, and now in the 2020s they’re in their 70s and beyond. Unlike some traditional professions, where a defined age often marks the end of a career, artists tend to continue creating as long as they’re able.

In photographic portraits by Castlemaine artist Michael Wolfe, featuring 21 visual artists over age 70 from Mount Alexander Shire, this exhibition projection 20/70 explores how an artist’s practice is both dynamic and in constant evolution. Just what does creativity, character and commitment count for across a lifetime as an artist?

Celebrate the exhibition opening of Julie Millowick: Surrounding on Saturday 24 February, 2pm.

Thank you to major sponsors, local winemaking co-operative Boomtown Wine, and local bar and brewery Love Shack Brewing Company for sponsoring wine and beer, alongside support from StrangeLove with non-alc beverages.

Free event. Please RSVP here.

Julie Millowick: Surrounding

Julie Millowick is a localist, an artist who is deeply embedded in the place where she lives. Over many years, Millowick has documented the environmental legacy of gold mining around her home near Fryerstown in Central Victoria. This strangely poignant landscape has been turned upside down through violent extraction—but it remains resilient and in the process of recovery.

Curated by Jenny Long, Surrounding exhibits a selection of Millowick's work including a new series seen for the first time. Millowick’s photographs show us the devastating effects of mining, drought, flood and invasive plants, but also remind us of the interconnectedness that links all parts of this ecosystem including its human occupants. This is a terrain which the artist loves, and which she sees with acute perception. It is a landscape full of complexity, a region with a terrible past, but in its capacity for renewal is also a place that offers a spark of hope for the future.

Take part in a three-session drawing course with celebrated artist Gabrielle Martin. Exclusive to Castlemaine Art Museum, this drawing course will use select items from CAM’s Collection as a range of Still Life subjects.

Presented over three Saturdays in February 2024, the sessions will take place in the Higgins Gallery at CAM, surrounded by the glorious exhibition For everything there is a season.

Gabrielle Martin will draw on the surrounding exhibition for inspiration, with items from the Collection being brought out as Still Life subjects as well as seasonal fruit throughout the course. There will be opportunity to engage with your fellow participants over afternoon tea during each session.

All levels of skill and ability are welcome, with Gabrielle Martin providing individual teaching during each session.

Gabrielle Martin
Gabrielle Martin has held solo exhibitions and has been a finalist in many national art prizes, including the Archibald Prize, Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, Portia Geach Memorial Award, Len Fox Painting Prize, Maldon Portrait Prize and Metro 5 Award. She was the 2022 winner of the Maldon Portrait Prize and is currently included in Archie100, an exhibition celebrating 100 years of Archibald Prize history, which is touring nationally from 2021-2024. Her work is represented in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, the State Library of Victoria and Deakin University. She lives on Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Malmsbury.

Bookings essential. Limited spaces available.

Tickets: Purchase tickets here.

Choose your own adventure print poem! To coincide with the 2023 Experimental Print Prize, now showing at Castlemaine Art Museum, we’re thrilled to present a unique screenprinting workshop lead by Troppo Print Studio on Saturday 20 January 2024.

Due to popular demand, a second workshop session is now available!
Limited tickets available for this session running 1:30pm – 3pm.
Purchase tickets here.

As a group, participants will screenprint a selection of words on tote bags and t-shirts, creating a wearable concrete-style poem. Participants are asked to choose a descriptive or poetic word related to the theme of Environment. Prompts or examples of words include: activate, energy, future, nature, positive, reality, revolution. These words will then be incorporated into the screens for the workshop.

When booking tickets, submit your descriptive word, or email us with your word before 12 January 2024.

Workshop includes all print materials and tote bags. Participants are also welcome to bring a light-coloured t-shirt (e.g. white, creams) to screenprint on!

Troppo Print Studio is an artist run open access print studio in Melbourne's (Naarm) North. Facilitating workshops, leading to membership options, and happenings like the Screen Print Social Club. Troppo offer darkroom facilities, and accommodate paper, fabric, and garment printing.

Bookings essential. Limited spaces available.

Tickets: Purchase tickets here.

A themed conversation, Objectively Speaking brings together three artists from the 2023 Experimental Print Prize who are working with printmaking in three-dimensional formats.

Join us for a discussion with artists Deanna Hitti, Kelly Manning and Kat Rae, and learn about the processes and concepts behind their 3-D works on Saturday 13 January, 2pm.

Discover the range in artistic practice and explore the sense of material familiarity as each artist shifts printmaking into new territory.

Free event, all welcome.
No RSVP required.

The Experimental Print Prize, made possible through support from donor Michael Rigg, recognises the strong tradition of printmaking in Victoria, and acknowledges that experimentation and risk are essential to art. In 2023, the Experimental Print Prize once again draws together artists from across Victoria to investigate new possibilities within the bounds of printmaking.

Deanna Hitti
Deanna Hitti’s multidisciplinary practice explores the nuanced relationships between Middle Eastern and Western cultures. Informed by her Lebanese heritage, Hitti’s work often references historical and cultural material to reveal how perceptions of difference are constructed. Her large-scale prints and artist books employ various print methods, including cyanotypes, photography and screen printing. In a career spanning more than twenty years, Hitti has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her works have been shortlisted in numerous prizes and her artist book Towla won the Fremantle Arts Centre Print Award (2018). Her works have been acquired by major Australian collections including the State Library Victoria and the National Library of Australia.

Kelly Manning
Kelly Manning is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and printmaking. Across her 30+ year career, her work has investigated the impact of trauma and its ongoing legacies, the development of and need for strategies of survival, the power of resilience, and the importance of hope. Manning has a Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours (Drawing), RMIT University, Melbourne (2002) and is currently undertaking a Master of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne.

Kat Rae
Kat Rae is an emerging artist completing her Honours in print-informed fine art at RMIT, Naarm. Her work explores how place, memory and experience layer and mesh, and who/what is forgotten after the war. Kat served in the Australian Army for 20 years before deciding to become a full-time artist in 2019. Since then, her work has thrice been recognised in the Napier Waller Art Prize competition and she has exhibited in numerous group shows. She has her first two solo shows later this year.

Presented at the RedShed Arts Workshop in Newstead, join us for a CAM Off-Site 6-hour workshop exploring Laser Resist Etching with artist Clayton Tremlett on Saturday 13 January 2024.

To coincide with the 2023 Experimental Print Prize, now showing at Castlemaine Art Museum, workshop participants will produce a photographic etching and print using copper plate, and aquatint processes.

Laser Resist Etching is an etching technique developed by workshop facilitator and artist, Clayton Tremlett, for his 2016 exhibition Beard and Influence at CAM. It is geared toward adapting readily available resources to produce a photographic etching using lo-fi techniques.

Suitable for all abilities – no experience necessary.

Participants are to bring a laser printed image to the workshop. The Laser Resist Etching process works best with portraiture/botanical imagery (recommended).

In addition to producing your own photographic etching, participants will learn how to produce a 20 x 15cm plate and print it onto Magnani Incisioni Paper.
Participants will also come away from the workshop with additional resources for further exploration.

Clayton Tremlett
Based in Castlemaine, Clayton Tremlett is a Printmaker/Painter whose works draw explicitly from Australian History. His practice stems from sustained periods of research. He is renowned for his linocut portraiture; however, he also works with etching and serigraphy. His oeuvre includes wallpapers, artist’s books, collector cards and editioned prints. His work is included in the Australian National Gallery, Bendigo, Castlemaine, Geelong, Hamilton, Mornington Peninsula, Wangaratta, Warrnambool, and State Library of Victoria collections.

Bookings essential. Limited spaces available.

Tickets: Purchase tickets here

Celebrate the exhibition opening of Ancestor Treasures: First Nations Tools and Adornment on Jaara Country on Saturday 16 December, 2pm.

As part of this event, we also celebrate the launch of our latest Terrace Projection, a video work of paintings by First Nations collective Pitcha Makin Fellas, and an off-site billboard featuring a work by Ash Thomas (Yorta Yorta/Wiradjuri), both presented as part of the touring exhibition Collective Movements, with support from NETS Victoria.

Thank you to major sponsors, local winemaking co-operative Boomtown Wine, and local bar and brewery Love Shack Brewing Company for sponsoring wine and beer, alongside support from StrangeLove with non-alc beverages. Thank you Murnong Mummas for supporting this event with refreshments.

Free event. Please RSVP here.

Ancestor Treasures: First Nations Tools and Adornment on Jaara Country

Under the care of Jaara and Dja Dja Wurrung Country, First Nations ancestor tools and adornment have been within the stewardship of Castlemaine Art Museum since its inception in 1913 – having been housed as part of CAM’s Collection – and held in trust for the local Jaara and Dja Dja Wurrung community, as well as all First Nations people.

Many of these items are being exhibited for the first time in Ancestor Treasures, under the direction of Uncle Rick Nelson (Jaara), Dja Dja Wurrung Traditional Elder; Alvin Darcy Briggs (ADB) (Yorta Yorta, Taungurung, Ngarigo Walbunga), Artist; Tiriki Onus (Yorta Yorta, Dja Dja Wurrung), Associate Dean of Indigenous Development and Head of the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development, University of Melbourne; and Sharnie Hamilton (Djaara), Cultural Values Manager, Djandak.

Ancestor Treasures also includes traditional tools made by contemporary artist ADB (Yorta Yorta, Taungurung, Ngarigo Walbunga), in response to the Collection, and a video by First Nations photographer James Henry in collaboration with Henry Harmony Nelson's Descendants – the Saunders family from Mooroopna.

Terrace Projection: Collective Movements - Pitcha Makin Fellas, Why Don't Whitefellas Like Trees?

'Why Don’t Whitefellas Like Trees?' is an after dark video projection of paintings by Pitcha Makin Fellas – a First Nations collective hailing from Ballarat on Wadawurrung Country. This work was created by Gimuy Walubarra Yidinji woman Trudy Edgeley; Dja Dja Wurrung, Gunditjmara and Yorta Yorta woman Alison McRae; and Gunditjmara man Ted Laxton. This is a Monash University Museum of Art / NETS Victoria touring project. This project emerges from the touring exhibition Collective Movements.

Collective Movements - Ash Thomas, The Hunters

A new billboard, featuring 'The Hunters', a vivid artwork by First Nations artist Ash Thomas, is presented on Midland Highway, Castlemaine. Ash Thomas is a Yorta Yorta/Wiradjuri artist who creates detail-oriented paintings that interconnect culture, spirituality and realism. This is a NETS Victoria touring project, with support from The Torch. This project emerges from the touring exhibition Collective Movements, initiated by the Monash University Museum of Art.

To coincide with Stonework, we invite you to bring your treasured rocks, stones, minerals or fossils to Talking Rocks and have your items assessed and/or identified by an esteemed panel of Geologists. Perhaps you will discover something new about the rocks in your life!

On a first come first served basis, please bring 1-3 items (maximum) per person, with sessions limited to 5 minutes. Please keep your specimens to an easily held size and bring a pen and paper to note any advice, as written assessments cannot be given.

Optional gold coin donation to participate. This is an informal event, and participants and attendees are invited to listen in on each assessment session.

Suitable for all ages!

All welcome. No RSVP required.

Geologist Experts

Dr Bill Birch
Dr Bill Birch, Curator Emeritus, Geosciences, joined the Melbourne Museum (Museums Victoria) in 1974 as Curator of Minerals and retired at the end of 2013 after 40 years. His main roles were to grow and improve the museum’s collections of minerals, rocks and meteorites for use in research projects and exhibitions, and to engage with the wider community across many topics of interest within the vast field of geology. Birch's personal research interests are in the analysis of minerals, especially unusual species, documentation of mineral assemblages, and historical mineralogy. Working with other experts, he has described over 50 minerals new to science.

Clive Willman
Clive Willman started his career as a geologist at Chewton’s Wattle Gully mine in 1980 and later worked for the Geological Survey of Victoria and in Victoria’s gold exploration industry. He has contributed to numerous scientific papers and books on Victoria’s geology. Clive was awarded the Geological Society of Australia’s Selwyn Medal in 2003 for a ‘significant contribution of high calibre to Victorian geology’. Clive has produced a number of science education films for his YouTube channel ‘Geology Films’.

Dermot Henry
Dermot Henry, Head of Sciences, Museums Victoria Research Institute, joined the Museum in 1982, initially working in a variety of roles within the Geosciences section. Now, as Head of Sciences, he has responsibilities for a large multidisciplinary team that works across the broad disciplines of zoology, palaeontology, geosciences, and human biology. Through his career he has been responsible for managing and developing collections, developing public programs and exhibitions, conducting peer-reviewed research, communicating science to a diverse range of audiences, and promoting the Museum in a wide variety of forums. He has published on a variety of mineralogical, petrological and meteoritic topics and has edited and contributed to four books on Victorian mineralogy.

Bringing together historical works from the CAM collections with contemporary and First Nations artists, Stonework reveals there are many ways of looking at a stone.

Bookings are open for Gertrude's teacher professional development program Contemporary Art on the Road, presented in partnership with Gertrude, Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) and presenting partners Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Castlemaine Art Museum and Shepparton Art Museum.

CAM is pleased to host this free workshop in conjunction with Gertrude on Thursday 30 November.

Contemporary Art on the Road is a teacher professional development program founded to bring artists, art educators and teachers together to exchange ideas, share creative experiences and explore contemporary art and culture. The program has been designed to introduce teachers to a range of hands-on, expertly designed strategies and resources for teaching contemporary art in their classroom.

This program is free for teachers, with priority given to regional and Low SES Victorian teachers.

Book in now for a day of professional development with educators from Gertrude, Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA), alongside a hands-on workshop by current Gertrude Studio Artist Lisa Waup.

Lisa Waup will lead a workshop demonstrating the re-use of materials to create remnant fabric jewellery and ornamentation. Lisa Waup is a mixed-cultural First Peoples multidisciplinary artist and curator born in Naarm Melbourne. Waup’s practice spans diverse media, including weaving, experimental printmaking, jewellery making, photography, sculpture, fashion and digital art.

Bookings essential. Click here to book.

Hear from 2023 Experimental Print Prize artists Melissa Proposch and Marika Strohschnieder as they discuss their exhibited works on Saturday 25 November, 2pm.

This themed talk, entitled Spirit Level, links artists from this year's EPP who touch on themes of religion, ghosts, and the human spirit through their works.

Join us for an insightful conversation with the artists, delving into their process and research.

Free event, all welcome. No RSVP required.

The Experimental Print Prize, made possible through support from donor Michael Rigg, recognises the strong tradition of printmaking in Victoria, and acknowledges that experimentation and risk are essential to art. In 2023, the Experimental Print Prize once again draws together artists from across Victoria to investigate new possibilities within the bounds of printmaking.

Melissa Proposch
Melissa Proposch is a practicing printmaker of some 30 years. She is a former publisher of Trouble magazine, lecturer in printmaking and drawing, a founding committee member of Castlemaine Press community access print studio, and currently, co-director of Artpuff gallery and workshop. Recent work has explored haunted houses, and printmaking and photography as independent and interdependent spectral technologies. This has led to work combining the tangible presence of printed and imprinted objects with the intangible histories of secondhand domestic items. She uses this vacillating palpability to invoke fissures in our everyday through which our ghosts might make themselves known.

Marika Strohschnieder
Marika Strohschnieder is a multidisciplinary artist with formal training as a stone sculptor, fine art conservator and jewellery designer. Having worked in a wide range of art institutions has inspired a diverse practice as an artist and encouraged experimentation. The use of text has been a feature of Marika’s work with techniques including 3D-printing, roller printing, letter stamping and the use of hand printed vintage letterpress type. In 2017 Marika established Studio LUX, a jewellery and sculpture studio in the Macedon Ranges in Victoria. Marika has a particular interest in jewellery, sculpture and wearable art.

To coincide with the 2023 Experimental Print Prize, now showing at Castlemaine Art Museum, we are delighted to present a unique printmaking workshop with Central Victorian artist and printmaker Jackie Gorring on Saturday 4 November, 11am.

Join us at the gallery for an intimate workshop in relief printing, where participants will experiment with using Styrofoam as a large stamp, combined with pipe cleaners, as an improvisational and boundary-pushing form of making prints, which can be editioned. Suitable for all ages and levels of ability.

Jackie Gorring practises in relief print and sculpture. She prints from stamped Styrofoam blocks on canvas and paper and repurposed cardboard. Gorring has exhibited nationally and internationally, and her prints are collected by many institutions and private collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Canberra Museum and Gallery; Parliament House, Canberra; Print Council of Australia; and Burnie Gallery, Tasmania. Jackie's work is featured in Dr Sasha Grishin's Australian Printmaking in the 1990s. Gorring has attended art residencies in New Delhi, Nepal and China. She teaches privately in her studio/gallery in Victoria. Jackie received a Rural Art Grant in 2008 and continues to exhibit in Melbourne, Sydney and regional areas.

Bookings essential. Extremely limited spaces available.

Tickets: Purchase tickets here.

Celebrate the exhibition opening of Stonework on Saturday 21 October, 2pm.

Thank you to major sponsors, local winemaking co-operative Boomtown Wine, and local bar and brewery Love Shack Brewing Company for sponsoring wine and beer, alongside support from StrangeLove with non-alc beverages. Light refreshments also provided.

Free event. Please RSVP here.

Bringing together historical works from the Castlemaine Art Museum collections with contemporary and First Nations artists, including Stephen Bram, Alvin Darcy Briggs, Pete Curly, Brodie Ellis, Sally Marsland and Felix Wilson, Stonework reveals there are many ways of looking at a stone.

For First Nations artists with a deep knowledge of their Country, stones and rock formations have a spiritual and cultural energy as well as intrinsic and material qualities of colour, sharpness, hardness, weight.

A different attitude to stones developed in Europe in the 19th century. Sharp-eyed natural historians turned their attention to mountains and valleys and developed a controversial new discipline – Geology. With rocks in mind, works by Louis Buvelot, Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin, W. B. McInnes, Elma Roach and Penleigh Boyd show landscapes that are dynamic and alive, constantly weathering, warping, folding, eroding, erupting or sinking.

Contemporary and First Nations artists, sculptors, photographers and jewellers also reveal unexpected aspects of rock and stone: geometry, ritual, even relationships to memory and trauma.

The exhibition also includes historical maps: the work of geologists and cartographers from the Geological Survey of Victoria, while specimens of minerals and fossils from CAM's historical collection ground the exhibition in the physical world and introduce the viewer to the concept of deep time.

In this conversation event, hear from some of the contemporary artists in Stonework, including Stephen Bram, Pete Curly, Sally Marsland and Felix Wilson, as they discuss their exhibited works, and reveal their favourite stones. Join us for an informal conversation with the artists in the Whitchell Gallery at CAM on Saturday 21 October, 1pm.

Free event, all welcome. No RSVP required.

This conversation will be followed by an opening celebration for Stonework from 2pm. Please RSVP here.

Bringing together historical works from the CAM collections with contemporary and First Nations artists, Stonework reveals there are many ways of looking at a stone.

Stephen Bram
Stephen Bram is known for his paintings, large-scale wall drawings and three-dimensional, room-size installations, which have been executed in galleries and museums around the world. He was one of a small group of artists who established Store 5 in 1989, an artist-run exhibition space in Melbourne, which reinvigorated abstract painting in Australia. Bram’s work engages perspective and architecture, constructing spaces where hard-edged abstract shapes collide. His paintings reveal the flatness of the canvas and at the same time its potential to create spatial depth. The artist is engaged in a deep and long-lasting conversation regarding abstraction, illusion, representation, idealism, architecture, modernism and postmodernism. Bram’s works are in important public and corporate collections including, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; Daimler Collection, Berlin; B.H.P., Melbourne; Monash University, Melbourne; University of Queensland, Brisbane; Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology; and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Bram is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne.

Pete Curly
Pete Curly is a Gaelic, Ngarabul-Gumbaynggirr of Barrigirrbay artist working across wood, stone, and steel on Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Central Victoria.

Sally Marsland
Sally completed an Honours degree in Fine Arts, Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT in 1996 before studying under professor Otto Künzli at the Munich Academy of Fine Art. She won the Herbert Hoffman Award in 2002 and the Colin and Cicely Rigg Contemporary Design Award in 2006. Her work is held in numerous public collections. Sally Marsland uses materials as diverse as resin, pigment, bone, wood, stone and semi-precious stones and a variety of metals in a practice guided by an internal logic based on taxonomic series, as in series such as Almost Black, Flat Colour, Some brooches that are round, Jewellery made with holes, Sally’s work is typified by simplicity and a deeply instinctive process of making.

Felix Wilson
Felix Wilson is an artist based on Dja Dja Wurrung land on the goldfields of Central Victoria. His practice explores the continuities and interconnections between human culture and the non-human, particularly place-based extractive histories and relationships across sites. Having completed a project-based PhD at RMIT in 2019 which focussed on photographic images, he has recently moved into integrating stone objects and sculptural pieces into his practice.

Join us for a special conversation with the 2023 Experimental Print Prize award winners, Margaret Manchee, One-Three Collective (David McBurney and Mark Dustin) and Simon Dubbeld, on Saturday 7 October, 11:30am.

The Experimental Print Prize, made possible through support from donor Michael Rigg, recognises the strong tradition of printmaking in Victoria, and acknowledges that experimentation and risk are essential to art. In 2023, the Experimental Print Prize once again draws together artists from across Victoria to investigate new possibilities within the bounds of printmaking.

This will be an informal conversation with the artists, traversing the exhibition space and delving into the concepts and processes behind each of the winning works. Discover the way in which these artists extend the limitations of printmaking to create their distinctively experimental works.

Free event, all welcome. No RSVP required.

Margaret Manchee, First Prize
Margaret Manchee, Chartered Accountant, combines a career in accounting with a fine art practice. She was born in Hong Kong and moved to Australia in the 1980s. Since graduating in Fine Art from the University of Melbourne – Victorian College of the Arts in 2008, she has been a printmaking teacher at Firestation Print Studio in Melbourne. She creates copper etchings, mono-printing, paintings/collages, Papier Mache and artist books. The recurring motif ‘circle’ in her work came from her Indonesian and Chinese heritage.

One-Three Collective, Highly Commended
One-Three Collective (David McBurney and Mark Dustin) is a project that invites print-based artists to work collaboratively with the same, or common, image information to produce print oriented, experimental images. Through the exploration of reproduction processes, they create artworks that challenge established print norms and examine evolving relationships between media, images, and artificiality. In a world where shared images are ubiquitous, One-Three Collective seeks to re-encode ambiguity and challenge notions of authenticity. Through their art, they invite viewers to question how and where an individual view begins or ends within the complex existence of contemporary images.

Simon Dubbeld, Emerging Artist Award
Simon Dubbeld is an emerging local artist. Simon studied visual art at RMIT, Melbourne and LaTrobe University, Bendigo.

Celebrate the opening of the 2023 Experimental Print Prize (EPP) exhibition. This exhibition features 43 finalists, with the announcement of three prizes on opening night: First Prize ($10,000), Highly Commended ($5,000) and Emerging Artist Award ($3,000).

Join us for the opening on Friday 15 September, 6pm, with prizes announced from 6:30pm.

In keeping with the experimental theme, The Press Gang, a Victorian art concept band, will perform in the gallery. The Press Gang is made up of esteemed printmakers who rework pop songs with printmaking themed lyrics.

This performance is supported by the Mount Alexander Shire Council Event Grants Program.

Thank you to our major sponsors, local winemaking co-operative Boomtown Wine, and local bar and brewery Love Shack Brewing Company for supporting CAM events and providing local beer and wine and StrangeLove for sponsoring non-alcoholic beverages. Light refreshments also provided.

Free event. Please RSVP here.

The Experimental Print Prize is a biennial, non-acquisitive prize, open to artists residing in Victoria. There is a strong tradition of printmaking in Victoria and the EPP seeks to foster new directions in the field, through both the exhibition of shortlisted artists and awarding of prizes. Unique amongst printmaking prizes, EPP recognises that experimentation and risk are essential to art.

Celebrate the closing weekend of David Rosetzky, Air to Atmosphere on Saturday 2 September, from 4–6pm. Join us for closing drinks and a live set on the terrace by DJ Designer and DJ jimbellina.

Thank you to our major sponsors, local winemaking co-operative Boomtown Wine, and local bar and brewery Love Shack Brewing Company for supporting CAM events.

Castlemaine's own Forêt Distilling are also supporting this special event. Attendees will be able to sample their freshly bottled pastis, a French aperitif with anise, fennel, liquorice and more botanicals.

Free event. Please RSVP here.

David Rosetzky, Air to Atmosphere, is an interdisciplinary and collaborative project made with members of the LGBTQIA+ community in Castlemaine, on Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Central Victoria.

David Rosetzky
David Rosetzky is an artist who is passionate about finding new ways to represent LGBTQIA+ and marginal identities through an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to art making. Often working with practitioners from the fields of theatre, dance, and film, he creates videos, installations and photographic works that question whether our identity is informed by how others see us, or how we see ourselves.

With an extensive exhibition history both in Australia and overseas, Rosetzky has presented his work in over 30 solo exhibitions and 60 group exhibitions. His Portrait of Cate Blanchett (2008), commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, was exhibited in The Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video at the International Centre for Photography, New York. His works are held in numerous collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, National Portrait Gallery, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and Monash Gallery of Art.

To celebrate the release of her book, Mosaicism – Thinking in Mosaic, leading contemporary artist and mosaic specialist Dr Helen Bodycomb will be in conversation at the gallery with author Cate Kennedy on Saturday 26 August, 2pm.

Dr Helen Bodycomb is well known as one of Australia’s few contemporary artists working primarily in mosaic. She is professionally active; exhibiting, fulfilling commissions, guest teaching and presenting her work nationally and internationally. In Mosaicism, Bodycomb draws on her experience as a visual artist and her ground-breaking research, to explain the human urge to ‘make special’. This intuitive act of assembling small, like parts, is one where the act of making is as important as the artefact made.

This conversation will delve into Bodycomb’s fresh concepts about making, mosaic, and materiality, and the way in which she explores these through imagery, prose, theoretical commentary, poetry and historical analysis. Discover the ancient practice of mosaic and its significance as a potent contemporary art form today.

Following the conversation, there will be an opportunity for book signing and light refreshments in the gallery. Free event, please RSVP here.

Hear from the Transference artists, Justin Andrews, Michael Graeve, Melinda Harper, Clayton Tremlett, as they discuss their current exhibition at Castlemaine Art Museum on Saturday 19 August, 12:30pm.

In this group exhibition, four Castlemaine-based artists, Justin Andrews, Michael Graeve, Melinda Harper and Clayton Tremlett, create new works that experiment with varying methodologies of transference. These artists record the process of transferring colour, shape, gesture and texture – allowing for improvisation, chance and complexities of surface and pattern.

Join us for an informal conversation with the artists, within the unique exhibition space, and discover the way in which these artists work across a variety of languages of abstraction, and navigate systematic processes that wield breaks in pattern.

Justin Andrews
Justin Andrews lives and works in Castlemaine. He has developed a form of geometric abstraction that points towards the complexity of contemporary existence. He summons his compositions through the use of angular elements, dynamic colour and organic surfaces. He is best known for his acrylic paintings on canvas, stretched on frames and panels made entirely by his own hands.

Michael Graeve
Michael Graeve was born in 1971, and lives and works in Castlemaine. He works across painting and sound disciplines through easel painting, site-specific installation, painting and sound installation, sound performance and composition. By engaging painting and sound art practices in dialogue, he seeks to extend frameworks for their creation, and reading into oscillations between conjunctive and disjunctive relations.

Melinda Harper
Melinda Harper was born in 1965, and lives and works in Castlemaine. She grew up in Canberra and went to Art school at Prahran Collage in 1982 to 1985. She studied under Robert Jacks, Lesley Dumbrell and Victor Majzner. Harper’s first exhibition was in 1987 at Pinacotheca in Melbourne. She was a leading member of the Store 5 artists group in Melbourne (1989-1993). While Melinda Harper is best known as a painter, her practice also includes prints, drawings, painted objects and embroideries.

Clayton Tremlett
Clayton Tremlett was born in 1964, and lives and works in Castlemaine. He studied Painting and Printmaking at Charles Sturt University between 1980 and 1984. He studied under Don Laycock and Simon Close. He is a printmaker/painter whose works draw explicitly from Australian History. His practice stems from sustained periods of research. He is renowned for his linocut portraiture; however, he also works with etching and serigraphy. His oeuvre includes wallpapers, artist’s books, collector cards and editioned prints.

Hear from local poet Terence Jaensch, discussing their poetry and involvement in Air to Atmosphere – as both collaborator and contributor.

Commissioned by CAM, David Rosetzky's Air to Atmosphere, is an interdisciplinary and collaborative project made with members of the LGBTQIA+ community on Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Central Victoria, that traverses photography, filmmaking, choreography, performance, song, poetry, publishing and social encounter.

In this conversation, Jaensch will delve into the poetic arena of the project and examine two of their sonnets featured in the Air to Atmosphere catalogue, published by Sonntag Press, exploring form, technique and more.

In an open forum format, attendees will be welcome to ask Jaensch questions about writing poetry, both in the context of the Air to Atmosphere project, and more broadly.

This is a free event. All welcome.

Terence Jaensch
Terry Jaensch is an Australian poet. Their first book of poetry, Buoy (Five Islands Press) was shortlisted for the Anne Elder Award by the Fellowship of Australian Writers. They have been the recipient of two Asialink residencies, one in South Korea, and one in Singapore where they co-authored with Singaporean poet Cyril Wong the collection Excess Baggage & Claim (Transit Lounge Publishing). Their most recent volume of poetry is Shark (Transit Lounge Publishing). They have worked in a variety of writing related positions including, Artistic Director of the Emerging Writers’ Festival, Poetry Tutor for Writers Victoria’s Online Poetry Clinic, Literature Coordinator for the Castlemaine State Festival and as Founder and Artistic Director of ISH (Insert Self Here): Queer Ideas, Activism and Arts Day. Most recently they have been a subject of, and have contributed 5 sonnets to, Air to Atmosphere, a large-scale collaborative and multi-disciplinary work by David Rosetzky exhibited at Castlemaine Art Museum, that includes photography, filmmaking, performance, publishing, music, song and choreography.

To coincide with current exhibition and major commission, David Rosetzky, Air to Atmosphere, CAM presents a live pop up performance in the gallery by David Rosetzky and collaborators – featuring choreography by Jo Lloyd in collaboration with performers Rhett D'Costa, Terence Jaensch and Eden Swan.

Drawing material from the Air to Atmosphere project, the performance will consist of choreographed movement, spoken text and poetry – exploring the experience of the LGBTQIA+ community on Dja Dja Wurrung Country – and propose new considerations as to how the dialogue within the project may open up possibilities for future collaboration, ideas and conversations.

David Rosetzky, Air to Atmosphere, is an interdisciplinary and collaborative project made with members of the LGBTQIA+ community in Castlemaine, on Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Central Victoria.

David Rosetzky
David Rosetzky is an artist who is passionate about finding new ways to represent LGBTQIA+ and marginal identities through an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to art making. Often working with practitioners from the fields of theatre, dance, and film, he creates videos, installations and photographic works that question whether our identity is informed by how others see us, or how we see ourselves.

With an extensive exhibition history both in Australia and overseas, Rosetzky has presented his work in over 30 solo exhibitions and 60 group exhibitions. His Portrait of Cate Blanchett (2008), commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, was exhibited in The Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video at the International Centre for Photography, New York. His works are held in numerous collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, National Portrait Gallery, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and Monash Gallery of Art.

Join us at the gallery for a floor talk with artist Mitch Nivalis, discussing their Terrace Projection commission for Castlemaine Art Museum, Equal the Contest on Saturday 12 August, 12:30pm.

"Equal the Contest began as a Master of Photography project that aimed to use image-making to challenge gender roles and stereotypes. As my research progressed, it became a feature documentary film and photobook about my journey learning to play AFL in the Mt Alexander Falcons Women's Sports Club, along with this projection, commissioned by CAM." – Mitch Nivalis

In this free talk, Mitch will discuss the way their video work subverts assumptions, while advocating for change and visibility in regional communities – through Australian football.

Mitch Nivalis (they/them) is a photographer and filmmaker based near Castlemaine. They are best known for their work advocating for change around visibility for diverse communities in Regional Victoria. In 2020, they published their first research study, titled Photographers as Changemakers, and in 2022, followed it up with Picture Change, a guide for organisations to produce more diverse and inclusive images. Equal the Contest is Mitch's largest body of work to date and the documentary film premiered at the 2023 Castlemaine Documentary Film Festival.

To celebrate the closing weeks of her exhibition, please join us for a floor talk with artist Jane Brown, discussing There's a certain Slant of light with Jane Brown, on Sunday 23 July, 2pm.

In this exhibition, There’s a certain Slant of light takes a darker turn with the inclusion of an exciting new body of works by celebrated contemporary photographer Jane Brown. The mysterious interplay of light on greenhouse plants, and refracted through mirrors, antique glass and windows are the subjects of these extraordinary new works – each meticulously hand-printed on paper, tin or glass.

Hear directly from Jane Brown, in conversation with curator Jenny Long, as she discusses the range of photographic techniques and processes utilised within the exhibition, whilst delving into the inspiration stemming from items in the CAM collection, including Victorian lustreware and glass-plate negatives of local portrait photographer A. D. Verey.

Jane Brown is a visual artist and Director of the Visual Cultures Resource Centre at the University of Melbourne. Her keen interest in the history of photography and photography conservation is reflected in her lectures on these subjects at the University. Jane has established herself as a skilled darkroom practitioner with a particular focus on 19th and early 20th Century photographic processes. Her work has been recognized by institutions such as the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Southeast Museum of Photography, Florida, USA, who have included her works in their collections.

Castlemaine Art Museum invites you to celebrate the latest Terrace Projection: Equal the Contest and the exhibition opening of Transference: Justin Andrews, Michael Graeve, Melinda Harper, Clayton Tremlett at Castlemaine Art Museum on Friday 30 June.

Drinks and light refreshments provided.

Thank you to our major event sponsors, local winemaking co-operative Boomtown Wine, and local bar and brewery Love Shack Brewing Company.

Please RSVP here.

Transference: Justin Andrews, Michael Graeve, Melinda Harper, Clayton Tremlett

Transference results from the touch of two surfaces that each leave their respective traces. In this group exhibition, four Castlemaine-based artists, Justin Andrews, Michael Graeve, Melinda Harper and Clayton Tremlett, create new works that experiment with varying methodologies of transference. These artists record the process of transferring colour, shape, gesture and texture – allowing for improvisation, chance and complexities of surface and pattern.

Terrace Projection: Equal the Contest

Equal the Contest is a commissioned video work by Castlemaine-based photographer and filmmaker Mitch Nivalis. Equal the Contest began as a Master of Photography project that aimed to use image-making to challenge gender roles and stereotypes. As research progressed, it became a feature documentary film and photobook about Nivalis' journey learning to play AFL in the Mt Alexander Falcons Women's Sports Club, along with this projection commission. Close up, genderless stills of our bodies are overlaid with moments of impact from the game, subverting assumptions around who has a right to belong on the football field and what our bodies are capable of.

To celebrate the release of his book, Portraits, Northern Books brings award-winning book designer, artist and poet W. H. Chong to Castlemaine Art Museum.

W.H. Chong's Portraits is a love letter to our culture makers, a sparkling collection of more than 300 drawings of artists, writers, musicians, thinkers and makers compiled from his sketchbooks of the last decade. There are also paintings, prints, and digital art. Portraits includes a forward by renowned artist John Wolseley.

Chong’s portraits present a kaleidoscope of the Australian cultural community, from national icons to local legends, all pursuing their individual passions and inspiration.

Chong will be in conversation at the gallery with local author, Libby Angel whose cover on her new book, Where I Slept, was designed by Chong. There will also be an opportunity for book signing with W. H. Chong as part of this event.

W. H. Chong
W. H. Chong is a well-known Australian book designer, and an artist whose preferred media are drawing and painting. He is also a published poet and writer on art. His Instagram is an ongoing project of depicting the people he encounters. In 2013 Chong was inducted into the Australian Book Designers Hall of Fame. He lives in Melbourne.

Libby Angel
Libby Angel is an Australian poet and novelist. She won the 2018 Barbara Jefferis Award for her debut novel, The Trapeze Act. Her poetry has appeared in a number of Australian journals. Where I Slept, a work of autofiction, is her second novel.

As part of the 2023 Melbourne Art Book Fair, Castlemaine Art Museum presents a two-day regional art book fair held throughout the 1931 heritage-listed art deco building.

From 11am to 3pm across 27–28 May, CAM will host a dynamic art book fair showcasing work by central Victorian artists, writers, and publishers, alongside a series of special events including a book launch, meet-the-maker design installation, artist talks, and panel discussions on creating and publishing in the regions and beyond.

With a vast range of stallholders from central Victoria, this is an extraordinary opportunity to meet regional artists and writers and support Castlemaine’s vibrant creative community.

What does waking up to birdsong instead of traffic do for a writer? And what happens when the town you live in has more artists, writers, clowns and PhDs than anywhere in Australia?

Writers Going Bush is a conversation with Carmel Bird, Martine Murray and Honeytree Thomas, hosted by Suzanne Donisthorpe. Three generations of writers at different stages of their careers discuss the benefits and obstacles of living and writing in Castlemaine.

Carmel Bird
Carmel Bird has written over 30 books and is the winner of the 2016 Patrick White Literary Award in recognition of her contribution to Australian Literature, and some of whose novels have just been re-published as part of Untapped: The Australian Literary Heritage Project. Her new collection of short stories Love Letter to Lola is coming out in May.

Martine Murray
Martine Murray has written many critically acclaimed books, including How to Make a Bird, winner of the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards Young Adult award in 2004, and The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley, winner of the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards Children’s Book award in 2006. She has studied filmmaking at Prahran College, art at the Victorian College of the Arts and Movement & Dance at Melbourne University. She has formed a dance theatre company called Bird on a Wire and received Arts Victoria funding to develop and perform a full-length work, as part of Melbourne’s Next Wave Festival.

Honeytree Thomas
Honeytree Thomas is an emerging writer, recipient of The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) Emerging Writers’ Mentorship Program for her novel The Passionflower and teaches writing at Bendigo Kangan Institute and Bendigo TAFE.

Suzanne Donisthorpe
Suzanne Donisthorpe was a producer/reporter on every incarnation of the Books and Arts program on ABC Radio National for over 20 years. She curated the well received show at Lot 19, Castlemaine, Signs of the Times in 2022. Her novel Getting Up was published by Pan Macmillan in 2013. She currently hosts The Retronauts program on Castlemaine public radio MAINfm.

Hear from renowned artist and printmaker David Frazer in conversation with Castlemaine Art Museum Director, Naomi Cass, discussing Frazer’s current exhibition For the Love of Song.

Featuring handmade illustrated books, endorsed and signed by the musicians, as well as a suite of linocuts, broadsheets, and Frazer’s magnificent wood blocks, this exhibition sees two great art forms entwine: printmaking and song writing.

Delve into Frazer’s artistic practice and discover his process of realising hand-bound and hand-printed artist books, in collaboration some of the most iconic Australian and International songwriters of a generation.

David Frazer has held over 40 solo exhibitions in Australia, London and China. He has won many art awards locally and internationally including the 1st International Print Biennial in Guanlan China, Cossack Art Award, Broken Hill Outback Art Prize, and 6 People’s Choice awards. In 2019, he was the Australian Commissioner for the Ulsan International Woodcut Biennial in Korea. He has been selected 3 times to hang in the Royal Academy of London Summer Exhibition. He has taught printmaking extensively in Australia and abroad. He lives and works in Castlemaine. David Frazer is represented by Australian Galleries, Melbourne.

Dive into a unique site activation at Castlemaine Art Museum, created by local designer Jem Selig Freeman of Like Butter.

The Last Sauna is an exploratory installation that showcases the skeletal structure of a sauna house or tiny home, reflecting on the beauty of the minimalist, sustainable design and the challenges of the housing crisis.

Join us on Saturday 27 May, 12pm, for a 'Meet the Maker' session, and hear directly from Like Butter's co-founder, Jem Selig Freeman, about the journey and inspiration behind this innovative installation.

Like Butter
Like Butter is a design and fabrication business owned and run by industrial designer Jem Selig Freeman and sculptor Laura Woodward. Based in Castlemaine, Like Butter has gained a reputation for its approach to design and fabrication that is based on flexible and lateral thinking, strong aesthetics and considered detailing. Like Butter has functioned across multiple industries; from its own furniture and lighting products, to one-off commissions for significant design and fabrication projects, to public art installations, through to film and animation production.

Celebrate the launch of David Frazer’s new artist book in collaboration with musician Tom Waits, More than flesh and bone, presented as part of the 2023 Melbourne Art Book Fair.

This exquisite handmade book is presented as part of Frazer's current exhibition For the Love of Song. This handmade artist book interprets the songs The Last Rose of Summer, Take It With Me and The Briar and the Rose by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan.

David Frazer’s exhibition is a passionate and unique collaboration between the renowned Castlemaine-based artist and some of the most iconic songwriters of a generation including Paul Kelly (AUS); Don Walker (AUS); Nick Cave (AUS/UK); Nick Lowe (UK) and Tom Waits (USA). Frazer’s most recent collaboration with Tom Waits is a world premiere.

This is a unique opportunity to celebrate David Frazer’s latest artist book and hear from the artist, alongside a special musical performance in the gallery.

Please RSVP here

David Frazer has held over 40 solo exhibitions in Australia, London and China. He has won many art awards locally and internationally including the 1st International Print Biennial in Guanlan China, Cossack Art Award, Broken Hill Outback Art Prize, and 6 People’s Choice awards. In 2019, he was the Australian Commissioner for the Ulsan International Woodcut Biennial in Korea. He has been selected 3 times to hang in the Royal Academy of London Summer Exhibition. He has taught printmaking extensively in Australia and abroad. He lives and works in Castlemaine. David Frazer is represented by Australian Galleries, Melbourne.

An afternoon dedicated to light, glass, and photographic histories; the legacy of Adolphus Verey (1862 – 1933); and contemporary approaches to old methods. With a range of speakers, a magic lantern exposition and a tour of There’s a certain Slant of light with Jane Brown, this event on Saturday 20 May will celebrate Jane Brown’s exhibition at Castlemaine Art Museum.

Featuring a new body of work by celebrated contemporary photographer Jane Brown, this exhibition presents us with a history lesson of photographic techniques and processes – photograms; internegatives; wet plate; silver gelatin and orotones – as though paying homage to drawing with light. The work also draws inspiration from items in the CAM collection, including a Victorian lusterware candleholder, and the little-known history of local portrait photographer Adolphus Verey.

Free event. Bookings essential. Click here to book.

Program

Jane Brown (Melbourne), Glass Labyrinths
Justin Shortal (Castlemaine), Introduction to Castlemaine photographic studio A Verey and Co, 1883 – 1954
Sophie Couchman (Melbourne), What Verey’s camera lens reveals about Castlemaine’s Chinese community
James McArdle (Castlemaine), A Garden, Moonlit (Robert Vere Scott and Adolphus Verey)
Harry Nankin (Castlemaine), Cameraless photography and the ecological gaze
Ellie Young (Trentham), My Carbon Footprint: Historic processes and Gold Street Studios
Martyn Jolly (Canberra), The Magic Lantern Apparatus

Speakers

Jane Brown
Jane Brown is a visual artist and Director of the Visual Cultures Resource Centre at the University of Melbourne. Her keen interest in the history of photography and photography conservation is reflected in her lectures on these subjects at the University. Jane has established herself as a skilled darkroom practitioner with a particular focus on 19th and early 20th Century photographic processes. Her work has been recognized by institutions such as the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Southeast Museum of Photography, Florida, USA, who have included her works in their collections. In 2013 she received the Art and Australia/Credit Suisse Contemporary Art Award. This year Jane has been invited to present a paper on photomechanical prints for the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation (FAIC) at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. Her work is currently on display at the Castlemaine Art Museum, Victoria, for the exhibition ‘There's a certain Slant of light with Jane Brown.’

Sophie Couchman
Dr Sophie Couchman is a Professional Historian and Curator who works closely with communities to tell their stories. She has researched and published in the field of Chinese-Australian history for many years and has been involved in the development of historical projects such as exhibitions, walking tours, oral histories and online resources. Her doctoral thesis explored the ways in which Chinese immigrants and their descendants in Australia were photographed and how stereotypes about Chinese Australians were reinforced through photography. She was curator at the Chinese Museum for seven years but has since worked on a range of projects including the British Migrants: Instant Australians exhibition (2018), Shooting the Past podcast (2018), Chinese Australian Hometown Heritage Tours (2017-2019), and the Makassar-Yirrkala: Creative Collaboration (2019). She is currently the Professional Historians Australia (Vic & Tas) Vice-President (Programs), recording oral histories for the National Library of Australia and writing a book on the Leong-Lim family.

Martyn Jolly
Martyn Jolly is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Australian National University School of Art and Design. As an artist he has participated in several major curated exhibitions and developed solo exhibitions which creatively re-use archival photographs. His works are in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Canberra Museum and Gallery. He has also developed a series of collaborative magic lantern performances around Australia, available on YouTube. As a writer he has researched various aspects of the history of photography, particularly Australian photography. His books include Faces of the Living Dead: The Belief in Spirit Photography; The Magic Lantern at Work: Witnessing, Persuading, Experiencing and Connecting, co-edited with Elisa deCourcy; Empire, Early Photography and Spectacle: The Global Career of Showman Daguerreotypist J. W. Newland, co-authored with Elisa deCourcy; and Installation View: Australian Photography Exhibitions 1848-2020, co-authored with Daniel Palmer.

James McArdle
Photographer James McArdle has practiced professionally and artistically for 55 years, taught art and photography from 1976, and was head of the School of Art and Design at La Trobe University, Bendigo before joining Deakin as Assoc. Professor. He writes on and reviews photography for various publications. Living in Castlemaine district since 1988, he was Shire President of Newstead Shire, and is a member of the Art Support Group at Castlemaine Secondary College and Life Member of CAM. McArdle is an active member of CAM Guides.

Harry Nankin
For forty years, photographer, educator and environmentalist Harry Nankin’s focus has been our contested material, spiritual and ethical relationship with the non-human world. Pursuing an ‘ecological gaze’ he has recorded the shadows of nature – ocean, rain, forests, live insects, the light of the stars – on photographic paper and film without a camera, just as the flash of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima caught the shadows of its victims at the instant of their perishing. Employing procedures that are as much land art and ritual as photography he has ‘turned the landscape into the camera’. Harry is the recipient of multiple arts grants and his work has been exhibited, reviewed, short-listed for prizes or acquired for collections on four continents. To interpret the post-Goldrush landscapes of central Victoria where he now lives, in 2020 Harry returned to the film camera.

Justin Shortal
Justin’s interest in Castlemaine’s 19th Century photographers began over 40 years ago when he acquired photographs by Adolphus Verey from local antique dealers. Justin came to Castlemaine as an English/drama teacher at Castlemaine High School in 1977. He was a founding member of Central Victoria’s first Community radio station, 3CCC-FM where he produced radio programs with students from schools across the region. He also produced training films for a local company, VEA (Video Education Australasia). Justin went on to work as a researcher, writer, producer, director and presenter for the Schools’ Television Unit of the Victorian Department of Education in East Melbourne. His final career move took him to the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) as Communications Manager. In retirement, Justin continues his passion for researching stories of the district’s early photographers and hopes to publish his findings.

Ellie Young
Ellie Young is the founder of Gold Street Studios in Victoria Australia. Since the establishment in 1999 Gold Street Studios has become the centre for alternative photographic print processes in Australia and New Zealand. The studio provides a resource centre for photographic image-makers. It attracts local and international participants seeking to advance their knowledge and skills in the art, craft, and science of traditional handmade and early photographic print processes from local and international tutors. Ellie Young self-published The Salt Print Manual in 2011 and has exhibited widely in Australia, Europe, England and China. Works and articles published in books and magazines, locally and internationally. Teaching in Nanjing, Tanjing and Beijing China has allowed the craft and skills to be shared with the arts and photographic community within China.

Discover the women whose vision and enterprise saw Castlemaine Art Museum grow from its grassroots conception into a celebrated gallery.

Presented as part of the National Trust's Australian Heritage Festival, Creating CAM: A herstory in cloth and conversation is a free event comprising four sessions, involving three origin story cloth workshops (part history sharing and conversation, part hand-sewing), alongside a Shared Storytelling Forum event.

Join CAM Front of House Officer, Sarah Frazer, in threading together the fascinating stories of seven women at the heart of the museum, through hand-sewing and conversation: two essential storytelling mediums that offer continuity between the age of CAM’s inception and today. All the women at the heart of this story created needlework, and one made an income designing embroidery.

To conclude the Creating CAM: A herstory in cloth and conversation series, this Shared Storytelling Forum will include an overview of CAM's herstory origins and explore the story cloth project, in which project participants will be invited to share their insights. Please note, you are not required to have participated in the project in order to attend – all are welcome.

Please join us at the gallery for this event on 18 May (2pm), on International Museums Day.

Presented by Melbourne Recital Centre in association with Castlemaine Art Museum, we are thrilled to offer a special performance with Divisi Chamber Singers in the gallery.

In a unique performance, acapella choral group Divisi Chamber Singers will perform in the Higgins Gallery at CAM, among David Rosetzky's exhibition Air to Atmosphere.

Divisi Chamber Singers maintain an active interest in pushing boundaries within the largely conservative medium of classical music performance. Due to the relative lack of queer representation in classical music, Divisi maintain a special interest in initiatives that elevate local LGBTQ+ artists.

This event is made possible through the Melbourne Recital Centre's Regional Touring Program with thanks to the generous support of the Gailey Lazarus Foundation.

Numbers are limited. Tickets on sale now.

Divisi Chamber Singers
Divisi Chamber Singers is a youth-led, not-for-profit organisation that supports early-career creative artists. We strive to break down established norms of classical music through commissioning and performing innovative creative works and projects. At heart, Divisi is a chamber vocal ensemble with a focus on the career development of its members, and of other Australian creatives. Due to the relative lack of queer representation in classical music, we maintain a special interest in initiatives that elevate local LGBTQ+ artists.

To this end, our ensemble has launched its inaugural professional development program, Compose Queer, which commissions four young queer composers to write for Divisi, and provides workshopping and development opportunities from LGBTQ+ industry professionals. Such projects give agency and professional development to composers and our members, accelerating their musical success. Divisi also maintains an active interest in pushing boundaries within the largely conservative medium of classical music performance.

Discover the women whose vision and enterprise saw Castlemaine Art Museum grow from its grassroots conception into a celebrated gallery.

Presented as part of the National Trust's Australian Heritage Festival, you're invited to stitch together the real history of the Castlemaine Art Museum in a hands-on series of story cloth workshops.

Creating CAM: A herstory in cloth and conversation is a free event comprising four sessions, involving three origin story cloth workshops (part history sharing and conversation, part hand-sewing), alongside a shared storytelling forum event.

Join CAM Front of House Officer, Sarah Frazer, in threading together the fascinating stories of seven women at the heart of the museum, through hand-sewing and conversation: two essential storytelling mediums that offer continuity between the age of CAM’s inception and today. All the women at the heart of this story created needlework, and one made an income designing embroidery.

These workshops will continue a long tradition of using stitched cloth as a means of communication, starting with a discussion on how cloth can tell stories of socio-economic statement, political persuasion, history, identity, emotion, and sentiment. Participants will contribute in creating a story cloth together to help unearth the little-known lives of these seven women, all of whom left an enduring legacy on the town of Castlemaine.

Participants of all ages and abilities are welcome, no sewing experience necessary. Participants only need attend one workshop (though if numbers permit, feel free to attend more).

Numbers are limited. Bookings essential. Click here to RSVP.

The fourth session will be a shared storytelling forum that will include an overview of CAM’s herstory origins and explore the story cloth project, in which project participants will be invited to share their insights. The Shared Storytelling Forum is open to all and will be held onsite at Castlemaine Art Museum on 18 May 2023, International Museums Day.

Discover the women whose vision and enterprise saw Castlemaine Art Museum grow from its grassroots conception into a celebrated gallery.

Presented as part of the National Trust's Australian Heritage Festival, you're invited to stitch together the real history of the Castlemaine Art Museum in a hands-on series of story cloth workshops.

Creating CAM: A herstory in cloth and conversation is a free event comprising four sessions, involving three origin story cloth workshops (part history sharing and conversation, part hand-sewing), alongside a shared storytelling forum event.

Join CAM Front of House Officer, Sarah Frazer, in threading together the fascinating stories of seven women at the heart of the museum, through hand-sewing and conversation: two essential storytelling mediums that offer continuity between the age of CAM’s inception and today. All the women at the heart of this story created needlework, and one made an income designing embroidery.

These workshops will continue a long tradition of using stitched cloth as a means of communication, starting with a discussion on how cloth can tell stories of socio-economic statement, political persuasion, history, identity, emotion, and sentiment. Participants will contribute in creating a story cloth together to help unearth the little-known lives of these seven women, all of whom left an enduring legacy on the town of Castlemaine.

Participants of all ages and abilities are welcome, no sewing experience necessary. Participants only need attend one workshop (though if numbers permit, feel free to attend more).

Numbers are limited. Bookings essential. Click here to RSVP.

The fourth session will be a shared storytelling forum that will include an overview of CAM’s herstory origins and explore the story cloth project, in which project participants will be invited to share their insights. The Shared Storytelling Forum is open to all and will be held onsite at Castlemaine Art Museum on 18 May 2023, International Museums Day.

First responders of the Castlemaine region are invited to a special event at Castlemaine Art Museum on Sunday 30 April to acknowledge the dedication of paid and volunteer staff and the cooperation between services which marks this wonderful region.

Presented by Dhelkaya Health and Castlemaine Art Museum, this event celebrates those who continue to keep our community safe.

Art can inspire, refresh and soothe those who have given so generously over these challenging years. Please join us at the gallery and enjoy local refreshments and drinks in the company of colleagues and amongst CAM’s historical and contemporary artworks.

Partners and families of first responders are welcome to this free event. Please RSVP here.

Castlemaine Art Museum and Dhelkaya Health acknowledge the Dja Dja Wurrung as Traditional Owners of the country on which the museum stands, and pay respects to Elders past, present and future.

Discover the women whose vision and enterprise saw Castlemaine Art Museum grow from its grassroots conception into a celebrated gallery.

Presented as part of the National Trust's Australian Heritage Festival, you're invited to stitch together the real history of the Castlemaine Art Museum in a hands-on series of story cloth workshops.

Creating CAM: A herstory in cloth and conversation is a free event comprising four sessions, involving three origin story cloth workshops (part history sharing and conversation, part hand-sewing), alongside a shared storytelling forum event.

Join CAM Front of House Officer, Sarah Frazer, in threading together the fascinating stories of seven women at the heart of the museum, through hand-sewing and conversation: two essential storytelling mediums that offer continuity between the age of CAM’s inception and today. All the women at the heart of this story created needlework, and one made an income designing embroidery.

These workshops will continue a long tradition of using stitched cloth as a means of communication, starting with a discussion on how cloth can tell stories of socio-economic statement, political persuasion, history, identity, emotion, and sentiment. Participants will contribute in creating a story cloth together to help unearth the little-known lives of these seven women, all of whom left an enduring legacy on the town of Castlemaine.

Participants of all ages and abilities are welcome, no sewing experience necessary. Participants only need attend one workshop (though if numbers permit, feel free to attend more).

Numbers are limited. Bookings essential. Click here to RSVP.

The fourth session will be a shared storytelling forum that will include an overview of CAM’s herstory origins and explore the story cloth project, in which project participants will be invited to share their insights. The Shared Storytelling Forum is open to all and will be held onsite at Castlemaine Art Museum on 18 May 2023, International Museums Day.

Join us at the gallery for a floor talk with artist David Rosetzky, discussing his major commission for Castlemaine Art Museum, Air to Atmosphere on Saturday 1 April, 12pm.

Air to Atmosphere explores the diversity, trauma, resilience, and pride of the LGBTQIA+ community. David Rosetzky, in collaboration with members of the community in central Victoria, including &so, Eden Swan, Terence Jaensch and Rhett D'Costa amongst others, has created a major new work including video and photographic portraits.

Flowing from Rosetzky's renowned practice in video and performance, this large collaborative and multi-disciplinary work includes photography, filmmaking, performance, publishing, music, song, choreography by Jo Lloyd and social events created with and about local artists and community members.

David Rosetzky is an artist who is passionate about finding new ways to represent LGBTQIA+ and marginal identities through an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to art making. Often working with practitioners from the fields of theatre, dance, and film, he creates videos, installations and photographic works that question whether our identity is informed by how others see us, or how we see ourselves. With an extensive exhibition history both in Australia and overseas, Rosetzky has presented his work in over 30 solo exhibitions and 60 group exhibitions.

Join us at CAM for a floor talk with artist David Frazer, discussing his current exhibition, For the Love of Song on Saturday 1 April, 10am.

In this exhibition, For the Love of Song, two great art forms entwine. Renowned printmaker David Frazer collaborates with some of the most iconic Australian and international songwriters of a generation: Paul Kelly (AUS); Don Walker (AUS); Nick Cave (AUS/UK); Nick Lowe (UK) and Tom Waits (USA). Frazer’s most recent collaboration with Tom Waits is a world premiere.

In this free talk, Frazer will discuss his handmade illustrated books, endorsed and signed by the recording artists, as well as the suite of linocuts, broadsheets (images from the book), and magnificent wood blocks presented as part of this exhibition.

David Frazer has held over 40 solo exhibitions in Australia, London and China. He has won many art awards locally and internationally including the 1st International Print Biennial in Guanlan China, the Cossack Art Award (invited artist category), the Broken Hill Outback Art Prize, honourable mention (International Print Biennial Exhibit, Taiwan) and 6 people’s choice awards. In 2019, he was the Australian Commissioner for the Ulsan International Woodcut Biennial in Korea. He has been selected 3 times to hang in the Royal Academy of London Summer Exhibition. In 2007 the ABC produced a documentary on Frazer as part of the “Artist at Work” series. He has taught printmaking extensively here and overseas. Frazer lives and works in Castlemaine.

Celebrate the opening of two major exhibitions at Castlemaine Art Museum, presented as part of the 2023 Castlemaine State Festival.

Join us for the opening of David Rosetzky, Air to Atmosphere and For the Love of Song, David Frazer with Paul Kelly, Don Walker, Nick Cave, Nick Lowe and Tom Waits on Friday 24 March, 6.30pm.

Casey Rice will be performing a live DJ set on the terrace from 6.30pm.

Drinks provided thanks to local winemaking co-operative Boomtown Wine alongside bar and brewery Love Shack Brewing Company. Light refreshments provided by Murnong Mammas.

David Rosetzky, Air to Atmosphere

Air to Atmosphere explores the diversity, trauma, resilience, and pride of the LGBTQIA+ community. David Rosetzky, in collaboration with members of the community in central Victoria, including &so, Eden Swan, Terence Jaensch and Rhett D'Costa amongst others, has created a major new work including video and photographic portraits.

Flowing from Rosetzky's renowned practice in video and performance, this large collaborative and multi-disciplinary work includes photography, filmmaking, performance, publishing, music, song, choreography by Jo Lloyd and social events created with and about local artists and community members.

For the Love of Song, David Frazer with Paul Kelly, Don Walker, Nick Cave, Nick Lowe and Tom Waits

A passionate and unique collaboration between renowned printmaker and local artist David Frazer and some of the most iconic Australian and International songwriters of a generation: Paul Kelly (Aus); Don Walker (Aus); Nick Cave (Aus/UK); Nick Lowe (UK) and Tom Waits (USA).

Two great artforms entwine – image-making and song writing – together they reach into our hearts in profound ways. Frazer’s most recent collaboration with Tom Waits is a world premiere.

You're invited to celebrate International Women's Day at CAM with Castlemaine based artist Kate Just on Saturday 4 March, 11.30am.

Join us for this special event and be part of a live knitting circle, engaging in conversation while contributing a crafted square to Kate's new community-engaged artwork entitled Conversation Piece.

Conversation Piece involves the creation of a giant, communally knitted and crocheted yellow length of fabric. This artwork will be created in public craft circles around Australia before it is exhibited in the Tamworth Textile Triennial in 2023. As part of the triennial, the work will then tour galleries across Australia for three years, where it will continue to grow in size.

Conversation Piece will act as a live, ongoing material documentation of the important process of collective making, gathering, talking, and listening. It will materially manifest a collective ‘conversation’ across time and place. Conversation Piece is created in various shades of the artist's favourite colour – yellow. For her, yellow is the colour of spring flowers, the sun, honey and gold; it is a colour of warmth, light, joy, and exuberance. In this work, the colour yellow speaks to the optimism, openness and warmth that occurs when we work collectively, and open ourselves to new people, ideas and experiences.

Kate Just is an award-winning American born Australian artist based in Castlemaine. Just is best known for her inventive and political use of knitting in artworks which tackle feminist themes. In addition to her solo practice, Just often works socially and collaboratively within communities to create large scale, public art projects that tackle issues including sexual harassment and violence against women.

People of all genders and ages and craft abilities welcome, with all yarn provided. Some crochet hooks and knitting needles provided, however attendees are welcome to bring needles.

This is a free event with only 40 spots available. Bookings essential.

Join us at the gallery for an artist floor talk with Jesse Boylan, discussing their commission as part of our Terrace Projection series, At the end of the day on Saturday 11 February, 12.30pm.

At the end of the day is a new video work by artist Jesse Boylan who asked staff working in Dhelkaya Health (Castlemaine Health), as well as residents of Pennhall Hostel (Aged Care), about what they think goes unseen in their daily lives and work.

In a kind of ‘behind the scenes’ set up, Boylan has created a series of silent video portraits.

Jesse Boylan is a photography, video and sound artist and writer based on Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Central Victoria, Australia. Jesse is interested in expanded documentary practice and the role art plays in environmental and social justice issues. Jesse likes to collaborate with others to make sense of our times and regularly collaborates with Linda Dement and Virginia Barratt as Bonedirt.

Jesse is a member of Lumina, an Australian photography collective and the Atomic Photographers Guild, an international group who aim to render visible all aspects of the nuclear age. Jesse is a current PhD candidate within the School of Art at RMIT University and they also teach into the BA Photography program at RMIT.

Join artist Tara Gilbee for a floor talk, discussing her new Orbit exhibition Ellipses in the Sinclair Gallery at Castlemaine Art Museum on Saturday 4 February, 12:30pm.

"Ellipses describes both the subject and material process of my work. The photographic apparatus and employed processes embody the idea of disturbance or 'peripherality', the elliptical framing, with blurred and out of focus sections and sharp striations of light breaking through the camera and frame. Historic sites are represented as psychological ‘grey zones’ and connected to contemporary carceral complexes as places of deep trouble. The works offer metaphysical registrations of muted and marginal spaces."
– Tara Gilbee

Tara Gilbee has a multidisciplinary approach to art making and has worked in collaboration with a range of practitioners from video, sound and live arts. Her arts practice moves between individual studio work to the exploration of interesting sites and context for making and presenting work, with a focus on the interstices of site and practice.

Tara Gilbee received a BFA in Sculpture at The University of Melbourne VCA in 1996 and completed a Masters of Contemporary Art at VCA in 2019. She has been a sessional lecturer at Deakin University for 3 years and providing arts education through various organisations. Tara has attended residencies nationally and internationally and is represented in public and private collections.

CAM invites you to celebrate the launch of the next Terrace Projection: Jesse Boylan, At the end of the day and the opening of the latest Orbit: Tara Gilbee - Ellipses.

Drinks and light refreshments provided.

Terrace Projection: Jesse Boylan, At the end of the day

At the end of the day is a new video work by artist Jesse Boylan who asked staff working in Dhelkaya Health (Castlemaine Health), as well as residents of Pennhall Hostel (Aged Care), about what they think goes unseen in their daily lives and work.

Orbit: Tara Gilbee - Ellipses

Ellipses describes both the subject and material process of Tara Gilbee's work. The photographic apparatus and employed processes embody the idea of disturbance or 'peripherality', the elliptical framing, with blurred and out of focus sections and sharp striations of light breaking through the camera and frame. Featuring works which emerged from a two year site-specific project undertaken at the Old Gaol in Bendigo and recent site visits to local gaols in Central Victoria.

Castlemaine Art Museum invites you to celebrate the inaugural CAM Commissions fundraiser at a free launch event on Friday 9 December, 6pm.

CAM Commissions are a series of unique, limited edition artworks developed and available for sale in support of Castlemaine Art Museum.

A vital fundraising venture, the funds raised from artwork sales provide crucial funding toward CAM's operations, programming and community engagement; supporting local and national exhibitions, artist commissions, inviting and accessible programs, and care for the collection.

Join us for a special evening at the gallery to celebrate, where these limited edition works will be available for purchase, alongside special art experiences with Catherine Pilgrim, Julie Millowick, Clayton Tremlett and John Wolseley.
Drinks and light refreshments provided.

2022 CAM Commissions Works Available to Purchase Online Now

The inaugural 2022 CAM Commission sees three remarkable local artists with national reputations ― artists who have recently exhibited at CAM, Zoe Amor, David Frazer, and Melinda Harper ― create new works in response to Castlemaine Art Museum’s heritage façade.

View and purchase the 2022 CAM Commissions online.

Join artist Dean Smith for a floor talk, discussing his current Orbit exhibition Between Dawn and Dusk in the Sinclair Gallery at Castlemaine Art Museum on Saturday 26 November, 2pm.

"In my ceramic work I have tried to convey an exchange and curiosity between the ceramic body and the observer. These forms have been wheel-worked and hand built using coarse stoneware and porcelain combined with high-fire glazes and enamels."
– Dean Smith

Dean Smith is a multidisciplinary artist, working mainly in ceramics using special effect high fire glazes combined with low fire enamels and precious metal lustres. Dean also extends his practice into photography and painting.

He has undertaken artist’s residencies in Taiwan, Denmark and Poland and has been a recipient of numerous notable awards including the Silver Prize at the Taiwan Ceramics Biennale 2012 and a recipient of a Career Development Grant from the Australia Council for the Arts in 2018.

Hidden in their leaves: eucalypts dye experiments in Australia

In this talk, artist and weaver Liz Williamson will discuss the Weaving Eucalypts Project exhibition now showing at CAM from 15 September 2022 – 12 February 2023.

The project involves a community of practitioners from Australia, New Zealand and several Indian Ocean countries – practitioners linked by an engagement with nature, concern for sustainability and natural dyeing.

Liz Williamson will briefly discuss the development to the project, key eucalypts dye experiments in Australia and the dissemination of eucalypts to Indian Ocean countries and the practitioners in the projects. Her presentation includes the landmark research of Jean Carman, who was the first to systematically document the colours of Australian Eucalypts by testing over 450 species and publishing her findings in 1978.

Join artist Zoe Amor for a floor talk, discussing her Orbit exhibition Architecture of a dream in the Sinclair Gallery at Castlemaine Art Museum on Saturday 22 October, 12:15pm.

Informed by a deep appreciation for the natural world and how diverse forms of life might peacefully coexist; Zoe Amor's ongoing project Architecture of a dream is a mothership for visionary compositions and meditations on culturally and ecologically significant microcosms.

CAM invites you to celebrate the launch of our latest Terrace Projection and the opening of Liz Williamson: Weaving Eucalypts Project; Zoe Amor's Architecture of a dream; and a new body of work by Jane Brown in There's a certain Slant of light. 

After sunset, our latest Terrace Projection: I'll Be Me will be viewable on the CAM façade.

Drinks and light refreshments provided.

Terrace Projections: I'll Be Me

I’ll Be Me is a presentation of new filmmaking voices: Aleka Adam, Cosmo Adams, Billy Lister, Tenzin Marius, Theo Mellick-Cooper and Ari McCord who, armed with the tools of self-reliance, have created their own stories to be projected on CAM’s façade. Six young members of the Castlemaine community have taken a chance to learn new skills and invest time and energy into exploring what matters to them. Two award-winning local bike riders Angus Melville and Flynn Culph also make an unusual appearance in the projection.

Orbit: Zoe Amor - Architecture of a dream

Informed by her deep appreciation for the natural world and the way in which diverse forms of life might peacefully coexist; Zoe Amor's ongoing project Architecture of a dream is a mothership for visionary compositions and meditations on culturally and ecologically significant microcosms.

There's a certain Slant of light with Jane Brown

There’s a certain Slant of light takes a darker turn with the inclusion of an exciting new body of works by celebrated contemporary photographer Jane Brown. The mysterious interplay of light on greenhouse plants, and refracted through mirrors, antique glass and windows are the subjects of these extraordinary new works – each meticulously hand-printed on paper, tin or glass.

Liz Williamson: Weaving Eucalypts Project

This collaborative project by Australian weaver Liz Williamson explores local colour, cultural connections, and shared weaving traditions. It extends from Williamson’s research into experiments with Australian natural dye plants and unique colours extracted from locally sourced plants.

To coincide with our current Terrace Projection: Agri-Cultures by Zoe Scoglio, we are delighted to present Paddock to Paper on Friday 23 September.

Part drawing workshop, part feast, Paddock to Paper is open to people of any age and technical ability to draw and experiment in this guided session with local artist and CAM staff member Anna Schwann. Join us at the gallery for a (sort of) still life drawing workshop, that you can eat at the end!

Anna Schwann works in expanded sculptural practice that investigates the encounter between art and audience; facilitating conversation using sensory engaging tactics as means of connection.

Taking inspiration from the farming 'industry', social economies, and the ethos of Gung Hoe Growers, this drawing workshop invites you to explore lateral thinking around process and outcome, the movement of time, and figuring out how to work with your neighbours.

Join artist Mark Dober for a floor talk, discussing his Orbit exhibition The Edge of Town in the Sinclair Gallery at Castlemaine Art Museum on Saturday 17 September, 2pm.

Mark’s exhibition features works made specifically for this show at the edge of Castlemaine and its surrounds.

Light and space, the near and the far, the bucolic and the strange, make their appearance in ways which convey contrasting and ambiguous moods. Above all, Mark's work conveys a direct and lively response to landscape, one grounded in observation.

A conversation and collective digestion on the question of culture. Presented at Harcourt Organic Farming Co-op, please join Terrace Projection: Agri-Cultures artist Zoe Scoglio in conversation with members of the extended Gung Hoe Growers and HOFC family.

Featuring Mel Willard, Gung Hoe Growers Co-Founder; Ira Barker, Gunditjmara Barkindji Person and Murnong Mammas Member; and Duang Tengtrirat, Local Cook, Mindful Cooking Teacher and Food Radical.

This off-site conversation will question, what becomes possible if thinking about the cultures within our guts, within the soil and within our social sphere, as one continuum? How can we learn from and support regenerative and community supported agricultural initiatives, to create cultures that nourish in this time and place?

As part of this in conversation event, Gung Hoe Growers vegetation will be arranged and ready to eat for attendees.

Please note, when visiting Harcourt Organic Farming Co-op:

• There is limited car parking, car sharing is encouraged.
• If you have visited another farm with animals please change your shoes (bio-security).
• Due to Queensland Fruit Fly, please bring cut up fruit only on-site.
• Keep HOFC Australia Foot and Mouth disease free. If you have been to Bali/Indonesia in the past three months, please notify HOFC before coming on farm. If you have, do not wear shoes, clothing or bring equipment which you travelled with onto our farm, or any farm in Australia for 6 months. Give them a good clean and put them in the back of the cupboard to quarantine. If you have been to a country where FMD is present, we ask you not to enter a farm in Australia for at least 7 days. Please work with customs officials to declare all high risk products and follow their advice.

Celebrate the launch of Christian Waller Stained Glass: Toward the Light at CAM with author Caroline Miley.

Christian Waller’s exemplary skills and achievements as an Australian stained glass artist are brought to light in this superb book. A leading proponent of Modernism in Australian art and the sole woman professional stained-glass artist in Australia until the craft revival of the 1970s, Christian was as ethereal in her outlook as she was exceptionally capable and innovative in her craft.

Castlemaine was Christian Waller's birthplace and CAM holds a number of her works in the collection.

Please join us at the gallery for an illustrated talk with Caroline Miley, discussing Christian Waller’s oeuvre with analysis of the themes, styles, influences, and iconography of her works, many previously unknown.

Dr Caroline Miley has had a lifetime interest in decorative arts, especially stained glass. She was Lecturer in Art History and Theory at the Victorian College of the Arts (University of Melbourne) and Curator of the College Collection. This book is the culmination of many years' research and a personal interest in the artist and her work.

We are delighted that Northern Books will be presenting an event with Judy Cotton, visual artist and author, in conversation with Suzanne Donisthorpe at CAM.

Judy Cotton is an internationally recognised visual artist based in Connecticut, USA. Her work is held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lyman Allyn Art Museum, National Gallery of Australia and private collections. From 1974 to 1993, Cotton was the New York contributing editor for Vogue Australia.

Judy will be at the gallery to discuss her memoir, Swimming Home, with an opportunity to sign books after the conversation.

In this stunning memoir, full of black humour and razor-sharp observations, artist and author Judy Cotton captures the intricacies of family relationships and the push–pull of home. In dazzling prose and with an artist’s eye for landscape, Swimming Home is a powerful meditation on loss and longing, freedom and connection.

Join us for a floor talk with artist Gabrielle Martin, discussing her Orbit exhibition Through the Long Grass at Castlemaine Art Museum on Saturday 30 July, 2pm.

The exhibition looks at the landscape near her home in the Goldfields town of Malmsbury. This land was reshaped in the 19th Century by civic rail and water projects and grazing that serviced the goldmining industry.

In this artist talk, Gabrielle will discuss the influences and ideas behind her work, and the role of memory, imagination and observation in her landscape paintings.

She will look at parallels between the landscape around Malmsbury and the orchards and paddocks on the outer fringes of Melbourne when she was growing up in the 1970s. Wild fruit trees, weathered pines and dry fields of grass are common to both, as well as endemic gorse, blackberries and briar rose that resist the best efforts at control. It is compromised landscape, but one she feels deeply connected with.

She will also talk about the role of the figure in her recent work and how it has evolved from her portraits.

CAM invites you to Terrace Nights: the opening of our latest Terrace Projection and, inside the gallery, two new exhibitions.

Please join us at the gallery on Friday 29 July, 6pm for the launch of Terrace Projections: Agri-Cultures, a projection commission by local artist Zoe Scoglio, and the opening of two new exhibitions: Reflections on the Castlemaine Art Museum Collection and, the first in our 2022 Orbit exhibition series, Gabrielle Martin's Through the Long Grass.

Drinks and light refreshments provided.

Terrace Projection: Zoe Scoglio, Agri-Cultures

Agri-Cultures is a commissioned video work by local artist Zoe Scoglio in dialogue with local small-scale farmers Gung Hoe growers in response to the theme ‘Industry.’ Focusing on the manual labours and tactile relations, this is a visual portrait of the daily regenerative wholistic practices and emergent cultures at the Harcourt Organic Farming Co-op. As a volunteer at Gung Hoe Growers, this commission was an opportunity for Zoe Scoglio to enter more deeply into conversation and to further learn from and attend to the practices of daily care-full cultivation.

Reflections on the Castlemaine Art Museum

Reflections began as part of CAM’s online response to Covid lockdowns. This exhibition presents a selection of works from the art museum collection, accompanied by a written Reflection from a diverse range of contributors. Contributors are asked to ‘reflect’ on works or objects from the CAM collections and history – opening our art and museum collections to new voices and knowledge.

Orbit: Gabrielle Martin - Through the Long Grass

Gabrielle Martin paints the landscape near her home in the Goldfields town of Malmsbury. This land was reshaped in the 19th Century by civic rail and water projects, and grazing that serviced the goldmining industry. There are parallels between this landscape and the orchards and paddocks on the outer fringes of Melbourne when she was growing up in the 1970s. Wild fruit trees, weathered pines and dry fields of grass are common to both, as well as endemic gorse, blackberries and briar rose that resist the best efforts at control. Watching children playing in the long grass unlocks memories of her own childhood play.

Join us for a floor talk with artist Peter Tyndall, discussing his current exhibition SINCLAIR+GALLERY at the Castlemaine Art Museum on Sunday 10 July, 2pm.

The exhibition Peter Tyndall: SINCLAIR+GALLERY first took shape on a series of small Spirax notebook pages. In this artist talk, Peter Tyndall will meditate on his habits of note taking, and the relationship of his vast collection of Spirax jottings to his finished artworks.

Peter Tyndall is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Join us for an afternoon of artists in conversation with exhibition finalists Kylie Banyard and Safak Gurboga, chaired by CAM Director, Naomi Cass.

Join us for an afternoon of artists in conversation with Len Fox Painting Prize winner Greg Creek and finalist Christine Wrest-Smith, chaired by CAM Director, Naomi Cass.

CAM invites you to a casual afternoon of drawing held amongst the Len Fox Painting Prize exhibition.

Drawing a painting? You might argue that drawing is the foundation of painting, a starting point and place to develop ideas.

With this in mind, we invite you to look to the works for inspiration. Surrounded by paintings from fifty three exhibiting artists whose works embody Emmanuel Philips Fox’s connection with light, colour and connection to place, there is much to be explored.

Make yourself comfortable at CAM and draw amongst like-minded people. All ages and ability levels are invited to come and let loose on paper. Facilitated by local artist Anna Schwann.

Please contact our friendly staff at the front desk with any access questions so that we can give you the best experience.

CAM is hosting a two-day regional art book fair held on the gallery terrace showcasing local artist publications.

To complement the 2022 Melbourne Art Book Fair, CAM is hosting a two-day regional art book fair held on the gallery terrace and inside the beautiful 1931 art deco building. From 12pm-4pm across the weekend of the 26 and 27 March, CAM will host stalls showcasing work by central Victorian artists, writers, and publishers, and two afternoon panel discussions on creating and publishing in the regions.

In this guided drawing workshop with local essayist, comics artist and poet, Eloise Grills, participants will be led through a series of prompts that respond to CAM’s projection of Michael Corridore’s Angry Black Snake.

Angry Black Snake captures the drama of burn out meets across regional Australia. The term describes when an engine overheats and the radiator hose explodes through the smoke. This workshop will explore themes such as climate change and bodies in landscape.

Eloise Grills has taught creative writing and comics through Arts Access, Stella Schools, Emerging Writers Festival, Queensland Poetry Festival, Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, and a number of universities. Her work has been recognised by awards such as The Melbourne Prize, The Peter Blazey Fellowship, The Lifted Brow X RMIT Non/Fiction Lab Prize for Experimental Nonfiction, The Cosmonauts Avenue Nonfiction Prize and the Woollahra Digital Literary Award. Her first full-length illustrated essay collection ‘big beautiful female theory’ is forthcoming via Affirm Press in July 2022.

This is a relaxed workshop.

No prior drawing experience required.

Non-alcoholic punch and drawing materials provided.

Young people are especially encouraged to attend this workshop, though all ages are welcome.

CAM welcomes you to join three of the selected artists as they discuss their conceptual approach to experimentation for EPP. The Experimental Print Prize draws together artists from all over Victoria to investigate new possibilities within the bounds of printmaking.

Another Dimension - artists in conversation are:

Rudi Williams:

unfixed: σκιά σκιά σκιά ombra ombra ombra shadow shadow shadow 2021

Jon Butt:

u Muography - experimental printer 2021

Kate Gorringe-Smith:

Eastern Curlew Afterimage (the things we see more clearly once they're gone), 2021

Visit the exhibition to cast your vote in the People's Choice Award.

The Experimental Print Prize is open now until 28 February 2022.

Castlemaine Art Museum recognises and celebrates contemporary printmaking. There is a strong tradition of printmaking in Victoria and this non-acquisitive prize is the second of three award exhibitions.

Castlemaine Art Museum invites you to the launch of a new projection program, and a series of public programs, 'Terrace Nights'.
'Terrace Nights' opens with a projection of photographer Michael Corridore's work 'Angry Black Snake' on the gallery facade.
‘Angry Black Snake’ contrasts the joy of gathering in celebration of a shared love of cars, with dream-like scenery that is neither distinctly pleasant nor clearly post-apocalyptic. Corridore’s contextless figures elicit a sense of unease in the viewer that remains unceasingly relevant in conversations around man’s impact upon the environment. 'Angry Black Snake' was the winner of the Aperture Foundation's Portfolio Prize and was exhibited in their New York gallery in 2010.
Please join us in the gallery at 6pm, Friday 4 February to be the first to hear about this new two-year program of projections and events.
Drinks and light refreshments provided.
Music by Castlemaine Electronics Workshop;
Refreshments by Sprout Bakery & Long Paddock;
Wine by Black Jack Wines.

CAM is pleased to host the National Boys Choir of Australia for their Annual Concert Tour, 'Gippsland to Goldfields'.

CAM will stay open late until 6:30pm on Thursday 13 January, with the boys performing three 15-20 minute sets from 5pm-6:30pm.

The National Boys Choir of Australia is delighted to return to the concert platform after nearly two years, to present a program of beautiful choral works, including Australian songs, folk tunes and classical pieces, a few favourite showtunes, and a tiny touch of Disney.

Join artist Peter Tyndall and curator Jenny Long in conversation at 2pm, Saturday 18 December.

The exhibition SINCLAIR+GALLERY will re-stage all such SITE+SIGHT inspections, as the Actors of Regard come and go.

The formal Title of each Act of Regard will be :

detail

A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something...

LOGOS/HA HA

Peter Tyndall

for

Theatre of the Actors of Regard

CAM welcomes you to join this year's winning artists in conversation on Sunday 12 December from 2pm-3pm. The Experimental Print Prize draws together artists from all over Victoria to investigate new possibilities within the bounds of printmaking. Bookings are not required.

The winners of the 2021 Experimental Print Prize, as judged by Catherine Pilgrim and Trent Walter, are:

First Prize - Bridget Hillebrand, Drift, 2021

Highly Commended - John Loane, The Shallow, The Deep (existential dichotomies), 2020

Emerging Artist Award - Hannah Caprice, We must be imaging things, 2019

Visit the exhibition to cast your vote in the People's Choice Award.

The Experimental Print Prize is open now until 28 February 2022.

Castlemaine Art Museum recognises and celebrates contemporary printmaking. There is a strong tradition of printmaking in Victoria and this non-acquisitive prize is the second of three award exhibitions.

Join Project Eleven's Konfir Kabo, Mara Sisson and Ressika Tikoalu in conversation as they discuss #Perempuan 2021: Contemporary Indonesian Art.

Perempuan 2021 celebrates voices and unspoken stories of Indonesian women – a platform for artists to share issues that are not always openly discussed in Indonesia. Selected from the remarkable Project Eleven Collection, this exhibition explores activism, values and traditions through a broad range of art forms from painting, photography, textiles, sculpture and installation.

This exhibitions is supported by the Kabo Foundation, Art Guide Australia, Tint Design, and the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.

One Word is a Million: Writing Workshops at CAM
Workshop 2: Cloudy: A few isolated showers…

Local storyteller Wahibe Moussa is presenting two writing workshops that encourage new writing in response to artworks currently on exhibition at Castlemaine Art Museum.

Wahibe approaches art and writing with the belief that everyone has the ability to interact with and be inspired by art. We can foster new narratives using prompts that invite us to explore an individual artwork through our senses, creating new relationships between art and our inner world.

Each guided workshop will take place while the gallery is closed and surrounded by an exhibition for inspiration. Using the artworks as instigators, participants will be guided using prompts and drama-based stimulus to create new writing.

Who is this for?
This is a generative writing workshop, aimed to help participants discover entry points into their creative writing. You may have an idea, but can’t think how to get started, or feel daunted by the sight of the first blank page. You may be in the middle of the Great Australian Novel but stuck on a particular point.

You may be a writer, you may be a visual artist, a performer, a cook, a nurse. You may be a high school student struggling with an assignment. Whoever you are, come along with your pen and notebook or electronic device of choice. But most of all bring along your curiosity and let’s see what we can do together. All genres are welcome: poetry, fiction, dialogue, essay, and anything in between.

Each workshop will be two and a half hours long. Participants can expect to leave the workshop with two or three pieces of new writing.

This event was supported by Mount Alexander Shire Council.

View exhibition details.

Everything has the potential to be revered; to be transfigured from the mundane to the meaningful, regardless of its origins or perceived value. Jewellery has been associated with monetary value—gold and gemstones are symbols of status and wealth in many cultures. Yet, the artists here push against this convention, challenging what is regarded as valuable and asking instead, what makes something meaningful?

Inari Kiuru is a Finnish-born, Bulleke-Bek/Brunswick-based multidisciplinary artist, designer and a mother of two young children. The key themes in Kiuru’s work reflect her Scandinavian background, arising from an intrinsic longing for a connection with nature.

Manon van Kouswijk is a Dutch Australian artist and contemporary jeweller living in Naarm/Melbourne who explores shifts and transitions and how aspects of a work appear and disappear.

Cara Johnson’s craft-based works interrogate tensions and narratives connected to the ways land is treated and used through material, intention and invested labour. Her practice is entwined with her rural location on Gadubanud country, and primarily concerned with traversing the complexities between people and plants.

The Power of Delicacy - Micky Allan

A sense of simplicity, a sense of complexity, why not both in the same continuum? Realistic detail can be glorious, abstract space just as ‘full’ of whatever it is that moves us, which is what counts. I aim to create places for the viewer to roam in their own responses, hopefully into hints of the previously unknown in quite that way. Adventure! Into both mystery and platitude, commonplace and strange.

Engraving glass panels, sometimes on both sides, before it being placed over works on paper, lets me play with layering in more ways than one. Transparencies abound! The process is tricky, using a dentist drill with changing drill points and keeping water flowing over it with the other hand so the glass stays cool, but despite the noise, I continue to be drawn into its orbit. Look how it can create the silver light of night!
Night and day, seasonal shifts, deep sea to far space, everything in constant interaction and change. Everything ‘dies’ and renews every second. I seek to find it beautiful.

Micky Allan
July 2025

The Power of Delicacy will be opened by Gael Newton, renowned historian and curator. Since 2014 Gael Newton has worked as photographic arts consultant. Formerly curator of photography at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Senior Curator of Australian and International Photography at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Newton has worked closely with Micky Allan in placing her archive in collections.

A very particular party for a very particular group of craftspeople!

Join us to learn about glazes, swap recipes, and meet your local clay crew. We’ll provide the expertise, you bring your favourite glaze recipe, a handy tip to share, and your tricky glaze questions.

Facilitated by local glaze enthusiast Ella Hughes (President, Castlemaine Clay) with guest potter Prue Venables (represented by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert).

We’ll start the afternoon with a look at Moondance, an exhibition of over 20 ceramic artists who were prominent in the 70s. Prue will then offer some steps and resources for your glaze journey. Then it’s your turn: ask a question, receive some advice, share a recipe. Together we will unpack your glaze questions (as best we can!). Bring a glaze recipe to share with the group (if you have one, not compulsory!).

We’re really looking forward to the party - a wonderful opportunity to connect with local potters, share skills, and explore some great ceramics.