Ponch Hawkes: 500 Strong

17 September - 27 November 2022
Shepparton Art Museum

In 2018, renowned Australian photographer Ponch Hawkes (b. 1946, Abbotsford; lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne) embarked on an epic project to photograph 500 Victorian women over the age of 50. Calling on women from across the state from all backgrounds, 432 volunteered to be photographed in the nude to celebrate the diversity and reality of older women’s bodies.

Photoshoots were organised in Melbourne at Hawkes’ studio and at both Shepparton Art Museum and Geelong Gallery. Participants were able to show their faces or could consider anonymity and, if they wished, come prepared with a personalised face covering.

The resulting series confronts the conventions of female behaviour and representation in art and society and was a major feature of Flesh After Fifty: Changing Images of Older Women in Art, curated by Jane Scott and presented at Abbotsford Convent in March 2021.

Hawkes took up photography in the 1970s while working as a journalist for Rolling Stone and The Digger magazines. Today she pairs a documentary approach with a feminist perspective to create works that engage in critical debate and comment on Australian society and cultural life. Her work is held in major public museum collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Australia, State Library of Victoria and many private collections.

500 Strong was originally presented as part of Flesh after Fifty, curated by Jane Scott.

Aleisa Miksad: Between Scylla & Charybdis | Amphora

3 December 2022 - 12 February 2023
Shepparton Art Musuem

Aleisa Miksad is an emerging ceramicist from Northern Victoria. Her work combines contemporary aesthetics and traditional forms, re-interpreting the classical ceramics and sculptures of the Greeks and Etruscans; ancient silhouettes are reimagined and exaggerated with writhing coils. In her practice, Miksad preserves the striations from the coil technique she uses, emphasising the bands and bumps to create a sense of fragility to which she adds various adornments, such as spikes and tentacles.

For her SAM Spotlight exhibition Between Scylla and Charybdis | Amphora, Miksad presented a series of porcelain vessels, each embodying different female characters depicted in Homer’s The Odyssey - from mythic sirens and monstrous Charybdis to Odysseus’ mortal wife, Penelope.

Exhibition Catalogue

All Together:
Meredith Turnbull & Ross Coulter

12 November 2022 - 30 April 2023
Shepparton Art Musuem

Referencing the history of the group portrait from Velazquez’s Las Meninas (1656) to the modern-day family photo, All Together expanded on how we interpret and represent ‘family’ in this collaborative project between the artists and visitors to SAM.

Throughout the exhibition visitors were encouraged to make use of the ‘selfie station’ to self-compose their own ‘awkward family photo’ of themselves and fellow museum-goers, to become part of the expanding understanding of what group portraiture and family can be.