Where are the memorable places in your life? Our relationships to spaces are influenced by many factors and therefore affect us in different ways. The...

Picturing Places of Meaning: A Creative Art and Writing Workshop

Location:

Forbes St
2010 NSW
Australia

Venue:
National Art School (NAS)

Featuring

Dr. Ella Dreyfus

Contemporary Visual Artist

Ella Dreyfus PhD is an Australian contemporary visual artist, photographer, senior lecturer and Head of Public Programs at the National Art School, Sydney. She is an award winning artist and well known for her photographic exhibitions and monographs The Body Pregnant, Age and Consent, Transman, Under Twelve, Under Twenty, Scumbag and To See Beyond What Seems to Be. She won the inaugural Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture and was an Australian Postgraduate Award Scholar at the University of NSW for her doctoral thesis Shame and the Aesthetics of Intimacy: Three contemporary artworks (2012). She was an Artist-in-Residence at the Cite Internationale des Artes, Paris and her photograph Transman was exhibited at the Musee du quai Branly in 2013. She was awarded a Visual Arts in Culture Research Residency at the Banff Centre, Canada in 2014. Her most recent exhibition Walking in Wiesbaden was shown at the Aktives Museum Spiegelgasse in Wiesbaden Germany, and was the result of her work as an Artist-in-Residence at the Kunsthaus Wiesbaden, with a scholarship from the Kunstverein Bellevue Saal in 2017.

www.elladreyfus.com  www.elladreyfus.gallery

Professor Katherine Boydell

Professor of Mental Health

Dr. Boydell is a Professor of Mental Health at the Black Dog Institute, University of New South Wales. Her research is both methodological and substantive; substantively, it focuses on understanding the complex pathways to care for young people experiencing a first episode of psychosis, the use of new technologies in child and youth mental health, and the ‘science’ of knowledge translation. Methodologically, it focuses on advancing qualitative inquiry, specifically, in the area of arts-based health research. Professor Boydell explores the use of a wide variety of art genres in the creation and dissemination of empirical research - including documentary film, dance, digital storytelling, found poetry, photo-elicitation, installation art and body mapping. Her work takes a critical perspective and focuses on the theoretical, methodological and ethical challenges of engaging in arts-based health research. She has published more than 200 journal articles and book chapters and has published a recent text titled Hearing Voices: Qualitative Inquiry in Early Psychosis.

Recent projects include the use of body mapping to share the experiences of youth with psychosis regarding their involvement in Keeping the Body in Mind Program at the Bondi Clinic, and digital storytelling with youth experiencing psychosis in rural communities. She is also the mental health lead for Sydney's The BIG Anxiety, a festival of interactive arts, coming up September - November 2017. 

She is Adjunct Senior Scientist with the Child and Youth Mental Health Research Unit, Child Health Evaluative Sciences, Research Institute, Hospital for Sick Children and Adjunct Professor in Departments of Psychiatry and Dalla Lana School of Public Health at University of Toronto. She is also Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Program in Theatre at York University

Access and Inclusion

  • Wheelchair Accessible - Access to the venue is suitable for wheelchairs (toilets, ramps/lifts etc.) and designated wheelchair spaces are available.

Event Details

Where are the memorable places in your life? Our relationships to spaces are influenced by many factors and therefore affect us in different ways. The age and history of a place, whether it is local and familiar or far away, exotic and mysterious, all play a part in shaping our perceptions.

This creative workshop explores the idea of place and the meanings we attribute to special places. In a 1½ hour session, visual artist and educator Ella Dreyfus leads you through a creative process that combines photographs with simple guided visualisations and writing exercises to explore ways that certain sites retain fragments of memory and traces of emotion.

In preparation for the workshop, it is suggested you collect existing photographs (your own or found imagery) and spend time thinking about the places of meaning in your life. They could be homes you’ve lived in, workplaces, play spaces or cities and countries in which you have travelled. They might be grand spaces or seemingly insignificant places such as a favourite corner of a room, a view from a window, a notable building or street. They can be any environment at all; inside, outside, in nature.  

Bring up to three photographs to the workshop as your raw material to be scanned, enlarged and printed as the base for your creative work. By layering words with pictures, your personal stories become original artworks.

In selecting photographs of special places consider the following points:

·      Choose places where something occurred that triggers strong memories and emotions.

·      If you don’t have your own photograph of the exact place, find a photograph of it in a book, photo album or on the internet.

·      Select photographs without people, as it is the place that is important. Your memory and imagination will provide the content to create the artwork.

·      The photographs need to be sourced prior to the workshop and brought along in any format or on any device (a photographic print, a memory stick, or on a mobile phone or tablet).

·      Note that your photographs may be seen and shared with others in the workshop, so only bring photographs that you are comfortable with other people viewing.

·      Photographs will also be provided at the workshop for those who cannot bring them.

Workshop conditions

1.     The workshop runs for 1½ hours from 2:00-3:30pm.

2.     The workshop is suitable for people over the age of 18 and no experience is necessary.

3.     The workshop is limited to a maximum of 16 participants.

4.     Bookings are essential and can be made at The Ticketing Group.

5.     Participants can bring up to 3 photographs to the workshop.

6.     All photographs will be scanned, sent or uploaded to a computer and printed.

7.     The print will form the basis of the creative picture. All other materials are provided.

8.     The finished pictures will be scanned and saved for documentation purposes and a copy will be emailed to each participant.

9.  The finished pictures will be the property of the participant and can be taken away at the end of the workshop.

10.  The facilitator reserves the right to dismiss any participant who is disruptive to the workshop and other participants.

Note: Research scientist Professor Katherine Boydell of the Black Dog Institute will assist in the session as she is currently exploring the use of art genres in the research process.

 

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Access and Inclusion

  • Wheelchair Accessible - Access to the venue is suitable for wheelchairs (toilets, ramps/lifts etc.) and designated wheelchair spaces are available.