Online Come Make with Us #2

Following on from Come Draw with us online workshops held in 2021, Come Make with us will have you discovering alternative ways to engage students with, but not limited to, drawing and sculpture.

This session features artists Luke Thurgate and Sera Waters. Both presenters will suggest ways of thinking through art making and the importance of practice and experimentation. A hands-on practical component is included during the session so make sure you have your materials ready.

You will need:

Pre-threaded needle
Range of thread (also other found textiles such as trims, ribbons, buttons, string, etc are great too)
A pre-loved textile substrate to stitch into (this could be an old teatowel, a pillow case, a scrap of fabric, piece of clothing, towel etc)
A hoop (if you have one)
Scissors
Your choice of drawing materials (charcoal, pencils, pens, pastel, paint and paper)
A4 photocopy of your face
An object with a reflective surface that is not a mirror e.g. kettle, hard plastic, back of spoon etc.

Sera Waters Presentation

Luke Thurgate Presentation

Sera Waters

Born in Murray Bridge in 1979, Sera Waters is a South Australian artist, writer and academic currently living in Adelaide. As the descendant of five generations of South Australian settler colonists – her forebears came to Australia from England, Scotland, Ireland and Germany – Waters draws on the narratives of her familial history to redress gaps and silences within Australian history. Working predominantly in textiles, fibres and sculpture, her meticulous skill in hand-embroidery and domestic hand-crafts was propelled by an opportunity to study Western European stitching techniques at the Royal School of Needlework in England, in 2006. Waters returned to Adelaide armed with the material vocabulary of her matrilineal ancestors – the skills her great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother would have regularly practised – as a means to examine “the threads that have been inherited from the past, to intentionally reset their course.”[1]

[1] Sera Waters quoted by Miram Kelly, “Sera Waters: Domestic Arts,” Artlink, 1 December, 2017

Sera Waters Website

Luke Thurgate

Luke Thurgate is an artist and educator based in Sydney. He studied at the University of Newcastle, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art in 2007. He is currently completing a Master of Fine Art at the National Art School where he also teaches drawing. Before moving to Sydney, Luke was a lecturer and public programs manager at Adelaide Central School of Art. He has held exhibition and education programming roles at the Art Gallery of South Australia and Newcastle Art Gallery.

Luke’s practice re-appropriates cultural signifiers used in the construction and deconstruction of identity. He is interested in a range of tensions that exist in contemporary figurative art making and explores these through sculptures, paintings and drawings. His work references masculinity, violence, romance and death.

Luke has exhibited extensively in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. He was the inaugural artist in residence at Burra Regional Art Gallery and has also done residences at Seymour College and Art Lab Australia. He has been a finalist in numerous art prizes including the 2020 Tom Bass Figurative Sculpture Prize, the 2019 Dobell Drawing Prize and the 2017 Whyalla Art Prize. Luke is represented in NSW by .M Contemporary.

Luke Thurgate Website

Luke Thurgate Instagram