With an eye on engaging staff and students as well as the broader community, the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery regularly presents artist talks and projects.

The LWAG team has been providing free exhibitions and programs to the public more than 30 years and regularly collaborates with teaching academics from across the University to create enriching learning experiences.

Associate Professor Jenny Rodger, from UWA’s School of Biological Sciences and the Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Science, collaborated with artist Gemma Ben-Ary and curator Lee Kinsella to deliver a webinar to third-year neuroscience students in May.

The presentation was based on Ben-Ary’s installation The Abyss (series II,) which was on display as part of the From the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art exhibition.

^{Gemma Ben-Ary, The Abyss series, 2019, oyster shell, glass eye, polymer clay, dimensions variable.}

The activity was designed to challenge Associate Professor Rodger’s students to think outside the box in terms of how the nervous system evolved and how a lot about an animal’s lifestyle can be inferred from the structure of the eye.

“Gemma utilised eyes from a taxidermist and then folded them in polymer clay and tucked them within oyster shells,” Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art curator Ms Kinsella explains.

“Jenny was able to work backwards from their physical structure to create a sense of their environment — what these animals might feed on, what part of the water column they might live in — for example, an asymmetrical pupil shape that allows more light in from above may suggest that they are bottom dwellers.

“Gemma is riffing on the remarkable variety of creatures that exist in nature. Perhaps such creatures already exist?”

Artist Jody Quackenbush shared personal insights during a public talk about her textile art practice. Quackenbush spoke of her own mental health and aligned her experience with the art historical precedent of Camille Claudel.

^{Strong garment III, 2019, fabric, metal, plastic, dimensions variable, Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art, The University of Western Australia}

“Jody grapples with really personal and quite difficult issues in stitched form,” Ms Kinsella says.

“She uses thread to stitch garments about artists as well as garments related to past traumatic experience.

“She was so very generous to explain how her experiences in mental health institutions have informed particular works of art. Members of the audience were very moved by her honesty and openness and impressed by her capacity as a maker.”

^{Jody Quackenbush, Octopus/deep sea creature mask (detail), 2013, fabric, embroidered flowers, fake pearls, found plastic. Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art, The University of Western Australia.}

In a new gallery initiative, UWA students engaged with paintings by renowned Australian artist Susan Norrie, which was part of the newly launched UWA Advance program.

This collection research project invited students to participate in a unique research experience in working with LWAG staff as they catalogued and researched paintings from the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art.

The project culminated with students posing questions to the artist and their research was included in label text displayed alongside Norrie’s paintings.

“The students are building upon what they’ve learned via their coursework and leaping into a completely different kind of engagement,” Ms Kinsella says.

LWAG maintains an ongoing relationship with the School of Design, with Curatorial Studies lectures presented in the gallery.

“These students interrogate us about our curatorial practice, our decision-making and the kind of relationships that we are exploring in the exhibitions,” Ms Kinsella says.

“Such discussions are at the very heart of curatorial studies and I think that’s one of the benefits of having a purpose-built gallery on campus.”

School of Design’s Associate Professor Ionat Zurr recently toured the Sustaining the art of practice exhibition with students from her Living Art unit to consider notions of care as it relates to works of art in collections and on display in a gallery environment.

LWAG manager of engagement and education Justine Ambrosio says UWA is in a privileged position with significant collections and academic and public programs.

“We are really strongly placed to offer something quite unique,” Ms Ambrosio says.

“It’s that extra layer, and hopefully through what we do — whether it be a workshop, an academic or public program — our audience gain a deeper understanding and are able to critically engage with the diverse ideas presented in the exhibitions.”