Professor Susan Luckman, Catherine Truman and Kath Inglis: Mentor Mentee – A creative relationship

Date: Wednesday 2 December, 1pm

Presenters: Professor Susan Luckman, Catherine Truman and Kath Inglis

Guildhouse financial members Free
Non-members (COVID-19 hardship concession) $5
Non-members (full price) $15

Professor Susan Luckman, discusses the interim findings of a UniSA led longitudinal research study examining the impact of mentorships on artistic careers.

The research study titled Mentor Mentee: A creative relationship offers initial findings from a three-year project undertaking research-informed evaluation of Guildhouse mentorship programs over the past decade. The study identifies a gap in global published research documenting the ongoing value of mentorships, the ongoing report enables artists to share their experiences and shape best practices for artist-led learning going forward.

Contemporary jewellers Catherine Truman and Kath Inglis discuss their ongoing professional relationship and the impact of mentorships within their individual practice. As mentor/mentee’s and active figures within their community, Truman and Inglis reflect on the impact of peer based learning, shared knowledge and the importance of fellowship within arts practice.

Guildhouse acknowledges the generosity and leadership of the Ian Potter Foundation and the University of South Australia for their support of this important research.

Professor Susan Luckman

Dean of Research, UniSA Creative, University of South Australia

Susan Luckman is currently Dean of Research at UniSA, Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries and (when not Dean) Director of the CP3: Creative People, Products and Places Research Group (CP3) at the University of South Australia. She is the author of Craftspeople and Designer Makers in the Contemporary Creative Economy (Palgrave 2020), Craft and the Creative Economy (Palgrave Macmillan 2015), Locating Cultural Work: The Politics and Poetics of Rural, Regional and Remote Creativity (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), co-editor of Pathways into Creative Working Lives (Palgrave 2020), The New Normal of Working Lives: Critical Studies in Contemporary Work and Employment (Palgrave 2018), Craft Economies (Bloomsbury 2018), and Sonic Synergies: Music, Identity, Technology and Community (Ashgate 2008).

Catherine Truman

Catherine Truman is an established object maker and contemporary jeweller working across the disciplines of art and science. She is a co-founder and current partner of Gray Street Workshop, an internationally renowned artist-run workshop established in 1985 in Adelaide, South Australia. Truman’s practice is renowned for its diversity and depth and incorporates jewellery, objects, digital imagery, film and installation works with a focus upon the parallels between artistic process and scientific method.

Between 2009 and 2013 she was artist in residence in the Autonomic Neurotransmission Laboratory, the Anatomy and Histology departments and the Ian Gibbins Microscopy Suite at Flinders University, Adelaide.

Truman was awarded an Arts South Australia Fellowship in 2016 and her work was featured in a significant survey exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia. She was the subject of the 2016 South Australian Living Artist (SALA) monograph, Catherine Truman: touching distance, written by Melinda Rackham, published by Wakefield Press. In 2017, as part of their Icon program, the Jamfactory, Adelaide presented a solo exhibition of Truman’s work. Titled no surface holds, the exhibition highlighted her art/science practice it toured nationally 2018-2020.

During 2019 she was artist in residence at the state Herbarium and Botanic Gardens of South Australia and the Flinders Centre for Ophthalmology, Eye and Vision Research, School of Medicine, Flinders University.

Currently Truman is undertaking a project titled Shared Reckonings a project that explores the creative parallels between the ways in which the human eye and plants process light which will culminate in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Economic Botany and the Dead House in the Botanic Gardens of South Australia during the Adelaide Festival 2021.

Truman is represented in major national and international collections.

Kath Inglis

Raised in Australia’s multicultural tropical city of Darwin, Kath Inglis moved south to Adelaide to study contemporary jewellery. After graduating from the South Australian School of Art in 2000, Kath continued to develop her practice by working from a number of studios, including the renowned Gray Street Workshop, JamFactory’s Metal Design Studio and soda and rhyme. Kath is inspired by her surroundings; with political and social issues to weather extremes and subtle events, finding their way into her work. Her jewellery pieces become an autobiography of her life. Her passion for Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) started in 2001 and she takes great joy in transforming a mundane material into something precious. A career highlight so far is having her work collected by the Art Gallery of SA and at the same time being included in the Guildhouse 50th anniversary exhibition in 2016. Kath Inglis’ work is in high demand and her jewellery can be found in stockists and gallery shops in Australia, New Zealand, USA and China. Kath lives in the beautiful Adelaide Hills with a work bench located at The Barn.

Mentor Mentee – A creative relationship

Led by Professor Susan Luckman, University of South Australia, this report offers initial findings from a three-year longitudinal research study examining the impact of mentorships in the ongoing development of creative careers informed by Guildhouse mentorship programs over the past decade.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. Also backed by generous support from the Day Family Foundation and Creative Partnerships Australia.

Images (L-R): Professor Susan Luckman photograph courtesy the speaker, Catherine Truman photograph Rosina Possingham, Kath Inglis photograph Rosina Possingham; Catherine Truman, Ghost, 2020. Photograph Grant Hancock; Catherine Truman, Ghost (detail), 2020. Photograph Grant Hancock; Kath Inglis, Orange Epiphyte Neckpiece, 2019. Photograph Craig Arnold; Catherine Truman, Restless Calm, 2020. Photograph courtesy the artist; Kath Inglis, Drift Brooches, 2020. Photograph Craig Arnold; Kath Inglis, Epiphyte Brooch, 2019. Photograph Craig Arnold; Mentor Mentee: A creative relationship extracts. Design: Amy Milhinch.

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