qut art museum | Kathleen Jennings

On 2 June, I’m giving a silhouette bookplate workshop at the QUT Art Museum! (This is in addition to the artist floor talk on 12 May.)

Developed in response to the current exhibitions ‘Spowers & Syme’ and ‘A Matter of Looking: 20th century works from the QUT Art Collection’, join Kathleen Jennings to explore the principles of silhouette art, cutting techniques, composition and design to create a bookplate in a style of your very own!

Date: Friday 2 June
When: 10AM-12PM
Place: QUT Art Museum
Free, bookings essential, registrations via Eventbrite, link in bio.

‘Spowers & Syme’ is a National Gallery Touring Exhibition supported by Visions of Australia, Major Patron David Thomas AM, and the Gordon Darling Foundation. ‘Spowers & Syme’ is a Know My Name project.

Here are some rather better photos, courtesy of the QUT Art Museum, of the illustrations I did for their activity space, to accompany Spowers & Syme (a National Gallery Touring Exhibition), and the companion exhibition from the QUT Art Museum’s collection, A Matter of Looking.

I’ll also be giving an artist floor talk there on 12 May as part of the Brisbane Art & Design festival.

Spowers & Syme Celebrating the artistic friendship of Naarm/Melbourne artists Ethel Spowers and Eveline Syme, the National Gallery Touring Exhibition Spowers & Syme will present the changing face of interwar Australia through the perspective of two pioneering modern women artists. Spowers & Syme is a National Gallery Touring Exhibition supported by Visions of Australia, Major Patron David Thomas AM and the Gordon Darling Foundation. Spowers & Syme a Know My Name project.

A Matter of Looking: 20th century works from the QUT Art Collection This exhibition introduces audiences to rarely seen paintings, prints and drawings by female artists across the broad spectrum of the 20th century held in the QUT Art Collection. It calls us to immerse ourselves in the simple act of looking, in the hopes of not only discovering the extraordinary art produced by female artists of the last century, many of which will be unfamiliar names, but also experiencing something life-affirming.

Two new exhibitions have just opened at the QUT Art Museum at QUT Gardens Point, Brisbane (alongside the City botanic gardens) — Spowers & Syme (a National Gallery Touring Exhibition), and the companion exhibition from the QUT Art Museum’s collection, A Matter of Looking.

They are both warm and vivid and generous exhibitions. I highly recommend checking them out, particularly as many of the fragile works in Spowers & Syme — with all their interwar energy — may not be on exhibition again for some time.

And, accordingly, I was thrilled to be asked to design illustrations for the activity space, getting to spend time staring at all these works and distilling them down to a tumble of black-and-white energy. (I love playing in others’ worlds, whether artists or authors, trying to see through their eyes and then again, anew, through my own.)

Table and wall in art gallery covered with many small silhouette images of

AND the museum has just announced that they are part of the Brisbane Art & Design festival this May! As part of that, I will be there for an artist floor talk!

Join QUT Galleries and Museums Engagement Officer, Renae Belton in conversation with local illustrator and writer Kathleen Jennings who has been commissioned to design an activity space where people can explore pattern making, drawing and creative play whilst visiting our current exhibitions, ‘Spowers & Syme’ and ‘A Matter of Looking: 20th century works from the QUT Art Collection’.

Date: Friday 12 May
When: 12:30 -1:30PM
Place: QUT Art Museum
Free, bookings essentials, registrations via Eventbrite.

‘Spowers & Syme’ is a National Gallery Touring Exhibition supported by Visions of Australia, Major Patron David Thomas AM, and the Gordon Darling Foundation. ‘Spowers & Syme’ is a Know My Name project.