Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery is helping to keep kids occupied and creative with a series of activities that can be enjoyed from home.
Young ones can get artistic by crafting collages, creating indigenous animals and learning about their habitats, as well as creating watercolour and food dye artworks. For those keen to get crafty now, the activities are already online so no need to wait until for the upcoming school holidays.
Artist/educator Jill Anderson has created a series of creative activities inspired by works from MPRG’s collection. Kids can create a Patrick Pound-inspired collage and learn about Pound’s art of collecting photographs and objects. Watch a virtual tour of his recent MPRG exhibition and then learn how to create a themed collage.
Jill riffs off Danie Mellor’s work ‘An unsettled vision’ and asks kids to think deeper about our native wildlife and their habitats. Danie Mellor won the 2008 National Works on Paper and is a prominent artist in the MPRG collection.
In this creative activity, Jill introduces Mellor’s work and then instructs children on how to create their own collage work of a koala’s home. In another video, Jill talks about how nature inspires artists Rosie Weiss and GW Bott, both in MPRG’s permanent collection.
Discover how to borrow ideas from their practice to make your own artwork. Gather interesting natural specimens from their garden or park and arrange and trace them with a permanent pen. Learn how to create watercolours from textas or food dye and paint a fabulous work on paper.
Artist, musician and animator Jerome Rush has also created fun online tutorials for kids. Learn how to create an observational collage using coloured paper and a fine liner pen, how to paint a portrait with decaf coffee or a crazy crocodile hand puppet.
Like galleries and museums across Victoria, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery (MRPG) is currently closed to the public until further notice, in response to the COVID-19 crisis. However a range of online exhibitions and activities are available. For more information, visit: www.mprg.mornpen.vic.gov.au for details.
Image: A Patrick Pound Collage (video still) – courtesy of Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery