SAM Talks: Recent Episodes
Shepparton Art Museum
SAM Talks is a podcast series presented by our exhibition and engagement staff, exploring contemporary topics and issues that connect us across Australia. Join the conversation at www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au or @sam_shepparton on Instagram.
What does it mean to paint the landscape — not as a view, but as a living, breathing network of care?
In this episode, SAM Curator Caroline Esbenshade sits down with artist Anthea Kemp, recipient of the 2025 Theodore Urbach Landscape Painting Scholarship, to reflect on her time in Shepparton.
From volunteering at the Euroa Arboretum and the Goulburn Broken Indigenous Seed Bank to transforming field observations into large-scale abstract paintings, Anthea shares how immersion, attention, and patience have reshaped her understanding of both art and conservation.
Together, they explore the links between creativity and ecology — how care for the smallest seed can inspire new ways of seeing the world around us.
Recorded live at Shepparton Art Museum, this conversation traces the delicate balance between artmaking, place, and the quiet power of connection.
Hosted by Caroline Esbenshade
Recorded live at Shepparton Art Museum
Learn more about the Theodore Urbach Landscape Painting here.
Stay in touch with SAM on socials:
Instagram / www.instagram.com/sam_sheppartonFacebook / www.facebook.com/sheppartonartmuseumSign up to our monthly newsletter via Mailchimp
Visit the SAM website to discover our exhibitions and programs: www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au
About SAM:
Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) is located on Yorta Yorta Country, Shepparton, Victoria.
As a leading Australian regional art museum, SAM showcases its exhibitions and collections in new and exciting ways to create a welcoming, inclusive, and engaging space for all visitors.
Recognised for its significant Australian ceramics collection and nationally significant collection of Indigenous art, SAM’s programming is designed to be locally relevant and engages with global contemporary ideas. Through its exhibitions, collection, programs and events, SAM creates a place where art helps us to better understand the ancient culture of this country and contemporary multicultural Australia.
What does it mean to preserve the past — and prepare it for the future? In this episode, SAM Exhibitions Manager Nick Baylart sits down with conservator Robyn Ho, founder of c/o Studios, to unpack the art and science of conservation. From repairing holes in century-old canvases to restoring intent, meaning, and cultural significance, Robyn shares her journey from architecture to art conservation and reveals how global partnerships and delicate micro-surgery techniques are helping safeguard artworks for generations to come.
Recorded live at Shepparton Art Museum, this conversation offers a rare glimpse behind the scenes of a profession that bridges creativity, chemistry, and care.
Stay in touch with SAM on socials:
Instagram / www.instagram.com/sam_sheppartonFacebook / www.facebook.com/sheppartonartmuseumSign up to our monthly newsletter via Mailchimp
Visit the SAM website to discover our exhibitions and programs: www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au
About SAM:
Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) is located on Yorta Yorta Country, Shepparton, Victoria.
As a leading Australian regional art museum, SAM showcases its exhibitions and collections in new and exciting ways to create a welcoming, inclusive, and engaging space for all visitors.
Recognised for its significant Australian ceramics collection and nationally significant collection of Indigenous art, SAM’s programming is designed to be locally relevant and engages with global contemporary ideas. Through its exhibitions, collection, programs and events, SAM creates a place where art helps us to better understand the ancient culture of this country and contemporary multicultural Australia.
In this episode, artist Locust Jones joins SAM Artistic Director Danny Lacy for a thoughtful conversation about The Bird Agents — a monumental drawing made in response to the chaos of global politics and media. Together, they explore Jones’s evolving creative practice, how sound and news cycles fuel his work, and why drawing remains his most immediate way of processing a world in constant motion.
The Bird Agents is a part of the SAM Collection and was recently on show for the first time in the exhibition The Shape of Things to Come.
Locust Jones (b. 1963, Christchurch, New Zealand) currently lives and works in the Blue Mountains, Australia.In 2010 Locust completed a Masters of Visual Arts at Sydney College of the Arts (Sydney University) where earlier in 1993 he completed an undergraduate degree in Print Media.
Since graduating Locust has held over 25 solo exhibitions within Australia and internationally, including: Burn Freeze, David Krut Projects, New York (2014); Descent into the Mass Media Maelstrom, Galerie Patrick Ebensperger, Berlin (2014); 24HR News Feed, Christchurch Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand (2013) and Some Mistakes were Perhaps Made, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, NSW (2012)
Locust has participated in numerous museum exhibitions including: Art Gallery of South Australia, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne and Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. His work is held in major public collections including: Art Gallery of New South Wales; Art Gallery of South Australia; Artbank; Bathurst Regional Art Gallery; National Gallery of Victoria; Australian War Memorial; Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, New Zealand; James Wallace Trust, Auckland, New Zealand; National Gallery of Australia; Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery; Kunstwerk Museum; Collection of Peter W. and Alison Klein, Stuttgart, Germany and the Shepparton Art Museum.
Stay in touch with SAM on socials:
Instagram / www.instagram.com/sam_sheppartonFacebook / www.facebook.com/sheppartonartmuseumSign up to our monthly newsletter via Mailchimp
Visit the SAM website to discover our exhibitions and programs: www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au
About SAM:
Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) is located on Yorta Yorta Country, Shepparton, Victoria.
As a leading Australian regional art museum, SAM showcases its exhibitions and collections in new and exciting ways to create a welcoming, inclusive, and engaging space for all visitors.
Recognised for its significant Australian ceramics collection and nationally significant collection of Indigenous art, SAM’s programming is designed to be locally relevant and engages with global contemporary ideas. Through its exhibitions, collection, programs and events, SAM creates a place where art helps us to better understand the ancient culture of this country and contemporary multicultural Australia.
In this episode, join us for an insightful conversation between this year’s SAM Selects exhibitor, Dore Stockhausen, and SAM Curator, Caroline Esbenshade. Together, they explore Stockhausen’s formative years, her artistic evolution, and the creative inspirations that have shaped her journey. Delve into the compelling themes and stories behind her current exhibition, echoes of a new eden, now on view in our Community Gallery until 29 June 2025.
Dore Stockhausen (b. 1966 Mainz, Germany) is a mid-career artist with a rich creative practice, having shifted her focus over the last decade from jewellery-making to painting. Originally from Germany, Stockhausen migrated to Australia in 1992 and now lives and works in Beechworth, Victoria. Stockhausen has exhibited regularly since the mid-90s, and her work is represented in regional and national collections including the National Gallery of Australia.
Stay in touch with SAM on socials:
Instagram / www.instagram.com/sam_sheppartonFacebook / www.facebook.com/sheppartonartmuseumSign up to our monthly newsletter via Mailchimp
Visit the SAM website to discover our exhibitions and programs: www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au
About SAM:
Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) is located on Yorta Yorta Country, Shepparton, Victoria.
As a leading Australian regional art museum, SAM showcases its exhibitions and collections in new and exciting ways to create a welcoming, inclusive, and engaging space for all visitors.
Recognised for its significant Australian ceramics collection and nationally significant collection of Indigenous art, SAM’s programming is designed to be locally relevant and engages with global contemporary ideas. Through its exhibitions, collection, programs and events, SAM creates a place where art helps us to better understand the ancient culture of this country and contemporary multicultural Australia.
In October 2024, multi-disciplinary artist Brendan Huntley joined SAM Communications Officer Mikela Guseli for a conversation exploring Huntley's diverse creative practice. Known best for his clay and painting practice, the conversation spans from Huntley's early DIY art exhibitions with his parents to fronting Melbourne-based punk band Eddy Suppression Ring, and how the act of creating has been a constant form of self-discovery and self-expression through the past two decades.
Brendan Huntley is a prolific artist who works across music, painting and sculpture. His work is currently on display at SAM in Ceramics in Focus, where he playfully references historic ceramic forms to explore the human psyche and what it means to be human, instilling each of his works with individual sensibilities. Huntley approaches his ceramic practice with a belief that the transformative process of sculpting and firing clay involves a transfer of energy, giving each sculpture its own personality.
Stay in touch with SAM on socials:
Instagram / www.instagram.com/sam_sheppartonFacebook / www.facebook.com/sheppartonartmuseumSign up to our monthly newsletter via Mailchimp
Visit the SAM website to discover our exhibitions and programs: www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au
About SAM:
Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) is located on Yorta Yorta Country, Shepparton, Victoria.
As a leading Australian regional art museum, SAM showcases its exhibitions and collections in new and exciting ways to create a welcoming, inclusive, and engaging space for all visitors.
Recognised for its significant Australian ceramics collection and nationally significant collection of Indigenous art, SAM’s programming is designed to be locally relevant and engages with global contemporary ideas. Through its exhibitions, collection, programs and events, SAM creates a place where art helps us to better understand the ancient culture of this country and contemporary multicultural Australia.
Late last year, our 2024 Theodore Urbach Landscape Prize and Studio Scholarship recipient Ellen Lee joined SAM Curator Caroline Esbenshade to discuss Lee's three-month experience at SAM and the growth she experienced in her creative practice both during and since her time in the SAM Artist Studio.
In addition to discussing Lee’s experience, Caroline Esbenshade introduces the Urbach 2025 program and information on how artists can apply for the prize and scholarship opportunity.
Ellen Lee is an Australian artist who works from her home studio in regional Victoria. Working with watercolour, natural pigmentation and graphite, her experiences in nature and her surroundings provide an abundance of inspiration for her large scale works on paper.
Derived from the mappings and collection of marks from blind contour studies and observations of the environment; Ellen’s works centre around an exploration into the changes occurring within the landscape, and the observational nature of documenting, and drawing, in accordance to a natural response to the surrounding stimuli. Her work aims to create an immersive and sensory experience, bringing the viewer into a landscape of time, change and movement.
Ellen Lee is the recipient of the 2024 The Theodore Urbach Landscape Painting Prize & Studio Scholarship. During the 3 month studio scholarship at Shepparton Art Museum (SAM), Ellen’s work will focus on the surrounding wetlands and bird life of Victoria Lake. Read more about Ellen’s experience here.
Ellen Lee was the 2023 Spotlight Artist at Shepparton Art Museum (SAM). Her solo exhibition ‘Landscape; of sight, of sound’, focused on her time in local bushland of Banyula State Forest, with the scale of her works immersing the viewer in a meditative, visual landscape.
Ellen Lee was awarded the DM Myers University Medal for the highest achiever of academic excellence for the College of Arts, Social Science and Commerce at La Trobe University, Australia.
The Urbach program is generously supported by the Theodore Urbach Landscape Painting Scholarship and Prize Charitable Trust. The trust, established through the will of philanthropist and arts patron Theodore Urbach, was designed to provide prizes and scholarship opportunities to benefit artists and students working in the field of Australian landscape painting.
Stay in touch with SAM on socials:
Instagram / www.instagram.com/sam_sheppartonFacebook / www.facebook.com/sheppartonartmuseumSign up to our monthly newsletter via Mailchimp
Visit the SAM website to discover our exhibitions and programs: www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au
About SAM:
Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) is located on Yorta Yorta Country, Shepparton, Victoria.
As a leading Australian regional art museum, SAM showcases its exhibitions and collections in new and exciting ways to create a welcoming, inclusive, and engaging space for all visitors.
Recognised for its significant Australian ceramics collection and nationally significant collection of Indigenous art, SAM’s programming is designed to be locally relevant and engages with global contemporary ideas. Through its exhibitions, collection, programs and events, SAM creates a place where art helps us to better understand the ancient culture of this country and contemporary multicultural Australia.
In July 2024, artist Stewart Russell joined SAM Digital Content Coordinator Kati Hogarth for a conversation exploring the creation of his new installation Peter, Tommie, & John / reliving the dream.
Stewart Russell’s large-scale textile installation Peter, Tommie & John / reliving the dream explores one of the most influential political actions of the 20th century through the eyes of Australian Olympic silver medallist Peter Norman.
In this episode Stewart talks about the history behind the artwork, meeting Peter Norman, his practice and inspiration behind this series.
Stay in touch with SAM on socials:
Instagram / www.instagram.com/sam_sheppartonFacebook / www.facebook.com/sheppartonartmuseumSign up to our monthly newsletter via Mailchimp
Visit the SAM website to discover our exhibitions and programs: www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au
About SAM:
Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) is located on Yorta Yorta Country, Shepparton, Victoria.
As a leading Australian regional art museum, SAM showcases its exhibitions and collections in new and exciting ways to create a welcoming, inclusive, and engaging space for all visitors.
Recognised for its significant Australian ceramics collection and nationally significant collection of Indigenous art, SAM’s programming is designed to be locally relevant and engages with global contemporary ideas. Through its exhibitions, collection, programs and events, SAM creates a place where art helps us to better understand the ancient culture of this country and contemporary multicultural Australia.
In April 2024, SAM Selects artist Jen Valender joined SAM Curator - Community Caroline Esbenshade for a fascinating live conversation exploring the creation of her exhibition Field. Created during Valender’s time on the University of Melbourne’s Dookie Agricultural Campus for her CoVA Art + Ecology residency, the body of moving image works explore the relationship between art and the natural world through a series of video works featuring the wildlife and lush, fluorescent canola fields of Dookie. In this episode, the pair discuss working with animals, performance art, and connecting with farm life.
Field was on display in SAM's Hugh D.T Williamson Community Gallery from 3 February to 5 May 2024.
About the artist:
Jen Valender is a multidisciplinary artist who creates performative encounters on and with the landscape that raises questions about the relationship between art and the natural world.
Through moving image, she explores the ways in which art may be used as a navigational tool to investigate human and nonhuman connections. Valender has exhibited widely in galleries and museums in Australia, France, Germany, South Africa, and Portugal and holds a Master of Fine Arts (Research) from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.
Stay in touch with SAM on socials:
Instagram / www.instagram.com/sam_sheppartonFacebook / www.facebook.com/sheppartonartmuseumSign up to our monthly newsletter via Mailchimp
Visit the SAM website to discover our exhibitions and programs: www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au
About SAM:
Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) is located on Yorta Yorta Country, Shepparton, Victoria.
As a leading Australian regional art museum, SAM showcases its exhibitions and collections in new and exciting ways to create a welcoming, inclusive, and engaging space for all visitors.
Recognised for its significant Australian ceramics collection and nationally significant collection of Indigenous art, SAM’s programming is designed to be locally relevant and engages with global contemporary ideas. Through its exhibitions, collection, programs and events, SAM creates a place where art helps us to better understand the ancient culture of this country and contemporary multicultural Australia.
SAM Curator Jessica O'Farrell sits down with multidisciplinary artist Jason Phu to discuss his recent Art Wall commission for SAM, Some of the things that have come and gone with the waters. The pair dive into Phu's creative practice, the research he undertook for his site-responsive work, and the process of depicting a landscape following the devastation of recent flooding.
Australian Melting Pot (2018) examines the complexity of living between multiple cultures in Australia. Join artist Moorina Bonini and SAM Curator Belinda Briggs as they discuss the artwork and the multifaceted perspectives that contribute to the construction of Australian identity.
SAM Talks: Drawing Wall #39
with Troy Firebrace
Join Yorta Yorta artist Troy Firebrace and SAM Curator Belinda Briggs as they discuss the dual contexts of SAM Drawing Wall #39.
Troy uses layers of meaning within his work, encouraging his audience to look again.
At a first glance, we might recognise the familiar imagery of a dry riverbed in the summer sun—upon closer inspection, however, we discover some of the complexities of living in the modern world.
Learn how Troy uses art as a tool to educate students and audiences about Aboriginal culture in this SAM Talks: Drawing Wall #39.
SAM Talks: A Potter’s Legacywith Damon Moon
Join us as we discuss key artworks in our most recent exhibition; A Finer Grain, selected works from the Shepparton Art Museum. In this iteration, Damon Moon remarks on Marea Gazzard’s artwork in the exhibition, with introductory remarks from SAM Director Dr. Rebecca Coates.
samtalks #samtalkspodcast #sheppartonartmuseum #contemporaryart
SAM Talks: Colourwith David Sequeira
Join us as we discuss a series of key artworks in our most recent exhibition; A Finer Grain, selected works from the Shepparton Art Museum. In this iteration, David Sequeira remarks on Grace Cossington Smith’s artwork in the exhibition, with introductory remarks from SAM Director Dr. Rebecca Coates.
samtalks #samtalkspodcast #sheppartonartmuseum #contemporaryart
SAM Talks: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral
with Angela Valamanesh
Join us as we discuss a series of key artworks in our most recent exhibition; A Finer Grain, selected works from the Shepparton Art Museum. In this iteration, Angela Valamanesh speaks on her artwork in the exhibition, with introductory remarks from SAM Director Dr Rebecca Coates.
samtalks #samtalkspodcast #sheppartonartmuseum #contemporaryart
SAM Talks: The Exquisite Piratewith Sally Smart
Join us as we discuss a series of key artworks in our most recent exhibition; A Finer Grain, selected works from the Shepparton Art Museum. In this iteration, Sally Smart speaks on her artwork in the exhibition, with introductory remarks from SAM Director Dr Rebecca Coates.
samtalks #samtalkspodcast #sheppartonartmuseum #contemporaryart #sallysmart
Take a look at the artwork yourself via our online catalogue here:
https://gsam.melbourne.axiell.com/?page=search#view=details&id=30b2&terms=%5B%22and%22%2C%5B%5B%22keywords%22%2C%22sally%20smart%22%5D%2C%5B%22or%22%2C%5B%5B%22record-purpose%22%2C%22imu%20navigation%22%2C%22%3C%3E%22%5D%2C%5B%22record-purpose%22%2C%22%5C%5C!%5C%5C*%22%5D%5D%5D%5D%5D&offset
SAM Talks: Drawing Wall #38
with Jahnne Pasco-White
Join Jahnne Pasco-White as she talks about her response to the landscape and the way she captures this on canvas. Speaking about her methods and approaches to artmaking, Jahnne will discuss her use of naturally dyed fabrics and pigments that connect her practice to place.
SAM Talks: Sound Seen
with Sarah CrowESTOver the month of October, sound makers of all persuasions responded to visual scores created by artist Sarah CrowEST. Learn more about the online project and listen to the responses from participants in this SAM Talks: Sound Seen podcast.
SAM Talks: Industry Insightswith Pink Ember Studio Founders Aaron and Aoife Billings
What do you need to do to flourish in highly competitive arts and cultural space that is now largely online? In this SAM Talks: Industry Insights podcast, discover how Aaron and Aoife co-founded a queer-run artist co-op, Pink Ember Studios, and how they continue their practice in a COVID- socially distanced world.
To learn more about current projects at SAM, join us on our website www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au.
SAM Talks: Art and Design
with *artist Irene Grishin Selzer and Irina Rybakov of Pepite Shop
How has the need for art resulted in a design focus in our living rooms during the physical closures of our art museums and galleries? Many art enthusiasts have turned their focus towards their own places of creativity during these times of isolation. In this SAM Talks: Art and Design* podcast, join artist Irene and curator Irina as they discuss the role art, design and online platforms play in creating your own art experiences at home.
To learn more about current projects at SAM, join us on our website www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au.