Moonah Arts Centre presents ‘Animated Portraits’ an exhibition of digital art making by young people from November 2 to 10, at our space , 65 Hopkins St Moonah.

Animated Portraits presents a wide range of work by young people who attended a week long residency at Moonah Arts Centre in April 2011 as part of an artist in schools initiative sponsored by New Town High School. Many of those young people then joined students from Montrose Bay High and other young people to then attend a regular weekly workshop at Moonah Arts Centre in the months leading up to this exhibition.

The work presented sees young people exploring a range of animation techniques from 3D lego manipulation , to texta and whiteboard; chalk, claymation, paper cut outs and straight out pencil drawing. The emphasis has been on exploration of the many mediums and animation techniques available – with encouragement to build structure, character and narrative into the evolving works. 

Animated Portraits has been assisted by the Premiers Community capacity Building Fund and the State Government’s 2011 Artists In schools Program.

The project is part of a broader strategy by Glenorchy City Council’s arts and cultural development program, through the Moonah Arts Centre to improve access to digital art making opportunities within the local community.

The project tutors and supervising artists are professional animators Stefan le Mottee and Man Van Rooijen.  Both Stefan and Matt create animation for Tasmania’s best known animation house Blue Rocket as well as a range of other clients.

The exhibition also includes digital art work from both Glenorchy’s major arts and cultural Festival, The Works as well as digital art created by New Town High students working in class with visual arts teacher, Pete Young.

‘Soft Centre’ – the work created in 2010 as part of Glenorchy’s Works Festival. involved 16 young people working with a range of Tasmanian contemporary artists in animation, digital mural making, sound art and video and a sample of that work is presented once again in this exhibition.

‘a word from our sponsors’ was created by students from year nine and ten at New Town Boys High across 2011. Responding to a brief aimed at building student’s skills in graphic communications and how it is constructed, the students have developed a range of interesting social and commercial poster art.

The exhibition will include a free 1 hour animation demonstration and workshop by Stefan and Matt on Saturday 5th of November at 11am and again at 1pm.