Liz Wedge - Lino-cuts

Liz Wedge is an Art Gallery Guide and an Artist in different mediums, including Lino-cuts

Details about the exhibition

Inspired by……… an exhibition by 26 volunteers at AGSA 

(Art Gallery of South Australia)

Light Square Gallery, 39 Light Square, Adelaide 

https://www.tafesa.edu.au/adelaide-college-of-the-arts/light-square-gallery

Wed 5th August - Friday 21st August 

Monday to Friday - 10.00 a.m. - 5.00 p.m. 

Official Launch:   

Jason Smith, Director, AGSA 

Thursday 13th August, 3.00 p.m. - 5.00 p.m. 

Music is original music by David Innocente 

"One Thing Led to Another"

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to Inspired by Art and Volunteering, an exhibition with me, Tanya Ingerson. This podcast is an interview that I did with Liz Wedge. When I very first met Liz, I thought this person knows so much about art, and she does. What is amazing about Liz is that she researches so deeply and with such passion works that we have in our collection at the Art Gallery of South Australia and exhibitions that we have as well. So I think that you get a bit of a sense of that for this conversation. So anyway, sit back and relax and enjoy the conversation I had with Liz.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

What's your role here at AGSA as a volunteer? Okay, so my role here is a gallery guide, and I work with different groups, education groups, the special interest groups, spoke tours sometimes, and um yeah, and others. So I really enjoy guiding different groups.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

What groups do you like the better? Like, has there been one that you've kind of gone, oh, I like that?

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Well, it it varies. For example, some of the public tours that get some really interesting people coming in from overseas. So we start to chat before I take the tour. So I've got an idea of you know where they're from and what they've seen, because a few times there have been uh local people who have been to the gallery a few times, but most of the time it's people from interstate and overseas who have only visited once or not at all. So getting that um idea of where they're at with their art viewing in South Australia is good for me to start because I'll show them something, but not something else sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Is it do you feel like that I as a volunteer when we first start, you think, Oh goodness, am I going to know enough and prepare everything? Is it now in that beginning you have all this information floating around in your head, and as you're talking to your group, you're actually designing it, the tour?

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Absolutely, and you take things out, for example, I like to make um connections with works from um the same gallery space or different gallery spaces too, where I can see the work from where I am. And so sometimes I build a tour based on that. It might be that I've got a tour in mind, but after speaking to the people before we start, I go, mmm, I think they might be better off seeing this swing more than that wing, or this type of work more than that type of work. So I try and vary. I also um interchange work. So if there's a new work that I've discovered and I think it's really great, and it links to something that I have in my tour already, I'll add that in and take something out. Sometimes I add things in but I don't take things out. One of my longest tours was last week, one and a half hours.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

It is a really tricky thing to get but you get a sense of your group and the public of do you and I think that's what makes a really good guide is when you know when you tour they've had enough information or they actually are really hungry for some more. So that's kind of a skill that you learn. It is. How long have you been a guide for?

SPEAKER_01 3:10

I was part of the pandemic group, so we yeah, so our training was 2020. So I retired the end of 2019 and started straight away in 2020. So really interesting year of training was great. Yeah, that's so that was my first year 2020, and um I've been here since. Um, and what do you love about being a volunteer? Oh, uh lots of things. Being in a in a I call it a sacred space, it's just amazing, you know, all the artworks, having that that access to the artworks, and um also I enjoy the research, like the library and researching my various um works for different tours. But the people, meeting the people and having those conversations, and some of the people are just so interesting. Like the last tour I was on, there were some professors from Arizona, and uh after the tour, they um wanted to keep the conversation going and they're really lovely. And uh they wanted to have lunch together. I unfortunately couldn't, but those sort of experiences are really lovely. So meeting different people from interstate and overseas, uh, local people too. Um, I love it when we we because I love to invite them to discuss the work, so I don't like it being all one way, I don't think that's going to be of any benefit to a lot of the visitors. So I'll post questions and then start the conversation going, and and sometimes their responses are quite interesting, you know, quite unique. So you discover things yourself from that.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Yeah, oh my goodness, absolutely. And you're a part of the Inspired By exhibition, which for Sale, which is exciting. We all there's 24, I think. That's amazing. I know, it's so great. That's amazing. So, what is your art practice, Liz?

SPEAKER_01 4:57

It varies. Uh, when I came out of art school and university, I majored in four areas. So it was hard fabrications like jewellery and metalwork and printmaking, all the different forms of printmaking. Um, I also did ceramics for the four years and drawing and painting up to year, third end of the third year. I didn't run with that as much. I still do a little bit of it, but um I suppose my real love is um printmaking.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

And I love combining different techniques, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Oh goodness, and so for this exhibition, all the artists have been asked to produce something that they're inspired by. Anything. What are you inspired by for the works you're going to exhibit?

SPEAKER_01 5:39

For this particular exhibition, it was my trip to Tasmania in December. So I was there for a month and uh going through Cradle Mountain and then the um Franklin Gordon River was amazing. And so there were little pockets of inspiration from around Tassie that I've used for my prints, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Oh wow. Tasmania is like that, isn't it? There's a nature at its quietest and dramatic, and like I just feel like Mother Nature just went for it in Tasmania, didn't she?

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Absolutely. It's amazing, I loved it. So I've had three trips now to Tassie. Um, but uh this month over there uh and just uh being part of the environment and taking snippets because I'm a texture person, I love textures, so it's perfect.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Oh my goodness. Well, Liz, I have one last question for you. What do you love about art?

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Oh, where do you begin? I think what I love about art is the connections that you can make with other people and also what you discover about yourself and the world around you, and um you know, looking into art. It's a visual process and experience, but I think that with all artworks you can learn something from it that uh inspires you or excites you or uh causes you to pause and question what you're looking at. So yeah, it it's all of that.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Wonderful. Thanks, Liz, so much for that. We look forward to seeing you at the exhibition. Thank you. Well, I hope you enjoyed that chat I had with Liz. I always enjoy my conversations with Liz. I always learn something, but I really I really just enjoy the chat as well. I just love her passion for art. It was really interesting what she said about what she loves about being a volunteer and being at the gallery, the connection with people, and also that connection with art being a connection for yourself, like your connection. I love that. And of course, talking about Tasmania, I mean, how can that not be bad? So I'm really looking forward to seeing what Liz will be putting into the Inspired By exhibition as part of Sala. Have a look at the bottom of this podcast where there's details for the exhibition. So please join me next time when I interview another artist who's a volunteer at the Art Gallery of South Australia who will be exhibiting in this exhibition. And until then, bye for now.