Each month HOTA invites leading artists and performers to curate poses, subjects and performances for you to draw, with all materials provided and a drink on arrival.

Relax and unwind with short, guided drawing warm-ups, followed by long and sustained poses or still life subjects, with help from our guest artist and team of artist educators.

Whether you are new to drawing or one of the greats, all abilities are welcome to enjoy this unique and artful experience.

June – The Expanded Sessions with Kellie O’Dempsey
Taking an experiential focus on the life drawing studio these sessions aim to approach drawing as a vital and exploratory tool to translate the experience of drawing the body using the body. Drawing to music in a shared space we will use drawing to navigate and develop energetic approaches to image making using experimental techniques that will expand and extend preconceived ideas of life drawing.

Artist Bio
Kellie O’Dempsey creates site-generated installations and performances that integrate projection, video, collage, architectural space, gestural line, performance and digital drawing. Creating in both solo and collaborative formats with sound artists and contemporary dance practitioners, O’Dempsey’s diverse practice explores, deconstructs and heightens the concept of public space as shared experience. O’Dempsey manipulates space and alters perception to transform and reinvigorate the familiar, and to create a sense of brilliance. Using performance, play, line and colour, O’Dempsey’s public productions enable an inclusive form of cultural interaction. The immersive site installation and performance drawing works invite the audience to engage directly with the visceral process of making. Kellie’s past performances include: Art after Dark; Pier 2/3; 18###sup/sup### Biennale of Sydney; MONA FOMA, Hobart; White Night Melbourne; and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Model Bio
Lowana Davies is an olfactory, performance and installation artist based in Yugambeh Country. Her research-driven arts practice seeks to draw attention to multispecies justice via intersectional feminist, queer, and pro-Indigenous thinking. Her work has been presented throughout Australia, and in New Zealand, China, and Japan. Since completing her Bachelor of Digital Media (studio art) at Griffith University Gold Coast in 2017, Lowana has gone on to create artworks for the Commonwealth Games Festival 2018, THE WALLS art space, Gold Coast City Gallery, HOTA Children’s Gallery, The Old Lockup Maroochydore, The Block QUT, QCA Galleries, Outerspace, outdoors in public spaces, and online.