16 September 2023 – 15 April 2024
In MUSH/ROOM: A Field Guide to Exploration, visual artist Beci Orpin looks at the process of playing with ideas, using mushrooms and fungi to illustrate the way ideas can unexpectedly pop up from our imagination, like mushrooms spawning suddenly from the ground. Kids and the young at heart will be delighted by Orpin’s colourful creations, which she crafts from an array of media to form her fantastical fungi, from towering Puffballs to the tiniest Milkcaps, presenting a MUSH of different mediums in a ROOM full of mushrooms.
Beci Orpin: MUSH/ROOM, installation view, Shepparton Art Museum, 2023. Photo: Shepparton Art Museum
About the artist
Beci Orpin is a multidisciplinary artist, designer and author based in Melbourne. Her broad practice is united by a signature application of colour, shape and optimism.
She has collaborated with major brands and organisations including Apple, Google, Disney, Uniqlo and The Australian Ballet, as well as lectured and led workshops at national institutions, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Craft Victoria and Melbourne Design Week.
Across her 25 year career, Beci has remained committed to exploring art as a vehicle to form community. Many of her proudest achievements have been in the not-for-profit space, collaborating on projects with Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Water Aid, Children’s ground, VICSEG and Save the Children.
Beci’s Brunswick studio was specifically established in 2022 to serve as a gathering point for the next generation of creatives to come together, collaborate, explore and further understand how beautiful work can help us build beautiful lives. Beci has recently published Book of Girls, a new book that takes an archival view of her practice, and the subcultures and movements she has been involved with over the last 30 years.
Curator: Caroline Esbenshade
Location: The Ryan Family Children’s Gallery, Level 2
Free
Exhibition supporters
Government Partners
Greater Shepparton City Council
Creative Victoria
Learning & Engagement Partner
University of Melbourne
Exhibition Supporters
Dunstine Fritsche
Amanda Dziedzic