Between the Lines: Drawing & Animation Masterclass with Kieran Boland

Next date: Saturday, 31 October 2026 | 11:30 AM to 04:30 PM

** Please note the masterclass starts at 11.30am at MPRG where we will talk to Kieran about his work in the 2026 Nationla Works on Paper Prize. From there we will drive to The Nook (5 mins) to begin the class. Ride sharing is encouraged **

Join National Works on Paper finalist Kieran Boland for a playful, collaborative workshop that travels back through drawing and animation: part memory-mining, part time machine, entirely unpredictable.

Taking inspiration from his exhibited work Homework, Kieran will share how a humble school exercise book became the spark for exploring creativity, distraction and the places our minds wander when we're meant to be paying attention. Using his own primary school books as a jumping-off point, participants are invited to dig through the margins of memory: the doodles, daydreams and detours that filled the edges of every school day.

Working in traditional exercise books, participants begin by sketching a memory or visual prompt from Kieran. In the second phase, these pages are passed around the group, each person adding, altering or reinventing what came before. Page by page, individual recollections blur into something new: a story reshaped by many hands and perspectives. Selected drawings from all participants are photographed and sequenced into a shared animated GIF, a looping moving image forming a record of the experience, alongside your own exercise book to take with you. Any pages left blank are your homework!

Materials include classic ruled exercise books, along with the pens, pencils and crayons you'll remember from school, as well as dip pen and ink, the same tactile, slightly untameable medium running through Kieran's Homework series. Expect smudges, surprises and happy accidents.

No drawing or animation experience required, just curiosity.Bookings are essential, numbers are limited. All materials supplied, but if there's an old exercise book gathering dust in a drawer somewhere (spelling tests, doodles, mysterious diagrams and all), bring it along; it might be exactly the spark you need. And don't forget: bring an old shirt as we will be using INK!

Please bring a snack or lunch (there's fridge on site) & I'll make some afternoon tea!

Kieran Boland is a multidisciplinary artist working across drawing, film, video, animation, sound, writing and performance. He is currently a Lecturer in Design at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, and has previously taught at Monash University, RMIT and Deakin University, completing a PhD at RMIT's School of Art in 2022. His work has been exhibited and screened nationally and internationally, with artist residencies across Europe, Asia and the United States. Boland's practice explores memory, storytelling and the creative potential of everyday materials and overlooked spaces, inviting audiences to look past the obvious and embrace the unexpected. His Homework series, featured in National Works on Paper, revisits childhood exercise books as sites of imagination, distraction and possibility.

Image: Kieran Boland,Homework (2009) Pen, pencil and gouache on paper