2018 EXHIBITIONS
9 DECEMBER 2017 - 4 FEBRUARY 2018
GEORGINA POLLARD: LINES ARE DRAWN
Official Opening
Saturday 9 December | 2.00pm
A HomeGround Exhibition.
Painting on canvas is an invention of the 15th century and for artist Georgina Pollard it represents a convergence of architecture and textiles. By removing the stretcher bars, and thereby removing the element of architecture, the paintings emphasise textiles and its relationship to the architecture of the space. Pollard creates her paintings by pouring paint in different directions to create a fabric out of the surface of the walls. The works in this exhibition consider the lines drawn between architecture and textiles, permanence and transience, space and surface, male and female.
Image credit: Georgina Pollard, Unconditional 2017, 52x70cm, acrylic housepaint.
21 DECEMBER 2017 - 28 JANUARY 2018
ART NOW WITH TEXT CLASSICS
Mudgee Readers’ Festival partnered with Text Publishing during its 2017 event to stage an exhibition showcasing the Text Classics collection. A group of artists from around the Central West were each given a passage from a classic Australian work and asked to create an illustration in their own style. The results were striking and varied – mediums included watercolours, oil paintings, sculpture, photography and textile art. This touring exhibition comprises a selection of works from the original Art Now with Text Classics exhibition that took place during 2017 Mudgee Readers' Festival. It includes works by Denise Faulkner, Ruth Gobbitt, Dylan Goolagong, Charles Smith, Kelly Leonard, Kay Norton-Knight and Margot Stephens.
Image credit: Charles Smith, “In the Morning She Lay Calm.”
9 DECEMBER 2017 - 4 MARCH 2018
MAKE THE MARK: HSC ARTWORKS FROM THE DUBBO REGION
A vibrant exhibition of outstanding artworks produced by local Year 12 Visual Arts students for the 2017 HSC examination. Too often amazing HSC artworks, the products of months of concentrated effort and the manifestations of inspiration, talent and angst, never see the light of day again after being marked by the examiners. This multi-media exhibition gives everyone an opportunity to celebrate and marvel at the high standards and diversity achieved by local Year 12 Visual Arts students.
Image credit: Nastasia Reynolds (Dubbo School of Distance Education), Catatonic Light, 2016, photography. Courtesy the artist.
Official Opening
Friday 15 December | 6.00pm
9 DECEMBER 2017 - 4 MARCH 2018
NO HUMAN BEING IS ILLEGAL (IN ALL OUR GLORY): DEBORAH KELLY
No Human Being Is Ilegal (in all our glory) is an epic life-sized portrait project, initially commissioned for the 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014). The 20 photographic portraits have evolved into intriguing collage works through the collaborative creativity of teams of public participants over the course of many months. Conceived and organised by artist Deborah Kelly, the work continues to unfold throughout its tour of regional galleries and museums around Australia.
For the better part of three decades, Kelly has created a prolific body of mixed-media artworks that are at once unexpected, humorous, provocative, and profound. Often politically motivated, Kelly’s artworks explore ideas of power in all its manifestations, negotiating racial, sexual and religious prejudices and histories.
Image credit: Deborah Kelly & collaborators; Ramesh Mario Nitiyendran from No Human Being Is Illegal (in all our glory) (detail), 2014, pigment ink print on Hahnemühle papers bonded to aluminium, with collage from books and found materials, glue and UV protective varnishes, 200 x 109 cm. Courtesy the artist. Portrait Photographer: Sebastian Kriete. Created for the 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014).
Official Opening
Friday 8 December | 6.00pm
A MAMA exhibition toured by Museums & Galleries of NSW. This project was created for the 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014) with the assistance of the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. The Artist or Curator Residency program is supported by the Copyright Agency Limited’s Cultural Fund.
16 DECEMBER 2017 - 18 MARCH 2018
<HELLO, WORLD!>
WOMEN IN CODE
Software development is one of the fastest growing job sectors in the world economy. However, less than a quarter of computer science graduates are women and even less will become software developers. <Hello, World!> Women CODE tracks the historical and contemporary contribution of women to computer science and explores how cultural mindsets, stereotypes and educational hurdles have contributed to the shortage of women programmers and discusses how this gender gap, if not addressed, may shape our engagement with technology in the future.
Image credit: Portrait of software developer Isis Anchalee (digitally altered).
9 DECEMBER 2017 - 25 MARCH 2018
BLACK MIST, BURNT COUNTRY:
TESTING THE BOMB
MARALINGA AND AUSTRALIAN ART
Black Mist Burnt Country commemorates the 60th anniversary of the British atomic test series at Maralinga. It revisits the events and its location through artworks by Indigenous and non-Indigenous post-war and contemporary artists across the mediums of painting, print-making, sculpture, installation, photography and video. The exhibition explores the various perspectives and ways in which artists have explored the subject matter, either as contemporaries of the tests or as visitors to the former Maralinga test site or as traditional owners of the land.
Image credit: Paul Ogier, One Tree, carbon pigment on rag paper, 94 x 117 cm, 2010. Copyright: the artist
A Burrinja national touring exhibition
10 FEBRUARY - 15 APRIL 2018
JAMES FARLEY: WORKING WITHIN
Official Opening & Artist Talk
Saturday 10 February | 2.00pm
A HomeGround exhibition.
Working Within presents an approach to landscape photography that is grounded in ecological thinking. Created between a working flower farm and a flood-prone community commons, this project uses a technique of camera-less photography called lumen printing to explore an ecological aesthetic. Lumen prints are made without a camera, creating an image of themselves through a tactile exchange of materials. Working Within is a departure from enduring European aesthetic traditions of beauty and the sublime, and seeks to challenge historical hierarchies that contribute to the classification and exploitation of the earth. The artist facilitates a slow, collaborative and chaotic creation of a unique photographic object, exploring an ecological worldview grounded in openness, reciprocity and respect.
Image credit: James Farley, Working Within (detail), 2016/17, lumen print, image © the artist
10 MARCH - 3 JUNE 2018
MARION HALL BEST: INTERIORS
Official Opening
Saturday 17 March | 2.00pm
Marion Hall Best: Interiors is a travelling exhibition from Sydney Living Museums.
This exhibition colourfully charts the work of Marion Hall Best (1905-1988), one of Australia’s first and most influential independent interior designers, displaying original furniture, fabrics, furnishings and design schemes. Born in Dubbo, Best’s career spanned four decades - from the mid–1930s, a period of transition from the department store decorators and art furnishers of the 1920s, to the independent, professional designers of today. Her interiors vibrated with bold colours and patterns and a signature of her commissioned interiors was her vibrant glazed painted finishes on walls and ceilings. Best introduced the latest of international modernism in design to Australians through her shops in Rowe Street Sydney and Queen Street Woollahra, which were an inspiration to the local design profession.
Image credit: ‘A room for Mary Quant’, display room designed by Marion Best for the Rooms on View exhibition, Daily Telegraph Home Centre, Sydney, 1967 Mary White, 1967 Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, Sydney Living Museums. Photo © Estate of Mary White.
31 MARCH - 10 JUNE 2018
WASTE TO ART
Official Opening
Saturday 31 March | 2.00pm
Waste to Art is an annual competition and exhibition showcasing the creative re-use of discarded materials through art and craft. Engaging with the community, Waste to Art attracts school children, artists and community members and encourages them to challenge perceptions about ‘rubbish’ and its impact upon the environment. The result is a highly imaginative and thought provoking collection of artworks celebrating recycling and living sustainably. This year's theme is Polystyrene.
Image credit: Paul Tonniges, Vexing Times, 2017, scrap steel
24 MARCH - 18 JUNE 2018
OBSOLETE? ARTIST, OBJECT, SMALL MUSEUM
Artists Nicole Barakat, Aleshia Lonsdale and Fiona MacDonald apply their creative and investigatory flair to considering a community museum in Kandos, NSW. Obsolete? Artist, Object, Small Museum asks a central question: how can ordinary lives, then and now, and randomly collected provincial objects, illuminate Big Picture issues? The artists have each engaged with the Kandos museum and region, with a starting point of looking at Australia’s ongoing dispossession of First Nation peoples. The artists’ works are a theatrical mix of assemblage and performance, the making and unmaking of everyday objects or sublime artefacts, their strategies shedding light on how history is claimed and valued.
Image Credit: Fiona MacDonald, Obsolete no 5, 2017, inkjet print from digital image on archival paper. Source images: Kandos Museum collection object, photograph by Mike Oakey. Image courtesy of the artist.
A Cross Arts Exhibition in collaboration with WPCC
21 APRIL - 24 JUNE 2018
KAREN GOLLAND: SPELLS FOR LOST THINGS
Official Opening & Artist Talk
Saturday 21 April | 2.00pm
A HomeGround exhibition.
Spells for Lost Things is a series of works by Bathurst-based artist Karen Golland. Using her own personal archives alongside inherited collections, Golland explores the role that objects play in conjuring personal narratives and histories. Mimicking the techniques used by museums to document new acquisitions, each collection is researched, counted and recorded. Unlike a museum, Golland then re-works the object by drawing, photographing, copying, reducing and enlarging, changing its meaning and the physical space it inhabits. Spells for Lost Things uses these generated materials as possible ingredients for magic, exploring the multidimensional nature of human existence and reflecting on the complexities inherent in remembering the dead.
Image credit: Karen Golland, Softly wired, breathing deeply, 2017, hankerchief and wire. Image © the artist
23 JUNE - 12 AUGUST 2018
ACO Virtual
Official Opening
Saturday 23 June | 2.00pm
ACO Virtual, the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s world-first digital installation, was built using state-of-the-art technology. This ground-breaking interactive installation allows the audience to conduct and even play with the Orchestra. Audiences can see how fast the musician’s fingers move in a way not possible in a concert hall, hear the unique sounds of the ACO’s multi-million-dollar collection of instruments and take the helm of the “greatest chamber orchestra on earth” and stand in for Richard Tognetti himself. Developed by Sydney digital media company production Mod Productions, ACO Virtual features projections of 13 musicians surrounding you on all sides, with the sound of each player coming from the direction of their projection. It’s like standing in the middle of the Orchestra during a concert. A touch-screen allows users to feature and listen to one musician, a section of instruments or their desired selection of players.
Image Credit: ACO VIRTUAL Goldfields Arts Centre Kalgoorlie
16 JUNE - 2 SEPTEMBER 2018
MICHELLE NIKOU:
a e i o u
Official Opening
Saturday 16 June | 2.00pm
A NETS Victoria and Heide Museum of Modern Art touring exhibition, curated by Melissa Keys & Kendrah Morgan.
Adelaide-based artist Michelle Nikou draws on surrealism in a reflective and productive way to transform mundane domestic objects and materials into sculptures of humour and marvel. In this exhibition of new and recent work she utilises surrealist strategies such as chance, psychological metaphor, deadpan wit and juxtaposition, and inventively mingles high and low art sources and cultural references. Her work intentionally blurs and extends the boundaries between fine art and craft and often invests unremarkable or overlooked facets of daily existence with new and unexpected significance.
Image credit: Michelle Nikou, Vacancy (detail), 2014, cast lead alloy, lead, neon, latex, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney. Photograph: Sam Roberts. © Michelle Nikou
9 JUNE - 26 AUGUST 2018
BOWERBIRD: CLINTON BRADLEY AND THE ART OF COLLECTING
Official Opening
Friday 8 June | 6.00pm
A WPCC exhibition.
For Clinton Bradley collecting is more than just amassing works by his favourite artists, it is a creative dialogue with the artist, dealer and audience. Born and raised near Molong, NSW, Bradley has been collecting art since 2007 and has curated a collection of works by some of Australasia’s most sought-after artists, spanning sculpture, digital and conceptual art. This exhibition explores his ongoing interest in collecting and surveys his collection to the present day. Featuring the work of Brook Andrew, Glenn Barkley, Mitch Cairns, Marley Dawson, Brian Fuata, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Ryan Hancock, Christopher Hanrahan, Anastasia Klose, Ryota Miyahira, Michael Parekowhai, Jason Phu, Sarah Rodigari, Koji Ryui, Charlie Sofo, Geoff Thomas and Louise Weaver.
Image credit: Michael Parekowhai (New Zealand, b.1968) Cosmo McMurtry 2006 woven nylon substrate, pigment, 330 x 180 x 280 cm Art Gallery of New South Wales Gift of Clinton Bradley 2015. Founding Governor of the Friends of New Zealand Art. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program © Michael Parekowhai Photo: Diana Panuccio, AGNSW 333.2015 .
30 JUNE - 2 SEPTEMBER 2018
SARAH McEWAN: UNBIND ME
Official Opening & Artist Talk
Saturday 30 June | 2.00pm
A HomeGround exhibition.
Unbind Me is Sarah McEwan's 'installation conversation' about key philosophers, poets, authors, historians, economists, activists and artists who have contributed to the world with their various beliefs over the last 2700 years. Unbind Me travels through time beginning with Hesiod (c700BCE) in the Iron Age and running through to contemporary artist 'Truth Tellers' who look back and face complex and competing ideologies. The installation incorporates painting, some of them spilling with fabric, to more intimate works on paper, board or fabric to tell a feminist version of Western history.
Image credit: Sarah McEwan, I am the background (foreground/background/denial), 2017, ink and fabric on paper. Image courtesy the artist
18 AUGUST - 28 OCTOBER 2018
MICHAEL COOK: UNDISCOVERED
Official Opening
25th August 2.00pm
An Australian National Maritime Museum
Travelling Exhibition.
Undiscovered is a striking series of large-scale photographic works by Michael Cook, from the Bidjara people of south-west Queensland. Undiscovered provides a contemporary Indigenous perspective of European settlement in Australia, a land already populated by its original people. Cook’s artworks shift roles and perspectives around the notion of European ‘discovery’ of Australia, reflecting upon our habitual ways of thinking and seeing our history. This series questions who really discovered Australia while making reference to what was always here, what has been introduced and the effect this had on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, their culture and country.
Image credit: Michael Cook, Undiscovered #9, 2010, inkjet print. Image courtesy ANMM Collection.
1SEPTEMBER - 9 DECEMBER 2018
PRIMAVERA AT 25: MCA COLLECTION
Official Opening
31 August 6.00pm
This special exhibition marks 25 years of Primavera, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia's annual exhibition of Australian artists aged 35 years and under.
Established in 1992, Primavera showcases the work of young Australian artists aged 35 years and under. One of the longest-running exhibition series in the country, Primavera has become a significant platform for early career artists, 206 artists have exhibited in the annual exhibition. Many have gone on to exhibit both nationally and internationally, to become influential educators, and to play a significant role in the development of contemporary art practice in Australia. Primavera at 25 showcases 19 of these artists and collectives in a stunning retrospective.
Image Credit: Abdul Abdullah, Caliban (detail) 2015, oil on board, Museum of Contemporary Art, purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2016, image courtesy and © the artist, 2016, photograph: Jessica Maurer
8 SEPTEMBER - 9 DECEMBER 2018
HANDMADE TALES
Official Opening
8 September 2.00pm
A WPCC exhibition
Featuring an exemplar selection of recent quilts from the Dubbo Patchwork and Quilters Group, HandMade Tales explores the continued practice of quiltmaking in the Dubbo region today. The works featured present both an ode to and departure from tradition and the historical standing of quilts as utilitarian objects, repositioning these highly technical pieces within the realm of 'high art'.
