Rachael Tanner


Friday 26 May – Saturday 3 June 2023

Daily Opening Times :
MONDAY-FRIDAY 10 AM – 4 PM
SATURDAY 10 AM – 3 PM
SUNDAY CLOSED

This art project considers transformations in the natural history museum and how we focus on the cultural meaning of a specimen as it is photographically reproduced and transformed through interdisciplinary approaches to meaning making.

The artwork will speak in diverse and emotive ways to those interested in natural history, ecology, technology, collections, ethnography.

Rachael works occurs across divergent theoretical and practical disciplines; museological studies, visual arts, and yoga. These divergent modes of philosophical thought peel the layers of consciousness on multiple tiers. Primarily her work as an artist deals with oil paintings, digitisation and remediation techniques. Her arts practice is grounded through embodied physical and metaphysical explorations of the human or post human experience, and in this particular exhibition, through the lens of natural history specimen. Her work results in a rich visual inquiry. Her creative process ebbs and flows into various undulations which are responds to ecological and ethnographic anthropologies. Much of her installations and digital remediations express the cyclical nature of life, the sacred, and ephemeral, resulting in a transformative experience which unfurls over time and on differing planes.

My work is museological, and therefore looks at the way we can use visual material to communicate cultural, social, anthropological ideas to engage audiences into a deeper relationship to themselves, their community, their’ environment and connection to earth. Ultimately, the practice is an exploration of the human – earth relationship which looks at how we can express connection to the sacred and ephemeral of our biological and ecological heritage beyond the illusion of separation developed through the construction of the system. The collaboration between specimen, digitisation, and visual arts explores the subject of conservation and preservation of the natural world within an ideal that encourages symbiosis and reciprocity with earth.

Her work leads you into geometric blossoming, looking beyond the veil of form and separation, and towards meditation, co-creation, foundation. Rachael is working with content from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Lepidoptera (moth) collection, and draws upon the mystic and symbolic meanings of the moth/butterfly to inspire her work.

There is an extensive amount of opportunity in the visual exploration of digital materials as I use the scientific visual data to shift traditional knowledge paradigms on empirical documentation strategies. I am interested in how we are creating and documenting knowledge in the museum through digital and analogue mediations. This project suggests the need for museums to shift the current knowledge paradigm and documentation schema that is based on an empiric scientific epistemology, towards producing photographic reproductions which facilitate diverse interpretive, and emotive encounters with specimen research. By this means the museum could return the agency to the specimen and thereby create a construction of natural heritage that is based on reciprocity with nature, co-creation, and aura enriched experience. The aesthetics and

expression of scientific visualisation and communication is an important tool in developing a cultural memory bank which fosters environmental reciprocity and cultural change in our ecological conservation practices. To implement this shift into a new, and more productive paradigm of knowledge construction, the museum needs to consider how digital visual materials are communicating; the semiotics, rhetoric, and indexical style of the image as integral to forming cultural meaning, memory, and value. Working within the nexus of arts and science is an exciting position as it allows for breadth and depth of creative capacity.

Engaging with the specimen as their placed under the lens of the camera, what is experienced is a unique, tangible discovery of its aura, a mythical and enchanting nature. The work attempts to participate with the mystical and ephemeral qualities of the natural and human world which relate to ancestral wisdoms. Her work encourages a reflection of the digital visual materials as being a contemporary tool for creating new knowledge paradigms through encounters within a reality that mediates the ultimately mysterious nature of our ecological and biodiverse world heritage, that too resides within the human being and community.

Ultimately the art works aim to facilitate a deepening cultural relationship and shared sense of responsibility towards conserving the mystical, ancestral wisdoms that reside within the human beings deep psyche and inner knowing. It is about creating a reciprocal human-environment connection in a way which flows cyclically, similarly to the laws of yoga, union, our oceans, rivers, streams, winds, and life on earth.



Saturday 22 – 30 April 2023
Daily Opening Times:  11AM -5PM
Variations: Not open Anzac day (Tue, April 25 )

Crossing is an immersive interactive installation, negotiating ever-shifting waters and exploring your relationship to the sea and the act of cross

Experience the mesmerising journey of Crossing, an immersive installation that explores the themes of being close to the sea and the act of crossing. As you enter the space, you are greeted by wooden pathways and screens that cover the gallery floor; these are evocative of pathways, bridges or stepping stones. With each step, you are transported deeper into the experience, surrounded by fluid animations and immersive sounds that evoke the sensation of water and waves.

Drawing on Petterd’s personal connection to water, the installation invites you to experience the sensation of being on a beach and stepping over stones, creating a dialogue with the ever-shifting waters around you.

Engage with the installation through your movement and become part of the experience,  The installation draws you into a mesmerising dialogue with the ever-shifting elements of the space, encouraging reflection and contemplation. With pathways guiding your journey, you are invited to move between, to be in transition, and to arrive at a deeper understanding of your relationship to water and the sea.    

Robin Petterd is a digital media artist based in lutruwita/Tasmania, Australia. He completed a practice-based PhD in digital media from the University of Tasmania and has exhibited his work in events across Australia, the USA, and Europe. Petterd has curated international touring exhibitions and taken part in residencies in Japan and the Netherlands.    

Hobart Photographic Society Inc.


Friday 17 – Wednesday 29 March 2023

Daily Opening Times :
10:00 AM – 6:00 PM (8:00)
Variations to Daily Opening Times :
Open until 8pm on Friday and Saturday

This is a public exhibition of original photographic works produced by members of the Hobart Photographic Society.

This is an annual exhibition with a collection of works by our members covering a wide range of genres including but not limited to landscape, portraiture, wildlife, macro, urban and creative images.

It is expected that there will be 70 large format images on display plus a video display of a further 200 images. It will be open to the public and is anticipated to attract local, interstate and overseas visitor as it has in past years. HPS members include winners of numerous national and international photographic awards.

We believe that as with any art form unless it is shared with the public audience, colleagues, and friends it is not fully appreciated and is often lost forever. The exhibition offers an opportunity for our diverse and talented members to showcase their best or most meaningful work with others in our community.

The exhibition also provides us with an opportunity to describe the workings of the society and encourage new membership.

Past exhibitions have been reviewed by local media and been described as being of the highest order of presentation and diversity.

This exhibition offers visitors from interstate and overseas an opportunity to view our images and share something of the experiences and lives of the people living in our community.

As the majority of images on display are sourced from Tasmanian based suppliers they demonstrate the expertise and professionalism available in this state.

Julie Moltman/Ascending/2022/digital
Antje Worledge/Huon Pine/2022/digital
Alex Nicholson/Tasman Bridge/2001/digital

“Thresholds” is a free Sound Event by Matt Warren and future in nature (Dave Kendal) performed once to coincide and accompany the exhibition “Restless” on Sunday 5th March from 3pm – 5pm.

Alongside and amongst the paintings by Linda Veska, Matt Warren and future in nature (Dave Kendal) will each perform solo sets as well as an improvised collaborative set, responding to the word “Restless”, the works of Veska and informed by each other’s responses.

Matt Warren is a lutruwita/Tasmanian electronic media artist, musician, curator and writer, based in nipaluna/Hobart. The works investigate memory, transcendence, liminal space and the suspension of disbelief. His music and sound practice have a basis in both composition and improvisation. He performs and records electro-acoustic and drone works, solo and collaborates with others under several monikers. https://www.mattwarrenartist.com/

future in nature (Dave) We need a future in nature – biodiverse, inclusive, resilient. Our culture needs to reintegrate nature, we need to dwell in nature. Nature informs the music of future in nature – driving aleatoric arrangements, capturing raw sonic landscapes, and providing inspo for bass loops and analog tones.

Linda Veska, Dave gazing at Bay of Fires, 2023, oil on canvas, 50 x 40cm,
Photo by Sally Rees of Matt Warren “Below”

Opening Event
Friday 3 March 2023
5.30pm – 7.30PM
Exhibition to be opened by Joe Bugden, CEO SAC and Dr Niklavs Rubenis, UTAS

Sitting on chairs in liminal spaces and looking through doorways to another place or time

I acknowledge the Tasmanian Aboriginals, the first owners of lutruwita/Tasmania who never ceded sovereignty yet looked after this island so well. I pay respect to their elders – past, present and emerging.

The word “Restless” sums up contradictory feelings of desiring escape, hesitation, and nomadic life, not always voluntary. In a matter of weeks, I move to the big island, so this is a post lockdown moment of physical, personal and artistic expression of a preference for constancy of change in one’s life over routine predictability.

Last year I began painting chairs focusing initially on the flimsiest of chairs, a foldable camping chair and expanded this to include a campervan. I became influenced by visiting family in the Czech Republic last year for the first time to look at dissident and refugee chairs. Through research into Cold War mid-century design of furniture and interiors, I became intrigued by the way that decoration and design applied to what we sit on has bearings on history and politics. Thrones and seating for the rich was highly ornamental and associated with culture and art. Simpler, more streamlined and mass-produced furniture became part of the East/West political competition between capitalism and communism. Hand-made avant-garde furniture appears symbolic of dissidence and rebellion. My painting of the banana lounges used by Ukrainian refugees in February 2022 suggests the connection between dissidents, refugees and the fine line that now exists between homelessness and recreational camping.

Doorways and chairs represent alternative pathways and choice. The historic doorways of the Salamanca Arts Centre have been an inspiration for me during my residency.

I invite you to examine the surface membranes of these paintings of old buildings which began as factories or palaces. Layers conceal and reveal the past as another world, long gone, yet still alive in different forms, and often repeating itself with the constant looping of refugees, gentrification of old buildings and the ironic relationship between travel, invasion and escape.

Linda Veska, Two chairs and two coffee cups, 2023
Linda Veska, Dissident Chair 1, 2022, oil on canvas, 45 x 60cm, photo by Dave Kendal
Linda Veska, Salamanca stairwell doorway 2023 60 x 60 cm, oil on canvas, photo by @rsooart

Opening Event
Friday 20 January 2023
6:00pm – 7:30pm
Opening address by Dr Toby Juliff, Lecturer in Art at the School of Creative Arts and Media, UTAS

Chaos and order are two fundamental elements of lived experience, the two most basic subdivisions of the Self. The spaces between these elements are where life exists and where identity rests. 

Experiences of Being is a group exhibition by Romany Best, Donna Bergshoeff and Skye Mescall exploring the concepts of order and chaos as they are linked with the creative identity. Through the mediums of painting and photography Best, Bergshoeff and Mescall explore how three different artists represent order and chaos within their work.

Best utilises her studio as a manifestation of her inner chaos, bursting with abandoned paintings, half-finished projects and canvases all in states of preparation. Her life, overflowing with unmanaged baggage, is represented by the anarchy of her studio.

Mescall works with stacks and files of images, lists and notes hoarded over years, layered and replicated, trying to find small glimpses of beauty in mess, order in chaos, finding how her creative identity exists within the liminal spaces.

Bergshoeff utilises photographic diptychs to play with the viewers’ way of seeing and our natural proclivity to create order out of chaos. She finds scenes where images of chaos exist next to scenes of order and plays with the spaces between asking the viewer to examine one state, then the other and finally the two as one image. Together these works explore how it is to inhabit shifting liminal spaces between order and chaos.

Skye Mescall. Through a glass (2022). Oil on board. 40 x 50cm
Romany Best. Mo Pussy (2022-23). Oil on canvas. 76 x 91cm
Donna Bergshoeff. Liminal 3 (2021). Fiber based gelatine print. 81 x 51cm

Launch Event
Thursday 23 February 2023
6:00pm – 8:00pm

Vivi al Ago launches their AW23 Urba Collection

A capsule wardrobe of essential pieces that give form to the essence of urban living.
Masculine shapes are softened with feminine detailing.
The warmth of luxe wools, velvet, and the coolness of silk capture the feel of urban winter.
Classic black, the warmth of sandstone and the coolness of midnight, reflect the winter cityscape.
Inspired by classics and modern architectural minimalism.
The merging of simplicity and timeless quality.

Photographer : Claudia Smith.
Model : Abigail O’neill
Photographer : Claudia Smith.
Model : Abigail O’neill
Photographer : Claudia Smith.
Model : Abigail O’neill

Opening Event
Sunday 12 February 2023
6:00pm – 8:00PM
Exhibition to be opened by Lucienne Rickard (speeches at 6:30pm)

New paintings by Jane Flowers, furniture and sculpture by Ned Trewartha This joint exhibition examines the connection between the ‘Elements’ and ‘Shelter’. At sea amongst it, in an anchorage seeking it and ashore being comforted by it.


Jane Flowers. Hurrica V (2022). Oil on Canvas. 122cm x 122cm
Jane Flowers

Jane Flowers

Maritime artist Jane Flowers loves to capture the many moods of our ocean and waterways and express the pleasure of being in, on or around the water.

Her new paintings express themes of sea and sky, wind and water, the shape of sail and the pleasures of beachcombing.

Jane Flowers loves to immerse herself in nature and has always vowed  “I cannot paint what I haven’t seen, heard or felt on my skin.
Some may say that doing a couple of Melbourne to Hobart Westcoasters and a Sydney Hobart yacht race may be taking things to extreme…There is no doubt that many of her seascapes are inspired by being offshore and experiencing nature’s elements at their best. At the same time much of her work offers shore based vistas of calm reflection admiring Tasmania’s beauty in its quiet and nurturing stillness.”


Ned Trewartha. Shelter (detail). Photograph by David Walker.
Ned Trewartha

Ned Trewartha

Ned Trewartha is a traditional wooden boat builder and furniture designer/maker.

He is well known for his clinker dinghies handcrafted from select Tasmanian timbers, building only a few a year now. More of his time is spent creating furniture, and when time allows small sculptures and ukuleles.

He is passionate about the sustainable use of Tasmanian timbers and believes they are unique and precious and should be treated with great respect.  He carefully selects for each individual project to minimise waste. He does not like waste. His small sculptures are made from offcuts from the boatbuilding process.

Ned uses old recycled timber from wherever and whenever he can and cannot understand how these aged timbers with so much character can be discarded as no longer useful. The hard won patina of age should be celebrated not trashed, and he is not afraid to show off those battle scars and what some may see as faults, rather adhering to the concept of ‘wabi sabi’.

Some of Ned’s furniture has a sculptural element but always maintains form and an honest functionality.

He feels absolutely privileged to be able to work with timbers such as Huon Pine everyday.

His workshop/gallery/home is in Woodbridge on the beautiful D’Entrecasteaux Channel.

At the end of 2019, Tasmanian-born Kristina Vermey set herself a challenge: to swim each day in nature.

One year turned into two until the days reached a thousand. A thousand days of anticipation, trepidation and exhilaration. Of noticing the shifting seasons: The changing illustration of sun and tide; the sea sparkle in Summer and snow melt in Spring; the morning adornment of river and sky. 

A Thousand Days at Sea documents this journey in a series of transcendental seascapes. It is at once a story of homecoming and a celebration of beauty, ritual, healing, addiction and finding comfort in pain.

Kristina Vermey. Undeniable Dilemma (detail) (2021). Photography. 1120 x 920cm.
Kristina Vermey. Mine is Forever (detail)(2022). Photography. 1020 x 815cm.
Kristina Vermey. kunanyi (detail) (2020). Photography. 1020 x 815cm.

Opening Event
Thursday 8 December 2022
5:30pm – 7:30pm

Double Sun is a series of illustrations and sculptural works by Jamie Edward inspired by childhood drawings. In attempt to find a simple beauty in both process and outcome, the exhibition offers a light-hearted examination of our world and the significance of the sun.

The selection of sculptures and drawings in the exhibition capture both the small cycles of plants turning to the sun, and the longer cycles of the turning seasons. Double Sun illuminates the loose mess of making art, and the joy of living with nature. 

The works in Double Sun developed in response to an attempt to make sense of the political and environmental turbulence of recent years. Through open and exploratory work – where a loose and tactile approach allowed for a narrative to gently develop – the sun emerged as a unifying symbol that shapes and informs the human experience. The exhibition orients itself towards the sun, as an essential site of nature, joy and pleasure; as well as part of a cycle of darkness and light. 

From the temperate climate of Bruny Island, the works were produced from a location where the presence of the sun is always welcome. The relative remoteness of the island encourages a creative attention with shifts in the weather and light, and the works in Double Sun reflect how the sun provides this vitality and energy. The sun falls on the petals of native orchid flowers that turn towards the light through the day, tomato plants grow tall towards it, people stretch their limbs into it. 

These artworks capture personal experiences of the sun, and also reflect on the significance of the sun in art, philosophy, astronomy and literature throughout history. While there is warmth and joy in this work, Double-Sun also references the cold and darkness experienced in the sun’s absence as we turn and transition into night and move through the seasons. 

Double Sun attempts to document the intrinsic nature of the sun, through a simple and raw form of ark making. The exhibition is a celebration of the messy, naive and uninhibited expression of creativity. The process of allowing for mistakes and exploratory techniques results in work that catches a glimpse of an elusive moment or idea through abstract representation. Both the subject matter and the art making process are honest, natural and unfiltered. 

The exhibition expands upon the artist’s previous work that repeats a simple idea through showing a motif at scale. The every-day quality of the sun – an essential but seldom considered part of  daily lives – is brought into focus through this repetition and isolated attention. Double Sun continues the artist’s distinctive approach of using a lighthearted and humorous energy that is underscored with themes of waste and darkness. The works are both bright and grubby, but always joyful in their murkiness.

This exhibition is supported through Arts Tasmania.

Jamie Edward. Double Sun Phase 6 (2022). Oil, Pastel, Charcoal, Graphite.
Jamie Edward. Double Sun Phase 8 (2022). Oil, Pastel, Charcoal, Graphite.
Jamie Edward. Double Sun Phase 10 (2022). Oil, Pastel, Charcoal, Graphite.