Event Type: Exhibitions

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This exhibition is part of the OPEN SKY / Kelly’s Garden 2022 program
Curated by Ainslie Macaulay

Rough and Cut documents four years journeying into central Australia to a place called Coober Pedy. The town owes its existence to the discovery of opal seams in 1915, an iridescent gemstone that came to existence from the water that once covered this desert scape. This precious opal has been mined through a series of boom & busts, almost into oblivion. Beyond the mullock heaps and away from the sun’s searing heat lies the underground dugouts inhabited by the last of the miners still dreaming of one last opal-rich strike. Keeping the idiosyncrasies of the town’s personality alive and well, the encounters are an insight into the characters that call this place a forever home. Captured are the remnants of this magnetic, surreal landscape shaped by its extremities. We are faced with a seeming wasteland formed by remoteness, isolation, and finite resources, and we are reminded of our delicate place in the natural world relentlessly evolving through climate change.

– Abigail Varney

Open Sky is a series of exhibitions showcased in Kelly’s Garden, presented on the land of the traditional owners, the muwinina people. In Varney’s Rough & Cut series she explores the notion of excavating and shifting landscape, and the remnants that are left behind. Echoing these changed landscapes of Coober Pedy we look to Kelly’s Garden, post invasion where Varney’s work is placed.  The exposed rock walls that sit within the Salamanca precinct show the impact of colonisation on the natural environment. A reminder of the layers that are beneath our feet and the rich histories that have come before us.  

Pre orders for the catalogue for Rough & Cut now available through Perimeter Books. Published by Trespasser Books

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Artist

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Opening Event :
Thursday 13 October 2022, 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Free to attend, subject to capacity.
The opening event for Vacancy is sponsored by Spotty Dog Brewers

This exhibition showcases the highlights from the ‘outsider’ artist studio, a pilot program that aimed to find the best outsider artists in Tasmania and facilitate a tailored professional development program throughout 2022.  

An ‘outsider artist’ was defined here as an artist working outside of the mainstream visual arts industry or educational institutions, who may be self-taught or have no formal training in their chosen mediums.

This exhibition features new work from Lynn Avrillon, Hanna Batstone, Rosie Brennan, Kerrie Dare, Kjell Erskine, Sketch Kelly, Anna Mykhalchuk, Lisa Rime, and Faheem Sumar.

This activity was assisted through Arts Tasmania.

Opening Event
Friday 21 October 2022 @ 5:30pm

Showing Lloyd Rees’ love of Tasmania, this special exhibition features a remarkable series of 40 lithographs by one of Australia’s great landscape artists, with signed, original limited edition prints available for purchase.

“These lithographs were the artistic highlight of Rees’ last years, rich in grandeur and drama, executed when Rees worked with legendary master printer Fred Genis. Rees loved the technique of lithography and his relationship with Fred was one of his last creative pleasures”
– Jon Cecil, Curator

Presented by Jon Cecil Fine Art

Discovering Ability showcases the participants’ experiences, stories, and incredible creative abilities.

Discovering Ability is the second annual exhibition by OnTrack Tasmania NDIS participants. Its purpose is to highlight these artists’ who, despite the challenges and constraints, have a remarkable ability to use art to express their thoughts, feelings and life experiences.

Throughout the year the OnTrack Tasmania Making Tracks program offers a variety of classes and activities where participants learn new skills and work on art pieces. OnTrack Tasmania is proud to present the result of the talent and hard work from our participants’ and to showcase their creative abilities. The Discovering Ability exhibition makes use of the artistic talents of OnTrack Tasmania’s participants and staff to give each client the chance to express and share their experiences, stories, and exceptional skills. The exhibition aims to help artists recognise the value of their art and provide them an opportunity to sell at their pieces.

Opening Event
Friday 14 October 2022
6:00pm – 8:00pm

A study of identity through portraiture and still life, by Zoe Lovell.

“Portraits give us a glimpse into who a sitter is through their physical appearance. We are able to understand aspects of who they are through their facial expressions, body language and personal style. However, there’s always more to someone than what’s presented on the surface.

This body of work was born out of a frustration of being overlooked based on my outward appearance and the way I present myself. We each have our own unique experience with this sense of dismissal, regardless of how we appear on the outside and it saddens me to know that through some eyes, we’re only worth as much as our looks. 

I have created a series of portraits of myself and my friends, showcasing not only the way we look, but aspects of our lives that shape our identities, whether that’s through our lived in spaces or objects of importance to us. My aim during this process has been to capture aspects of ourselves that we value most and want to be recognised for. We each have our own set of ambitions, skills and personality traits that define who we are and eclipse the significance of our outward appearances. 

Whilst I have created portraits, which typically only give us a sense of personality through expression, body language and looks, these paintings aim to be a quiet celebration of individuality through the everyday and act as windows into the lives and identities of the subjects.”
– Zoe Lovell

Earth and Land presents lutruwita/Tasmania’s natural beauty, captured within the clay of Angela Reiher’s sculptural forms and Caitlin Love’s canvas.

Opening Event
Friday 30 September 2022
5:30pm – 7:30pm
Top Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre

Emerging artists Angela Reiher and Caitlin Love met in 2020 after taking ceramics classes together. They soon realised their shared ambition to produce a body of work to exhibit. Angela and Caitlin’s interest in the natural landscape and obsession with the Tasmanian wilderness was the subject of many conversations which lead the pair to recognise the many ways their works speak to each other. Angela collects wild clay from different locations in lutruwita/Tasmania, to use within her work. Caitlin represents the natural environment in her paintings, including some of locations where Angela has sourced her clay from. Their work embodies the landscape in more ways than one.

Angela and Caitlin have nurtured a strong friendship over the last couple of years, consistently supporting and encouraging one another to follow their motivations as artists. Together, the pair launched their work for Earth and Land with a trip to Tasmania’s wild and captivating West Coast, early in 2022. This is the first time that Angela and Caitlin have exhibited their work.

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Angela Reiher

Angela Reiher is an artist based in nipaluna/Hobart. Angela was born in Warragul, Victoria and moved to lutruwita/Tasmania in 2018. She came on a holiday to Tasmania in 2017 and fell in love with the amazing and diverse landscape as she travelled around the state. She has recently retired from a life of teaching to release her dreams and passion for the arts.

Angela has a deep-rooted connection with the natural world and her works reflect this. Angela’s work is inspired by what she sees around her, or literally includes elements from the environment. In her ceramic work, she uses items such as rocks for tools in shaping, trimming, carving and finishing work. Angela uses shells, rocks and leaves and other found items as inspiration and to emulate colours in glazes and in the finishing effects. Her handbuilding reflects the organic shapes in the environment and incorporates aspects of natural elements such as wild clay.

Angela loves connecting to the earth by collecting and hand processing clay found in the wild. Everything is done by hand until the final firing stage, including collecting the clay, picking up or digging out the clay with a small handheld shovel or shell. Clay is broken down and squished by hand, from large lumps into a smooth mix. Angela then pushes it through a sieve and dries it out to a usable degree, wedges it and makes it ready to use. Angela uses wild clays as finishing effects on ceramic pieces that she has either handbuilt or wheel-thrown. Angela likes her artwork to ‘create itself’. She begins with an idea but has learnt to have no boundaries. She likes the work to take on its own form and, in a way, to create itself.

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Caitlin Love

Caitlin Love was born in Ngunnawal country/Canberra and she studied Art History and Curatorship at The Australian National University. She moved to lutruwita/Tasmania in 2015 and based herself in nipaluna/Hobart to further her study at the School of Creative Arts, completing her master’s degree.  Caitlin currently works as an art teacher.

Painting has been a lifelong passion of Caitlin’s. In this exhibition, Caitlin captures the essence and life of Tasmania’s diverse and pristine wilderness through her exploration of the colours and vistas that have captivated her during hiking and camping trips. These paintings reflect her personal connection to Tasmanian landscapes and the profound nourishment she receives from being in nature. There is a welcoming sense of solitude and peace that can be found in Tasmania’s unique landscape, which offers Caitlin both a sense of belonging and a feeling of remoteness.

This installation by Elizabeth Barsham, Betty Nolan and Rebecca Watson features ceramic and sculptural creatures, and is a preview of the upcoming exhibition FLOCK at Nolan Art throughout October 2022.

A Hunter Island Press Pop-Up Print Sale and Exhibition.
Postcards and artwork sales will raise funds for the Ukraine Crisis Appeal.

Hunter Island Press (HIP) provides a place for artists to create work and pass on their skills to the community.

HIP members have produced images for postcards to raise funds for the Ukraine Crisis Appeal.

Artists represented include: Maggie Aird, Anastasiia Ananieva, Sally Beech, Rowena Bond, Alicja Boyd, Carolyn Canty, Rebecca Coote, Tina Curtis, Cath de Little, Jeanie Edwards, Ailsa Ferguson, Abbey J Green, Janice Luckman, Pat Martin, Rob McKenna, Anna Mykhalchuk, Linda Pollard, Julie Race, Sarah Robert-Tissot and Amalea Smolcic.

HIP thanks Monotone Art Printers for sponsoring postcard printing. 

An exhibition by Landscape Photographer Samuel Allen

“My homeland of Tasmania is a natural setting for landscape photography. The untouched temperate rain-forests, world heritage areas and coastal scenery is simply breathtaking. A plethora of famous walking tracks, well-formed and sometimes not well known within the island, lead to locations perfect for capturing images that I try to showcase with my photography.”
– Samuel Allen

How many bodies have passed through this hotel room? Those empty cupboards, tight sheets, and lumpy pillows, just an illusion of comfort and homeliness. I contort, conform, disrupt and seek respite in the voids, using my body as language and location as parameter.

Opening Event
Thursday 15 September 2022
5:30pm – 7:30pm
Free to attend, subject to capacity.
The opening event for Vacancy is sponsored by Spotty Dog Brewers

Vacancy is a series of self-portraits representing my body as language, within parameters of specific, often confined, space. Body placement is expressed through a process of conformity and contortion within a space that holds everyday normalcy. The form is both disruptive and illusionary — seeking comfort and filling the void through isolation and retreat.

I once thought hotels to be romantic places, and maybe they were at one time. These days I find them mostly clinical, attempting to lull me into a false sense of comfort and security. Despite this, the hotel room has been my sanctuary for many years. I traveled a lot for work. A nomadic life that appeared glamourous but in actuality was bound by limited space and time. Whilst being on the road, I found myself fighting to make space, to discharge and find retreat in a time-poor reality. The hotel room was often my only respite from the rushed, high-energy experience of putting on a show. These transient spaces gave me both limitations and opportunities for experience and expression to shape my work.

While the elements of interior/exterior maintain plausibility within the work, placing my body within these spaces interrupts a seamless reading, prompting the viewer to question the presence of the body as landscape… Vacancy draws attention to the body’s purpose, flexibility and limitations in relation to space…

Bodies are markers of self … and what is self but a body that relates to space, holds space, takes up space, finds space, makes space and leaves space.

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Eddie James

Eddie James is an emerging artist based in nipaluna, Hobart, Tasmania. Influenced by a career on the road, her practice explores the human capacity to see and read body language. She engages with the mind/body connection in creating action, reaction, emotion and physicality. James uses the body, movement and the tactile processes of analogue/alternative photography and printmaking to create a visual tension that highlights displacement, comfort, isolation and freedom. With the use of architecture, light and form, James translates a deep listening of space into a visual experience.

Eddie James trained at Swinburne University, School of Theatre and Performance, completed a Diploma of Visual Arts at the Newcastle Art School in 2019 and is now completing her BFA at The University of Tasmania. In 2020 she received the ‘Cobra’ Award from Contemporary Art Tasmania with which she then created the work ‘Walk On’. This project was picked up by 10 Days On the Island and a further iteration was created specifically for the festival. James has been selected as a finalist in numerous art prizes, including, twice, the Newcastle Emerging Art Prize. She is the current (2022) winner of the Women’s Art Prize Tasmania. The Judging Panel for this award was unanimous in its choice, saying; “In this work, Eddie James offers a multitude of narratives in a soft-focus ambiguous world. Room 18 is a strong well-conceived work with a timeless quality using the body as a disrupter in a transitory, illusory and disquieting space.”