VISIONS OF AUSTRALIA FUNDING ROUND 32
New South Wales
Tweed River Regional Art Gallery
Surface Tension: The Art of Euan Macleod 1991-2008
Development Funding: $27,650
To be developed by guest curator Gavin Wilson, this exhibition will explore Euan
Macleod’s highly personal negotiation of the Australian landscape—a painted
landscape in which the human figure emerged, around 1991, establishing a
presence equal to the terrain. From Macleod’s deeply felt encounters with the
landscapes of the NSW central-west, the soaring peaks of the MacDonnell Ranges
out of Alice Springs to the harbours of New Zealand’s South Island, the exhibition will
provide regional audiences with a compelling, highly original vision of the Australian
and New Zealand experience.
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery
May’s: The May Lane Street Art Project
Development Funding: $28,800
The May Lane Street Art Project is a survey of the artworks created at May Lane, St
Peters, Sydney, between 2005 and 2010 by celebrated Australian and international
street artists. It will be the first comprehensive exhibition of street art to tour
nationally. The artists selected for inclusion will be artists who are at the forefront of
the Australian street art movement, such as Adam Hill, an Indigenous artist from the
Worrimi nation. The works in the exhibition will provide a comprehensive overview of
what is happening nationally and internationally in street art and span a broad range
of street art styles—New York graffiti, spray paint, paste ups, stencils and sculpture.
Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales
Smalltown
Development Funding: $46,750
The exhibition Smalltown is a dialogue between photographer Martin Mischkulnig
and author Tim Winton, travelling through remote areas of Australia chronicling what
they believe to be the realities of overlooked settlements. Mischkulnig’s photographs
made using a rare 8 x 10 inch large format camera will offer urban audiences
immersion into the isolation, physical and social, of small-town life. A film featuring
Tim Winton will accompany the exhibition, with the author reading extracts from his
text Smalltown overlaid with more of Mischkulnig’s images.
Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery
Colour Country: Art from Roper River
Touring Funding: $43,154
Curated by Cath Bowdler, the exhibition Colour Country: Art from Roper River
consists of approximately 40 works by nine Indigenous artists who painted in the
Roper River region of the Northern Territory from 1987 some of whom still paint in
Ngukurr today. Works by major artists such as Ginger Riley Munduwalawala,
Djambu Barra Barra, Willie Gudabi and Moima Samuels, Gertie Huddlestone and
Amy Jirwulurr Johnson will be included. Many of these artists’ works have been
exhibited in group exhibitions but have not been seen together and in relation to one
another for over a decade and some works collected for this exhibition have not
been exhibited previously.
The exhibition will tour to three venues in South Australia, Northern Territory and the
Australian Capital Territory.
Australian National Maritime Museum
Exposed! The Story of Swimwear
Touring Funding: $129,594
Exposed! The Story of Swimwear highlights the designs and designers, past and
present, at the forefront of Australian swimwear design. The exhibition explores the
development of swimwear in popular culture and the designers and personalities
who influenced that development. Movie sirens, aquatic stars, bathing beauties,
athletes, sporting icons and designers all played their part in the evolution of the
modern swimsuit. Australian swimwear is placed in a global context, showing how
Australian swimmers and designers responded to their environment, beach culture
and the world.
The exhibition will tour to five venues in Western Australia, South Australia,
Queensland and New South Wales.
Bundanon Trust
White Gums & Ramoxes: Ceramics by Merric & Arthur Boyd from the
Bundanon Trust Collection
Touring Funding: $102,835
This exhibition presents the ceramic work of potter Merric Boyd and that of his son,
artist Arthur Boyd, and takes its title from two distinctive motifs in the work of the
artists. Merric Boyd was preoccupied with interpretations of trees, while Arthur
Boyd’s ‘ramox’ is typical of his interest in metamorphised and hybrid figures. The
exhibition includes Merric Boyd’s distinctive moulded, carved and painted pots and
figures, alongside examples of his drawings on related themes of trees, birds,
animals and his family. At the same time the exhibition will look at Arthur Boyd’s
ceramics, especially his ceramic tile paintings and sculpture that broke new ground
in Australia from the 1940s, in addition to his etchings and paintings that directly
acknowledge the influence of his father.
The exhibition will tour to 14 venues in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria,
South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory.
Victoria
National Exhibitions Touring Support (NETS) Victoria
Objects to Live By: The Art of John Meade
Development Funding: $27,000
Objects to Live By: The Art of John Meade will be the first exhibition to review twenty
years of work by John Meade, one of Australia’s leading sculptors. The exhibition will
range from the larger floor-based and suspended forms, smaller 'table sculptures',
an ensemble from a collaborative installation, and the Theremin-activated Nude with
pitchfork, which was the genesis of a number of public artworks. Meade’s
experimentation with conventional sculptural materials and exploration of newer
synthetic industrial materials such as polymer resin composites and synthetic
concrete will also be revealed and explained.
South Australia
Flinders University Art Museum
Gooch’s Utopia: Collected works from the Central Desert
Touring Funding: $100,887
Gooch’s Utopia is a collaborative project between Flinders University Art Museum
and Riddoch Art Gallery and comprises 52 works drawn from the collections of
Rodney Gooch (1949-2002) including batik, carving, acrylic paintings, works on
paper and ‘spare part art’. The exhibition surveys the phenomenon of art production
at the outstations of Utopia in the latter decades of the 20th century and explores the
role of Gooch as art advisor and independent dealer. The exhibition also responds to
Gooch’s wish that the works be seen and appreciated not only for their aesthetic
beauty but also for what they tell us about the culture of Anmatyerr and Alyawarr
peoples.
The exhibition will tour to nine venues in Western Australia, Victoria, Queensland,
New South Wales, Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory.
Tasmania
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
Tayenebe: Tasmanian Aboriginal Women’s Fibrework
Touring Funding: $124,773
Tayenebe is a Tasmanian Aboriginal word meaning ‘exchange’ and is also the title of
the exhibition supporting more than thirty Tasmanian Aboriginal women, aged
between twenty and ninety, involved in the reinvigoration of traditional fibre artwork
skills. The exhibition will include nearly 100 fibre objects made over two years by
Tasmanian Aboriginal weavers featuring contemporary works. Baskets made in the
1840s that have inspired the project will be exhibited alongside the vibrant and
experimental works of Tasmanian contemporary makers. The exhibition will
commemorate the tenacity and skill of the Ancestors, and reveal how the
reinvigoration of an Indigenous making process renews connections between
families, revives traditional practices and reintroduces the Indigenous knowledge of
plants, country and seasons.
The exhibition will tour to four venues in the Australian Capital Territory, New South
Wales, Victoria and South Australia.
Western Australia
Western Australian Museum
Edward Burtynsky: Australian Minescapes
Touring Funding: $61,650
Australian Minescapes is a new body of work by internationally renowned
photographer Edward Burtynsky gifted to the Western Australian Museum by the
artist. The exhibition features 28 chromogenic colour photographs of various mining
landscapes in the Eastern Goldfields and Pilbara regions of Western Australia and
documents the impact of mining on the Western Australian landscape. The works
continue Burtynsky’s examination of natural landscapes modified in the pursuit of
raw materials and also provides a background to human interactions with the
landscape.
The exhibition will tour to three venues in New South Wales, Victoria and the
Australian Capital Territory.
Australian Capital Territory
National Archives of Australia
Shell-Shocked: Australia after Armistice
Touring Funding: $113,223
The exhibition Shell-Shocked marks the 90th anniversary of the signing of the
armistice to end World War I and explores the immediate impact and the long term
legacy of World War I on Australia. It includes material from the Archives collection
such as World War I service dossiers, photographs and music alongside items
loaned from personal collections. From the first official telegram to Australia that the
Armistice had been signed, to efforts by Prime Minister Hughes and Joseph Cook for
Australia to be signatory of the Treaty of Versailles, the exhibition tells a range of
deeply moving stories that underscore the extensive effort taken to rebuild the lives,
communities and even the nation after four years of war.
The exhibition will tour to 15 venues in South Australia, Western Australia, Northern
Territory, New South Wales and Queensland.
National Gallery of Australia
Robert Dowling 1827-1886
Touring Funding: $90,340
Robert Dowling 1827–1886 is the first major exhibition of this important colonial
artist. As the first artist to be trained in Australia, Dowling holds a significant place in
the history and development of Australian art. He is primarily known for his portraits
of squatters, their families and properties, but also group images of Indigenous
people and was the first Australian expatriate artist to maintain a successful market
home in Australia. The exhibition will feature 55 paintings from the National Gallery
of Australia, state and regional galleries and public and private collections from
Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania as well as the United Kingdom and
United States of America. The exhibition offers a unique opportunity for audiences to
gain a comprehensive understanding of Dowling’s oeuvre.
The exhibition will tour to two venues in Tasmania and Victoria.
National Gallery of Australia
In the Japanese Manner: Australian Prints 1900-1940
Touring Funding: $128,772
In the Japanese Manner: Australian prints 1900–1940 highlights the work of major
Australian artists inspired by the traditional Japanese woodblock printing art of ukiyoe. It is innovative in its theme and content and is the first time the National Gallery of
Australia has focused on this subject. Audiences will be provided with a rare
opportunity to observe how Australian artists adapted the style and technique of
Japanese woodblock printing to form a distinctly Australian aesthetic. The exhibition
is nationally significant in its comprehensive representation of work by Australian
printmakers over the period of the early 1900s—1940s. The artists include Paul
Haefliger, Margaret Preston, Thea Proctor, Ethel Spowers, Lionel Lindsay, Violet
Teague and Napier Waller.
The exhibition will tour to five venues in New South Wales, Western Australia,
Victoria, Tasmania and Queensland.