2025 Exhibition Program
Hervey Bay Regional Gallery
About Hervey Bay Regional Gallery
Cover image: Fernando do Campo, Whalebone Arch, Acclimatisation Society of Queensland Gardens 1887-1956, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 153 x 122 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney.
Hervey Bay Regional Gallery (HBRG) is home to a thought-provoking program of exhibitions and events, staging internally curated exhibitions alongside touring exhibitions with strong resonances to local, Queensland and national arts discourse. As an emerging destination gallery, HBRG works with leading national and local artists to develop visual arts in the region.
Visit Us
166 Old Maryborough Road, Pialba, Queensland 4655
Free on-site parking available
Opening Hours
Monday: closed
Tuesday – Friday: 10am – 4pm
Saturday and Sunday: 10am – 2pm
Closed Good Friday, ANZAC Day and Christmas Day. Partial or full gallery closures may occur during exhibition changeovers
Contact Us
Email: regionalgallery@frasercoast. qld.gov.au
Phone: 07 4197 4206
Website: hbrg.com.au
/HerveyBayRegionalGallery
@herveybayregionalgallery
Accessibility
The gallery is on one level, is fully wheelchair accessible and has on-site permit parking. For more access information visit hbrg.com.au/visit-us or call 07 4197 4206.
Staff
Director: Sarah Thomson
Exhibitions & Collections Coordinator: Joe Breikers
Engagement Coordinator: April Spadina
Indigenous Programming & Community Engagement Officer: Sam Raveneau
Gallery Officer: Lois Shoebridge
Exhibition Technician: Jacob Bunt
Visitor Services Officers: Morris de Bortoli, Samira Keshtiar, Robyne Seers, Nicola Smart, Hannah Stanton and Bettina Stephan
Acknowledgement of Country
Welcome to Butchulla Country (land, sea and sky)
Djali Galangoor [lit. today good]
On behalf of the Butchulla people, welcome to Butchulla Country (land, sea and sky). It is with open hearts and a profound respect for people, place and protocols that we extend a warm welcome to all who journey through our lands, enjoy our seas and breathe the air under our beautiful sky.
Here, amidst the timeless landscapes of Butchulla Country (land, sea and sky), we honour the footsteps of our ancestors, ‘old people’, elders past-presentemerging and embrace the spirits of the land, sea and sky, and our creator ‘Biral’. Our connection to this special place transcends time, echoing the wisdom and stories of our people passed down through generations.
As custodians of Butchulla Country, we invite you to share in the richness of our culture, to listen to the voices on the wind as it carries tales of resilience and to witness the vibrant fabric of traditions and
practices of our people’s continuity of existence and mind-body-spirit connection to Country.
May your presence here be a safe and harmonious experience between past and present, a celebration of diversity, unity and mutual respect. May you find comfort in the beauty of our landscapes, our art, our culture, our language, our expression, our presence and inspiration in the strength of our diverse community.
All life is a shared journey, so let us walk together along this path, acknowledging the past, embracing the present and shaping a future where the echoes of our efforts ripple out for eternity to benefit all generations to come.
Biralunbar Galangoor [Many Thanks], again, welcome to Butchulla Country.
Veronica Bird
General Manager, Butchulla Native Title Aboriginal Corporation (BNTAC)
Welcome to our 2025 program
A message from the Mayor
I invite you to experience the dynamic and thoughtprovoking exhibitions at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery in 2025.
Last year, the gallery welcomed around 15,000 visitors and showcased the work of over 200 artists across 12 major exhibitions.
In the year ahead, the program will continue to celebrate diversity, featuring artists from a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives.
Visitors can look forward to major solo exhibitions by local women artists, the Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize, and a strong focus on Butchulla, Aboriginal, and Torres Strait Islander cultures, including a touring exhibition by renowned Torres Strait Islander printmaker Billy Missi.
I hope residents and visitors take the time to explore the gallery, immerse themselves in its vibrant exhibitions, and find inspiration in the stories shared through art.
George Seymour Fraser Coast Regional Council Mayor
A message from the Gallery Director
In 2025 we are excited to celebrate the vibrant artistic and cultural context of Butchulla Country with a series of captivating exhibitions.
We take pride in supporting local artists as they push the boundaries of their craft, presenting solo exhibitions that showcase the diverse talent within our community. These presentations, alongside curated group exhibitions of national significance, engage with vital conversations shaping our region and beyond.
The Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize makes its return this year, highlighting contemporary art from across Australia, with a focus on the theme of ‘people, place, and the environment.’
Throughout the year visitors can also explore National Interests: Australian Art in the 20th Century, an exhibition that pairs works from the Hervey Bay Regional Gallery’s collection with iconic pieces from Australia’s national collection.
Through these exhibitions we aim to spark inspiration, create meaningful dialogue, and offer fresh perspectives on the world around us. We look forward to welcoming you to the gallery.
Sarah Thomson Hervey Bay Regional Gallery Director
Plan your visit
Programs & Events
Hervey Bay Regional Gallery hosts a regular program of exhibition openings, artist talks, panel discussions, film screenings, tours, workshops and other events. Find out more about what’s on at hbrg.com.au.
Group Booking and Education
We welcome visits from community groups and classes of all ages. Get in touch to tailor your gallery experience: regionalgallery@frasercoast.qld.gov. au or 07 4197 4206.
Butchulla Seasonal Garden
Surrounding HBRG on two sides, the Butchulla Seasonal Garden showcases our native flora and how it is utilised by the region’s Traditional Custodians. Follow the illustrated signage to explore the garden at any time.
Gallery Shop
Our retail space stocks a curated selection of art, culture and history books as well as locally produced homewares, accessories, gifts and design products.
Image: Installation view, National Interests, Hervey Bay Regional Gallery, 2024. Photo: Natasha Harth.
From December 2024 – until 2026
National Interests: Australian Art in the 20th Century
Hervey Bay Regional Gallery and the National Gallery of Australia present National Interests: Australian Art in the 20th Century.
This exhibition explores the cultural legacy of Australian Modernism in the 20th century, pairing artworks from the Hervey Bay Regional Gallery Art Collection with significant works from Australia’s national collection.
Featuring works made from 1936 to 1997, each grouping of works of art acts as an entry point into a thread of Australian art history. Considered together, the works in National Interests paint a picture of Australia’s search for a national identity in a rapidly changing cultural landscape.
National Interests includes works on long term loan from the National Gallery of Australia with support from the Australian Government as part of Sharing the National Collection. #ArtAcrossAustralia
Featuring artworks by Joyce Bott, Arthur Boyd, Robert Cambell Jnr., Marc Clark, Ken Done, Maureen Hansen, PJ Hickman, Jan Morgan, Keith Namatjira, Sidney Nolan, Elizabeth Paterson, Robert Prenzel, John Wardell Power, Margaret Preston and Brett Whiteley
Opposite page: Margaret Preston, Still life: fruit (Arnhem Land motif), 1941, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1976 © Margaret Rose Preston Estate/Copyright Agency.
1 March – 11 May 2025
Natalie Lavelle: In the Making
In the Making captures the evolving artistic practice of Brisbane-based artist Natalie Lavelle, bringing together early experiments in abstraction and colour field painting with large scale monochromes and new works that expand into spatial installation.
This exhibition distils Lavelle’s interest in the formal language of painting, using colour, form and texture to create a meditative space for the viewer. While laden with art-historical references, Lavelle’s work draws on the powerful immediacy and sensuousness of paint on canvas.
Washes of colour in limited palettes create shifting depths on the surface of the canvas, destabilising our spatial perception. Geometric forms rendered by hand retain the artists’ touch, creating a poetic gesture in abstract form. Through her highly refined artistic language, Lavelle’s work valorises the sensory and embodied nature of painting, for both artist and viewer.
Raised in Hervey Bay, this is Natalie Lavelle’s first major exhibition on the Fraser Coast and the first survey of her practice to date.
Opposite page: Natalie Lavelle, Untitled (Burnt Umber and Ultramarine Blue), 2020, oil on Italian linen, 213cm x 168cm. Courtesy of Stable Artspace.
Emma Thorp: The In Between
The In Between is an exploration of the challenges of motherhood as an artist, tackling the complicated desire to carve out time for oneself and art ‘in between’ life’s responsibilities.
Emma Thorp’s practice humorously takes on these daily interactions and mundane tasks and makes them her artistic subject matter, fusing her work as an artist and mother.
Through her signature illustrative style and knack for visual storytelling, Thorp openly shares her experiences, carving out an identity as an artist mother while juggling the priorities of life.
Opposite page: Emma Thorp, Washing. Basket. Weave., 2024, pencil and ink on paper.
1 March – 11 May 2025
Joyce Watson: Family and Country, many people’s stories
My art speaks of my story
Of family and Country
Of being pulled from Country
And returning to Country.
Our stories are shared under the Mango Tree.
We learn from others’ stories,
And understand…
—Aunty Joyce Watson
In Family and Country, many people’s stories, Aunty Joyce Watson explores her ancestral connection to Waanyi Country in North West Queensland through stories of endurance and connection.
Watson’s work across textiles, sculpture, bronzes, drawing and printmaking draw on the artist’s matrilineal history, reflecting on the power of storytelling in the continuation of cultural knowledge across generations.
This exhibition brings together new and existing works with an installation of significant artworks and objects from the artist’s extended family.
Opposite page: Joyce Watson in the studio. Courtesy of the artist.
24 May – 3 August 2025
Joe Furlonger: Horizons
Opposite page: Joe Furlonger, Untitled, 1997, pigment with acrylic binder on canvas. Gift of Ray Hughes through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation 2016. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program. Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. © Joe Furlonger.
One of Australia’s most respected landscape painters, Joe Furlonger came to prominence in the late 1980s with a series of large-scale figurative paintings.
Employing a highly physical method, he applied swathes of colour with vigorous sweeps of the brush. With inspiration drawn from Matisse, Picasso, and Ian Fairweather, Furlonger has never attempted to disguise his artistic influences.
Drawn from the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) Collection, Joe Furlonger: Horizons traces the artist’s career through a range of media from painting ceramics, sculpture, and drawing.
Joe Furlonger: Horizons is a touring exhibition developed by the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.
Billy Missi’n Wakain Thamai
Hervey Bay Regional Gallery is pleased to present Billy Missi’n Wakain Thamai, a national touring exhibition presented by NorthSite Contemporary Arts in partnership with Torres Strait Regional Authority’s Gab Titui Cultural Centre (TSRA), and toured by Museums & Galleries QLD.
Billy Missi’n Wakain Thamai is a profound exhibition honouring the late Torres Strait Islander artist Billy Missi (1970-2012). It brings together over fifty of the artist’s most significant and iconic prints, including rare and never-before-exhibited monoprints, etchings, and linoprints from Djumbunji Fine Art Press and private collections. Curated by Dr Russell Milledge, this retrospective was developed in close consultation with the Billy Missi Estate, family members and friends, highlighting Missi’s critical role in the emergence of Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait) printmaking as a contemporary art form.
Billy Missi’n Wakain Thamai is an exhibition developed by NorthSite Contemporary Arts (Gimuy/Cairns) and touring Australia in partnership with Gab Titui Cultural Centre/Torres Strait Regional Authority (Waiben/Thursday Island) and Museums & Galleries Queensland. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia program.
Opposite page: Billy Missi, Dhanghalah Thiyaik | Drifting for dugong, 2009, linoleum cut printed in black ink from one block, 707 x 1010 (print matrix). Courtesy of Editions Tremblay.
© Billy Missi | Copyright Agency, 2024
Regional Spotlight
Regional Spotlight 2025 artists are Jacob Bunt, Val McGrath, Lou Millen, Colin Reaney, Suzanne Roberts and Karen Stanton. 31
The Regional Spotlight initiative is an opportunity for WideBay Burnett artists at any stage in their career, working in any visual art medium, to receive mentorship and share their work at the gallery.
Developed from an expressions of interest process, the 2025 exhibition brings a multifaceted survey of local artists sharing their personal connection to space, landscape, environment, home and time through mediums of painting, photography, printmaking, ceramics and mixed media work.
Opposite page: Karen Stanton, First
Light, oil reduction print on Awagmi
Bamboo Select paper print, 30 x 25 cm.
23 August – 16 November 2025
Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize GIRRA
Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize was borne out of the enduring social and cultural importance of the natural environment on Fraser Coast. Drawing its name from the Butchulla word for sand, a vital component of our region’s landscape, Girra brings together contemporary art that examines the intersection of people, place and the environment.
The biennial art prize invites entries from artists working in any visual art medium from across Australia, offering a $25,000 major acquisitive prize.
The finalists’ exhibition, held at the Hervey Bay Regional Gallery, will form a compelling story of our nation’s relationship to the environment told through diverse perspectives and aesthetic approaches.
Major Acquisitive Prize: $25,000
The Hervey Bay Boat Club People’s Choice Award: $2,000
Call for entries: 7 April – 5 May 2025
Launch and prize announcement: Friday 22 August 2025
23 August – 16 November 2025
Strange Kinship
Opposite
Strange Kinship explores our complicated relationships with animals, unpicking the identification and disidentification we feel towards certain species. Taking its departure point from our region’s fascination with whales—laden with symbolism and meaning—this exhibition examines human perspectives on the non-human world.
Artists in Strange Kinship explore multiple viewpoints of our attempts to connect with and understand animals, from the objectification and anthropomorphisation of certain species, to the layers of historical, cultural and symbolic meaning imbued onto our animal kin over time.
Calzadilla,
page: Deb Mostert, Whale as Object, 2024, watercolour, 55 x 77 cm.
Allora &
Dolphin Milk, Fernando do Campo, Deb Mostert, Gabriella Hirst, Nicholas Mangan, and more
Creative Generation
Opposite page: Halle Bryant (Aldridge State High School), A Question of Meaning on the Death-bed of Life, digital illustration, 59.4cm x 84.1cm x 5cm.
The Creative Generation Excellence Awards in Visual Art recognise and promote excellence in senior visual art education throughout Queensland state and non-state schools.
Since 1990, the program has helped raise community awareness of the degree of sophistication in concepts, diversity of technical competence, and the high standard of visual art education in Queensland secondary schools.
Each education region hosts a Creative Generation Excellence Awards in Visual Art exhibition to showcase submitted artworks within that region. The exhibition includes a broad range of mediums and subjects important to young Queensland artists from the region.
Tyza Hart: Appearing
Tyza Hart’s artworks foreground embodied experience through combinations of abstract gesture and figuration.
In this exhibition, a new installation of ceramic objects and dyed fabric is contextualised with key self-portraits, oil paintings, sculptures, poems, and videos, drawn from the past ten years of Tyza’s practice.
Since graduating from the Queensland College of Art in 2012, Tyza has exhibited widely in Southeast Queensland, with solo exhibitions at the Institute of Modern Art, Museum of Brisbane, Wreckers Upstairs, CARPARK Gallery, and at Gympie Regional Gallery.
Appearing is the first early-career survey of Tyza’s practice and will tour to Gympie Regional Gallery in March 2026.
Opposite page: Tyza Hart, Bellybutton to Bellybutton, 2023, stoneware with porcelain slip, 14 x 26 x 26 cm. Photo Louis Lim. Courtesy the artist and Darren Knight Gallery.
Dion Beasley: Six Dogs
Alywarr man Dion Beasley is an award-winning artist and illustrator. Born in Alice Springs, he has spent most of his life in communities throughout the Barkly region of the Northern Territory. Most recently Dion lived in Tennant Creek, before moving to Hervey Bay in 2020.
Dion is best-known for his unique observations of everyday life in remote communities—the streetscapes, families and most notably, the camp dogs that rule the streets. His drawings depict the social structures that exist between humans and animals, and the complex relationships between these rag-tag groups of dogs. His evolving style captures the charismatic nature of these animals, demonstrating an astute ability for storytelling while distilling their movements, personalities and quirks into his art.
As a Deaf artist with muscular dystrophy, Dion uses drawing to communicate with the world. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra among others.
With author Johanna Bell Dion has created three picture books, and his work has featured on merchandise under the Cheeky Dog label.
Opposite page: Image courtesy of the artist.
Weeds to Paper
Weeds are just plants growing in the wrong place.
Weeds to Paper is a collaborative project initiated by papermaker Zela Bissett with Butchulla Traditional Custodians and volunteers working in forest rehabilitation. Using plant matter as a sustainable form of creative expression, this exhibition suggests a new way of regarding weeds —as a resource rather than a nuisance.
Through a process of chopping, cooking and blending, the pest or waste plants are converted into a pulp from which sheets of paper can be extracted using a process called couching. Works in this exhibition use handmade papers to create collage, linocuts and three-dimensional casting.
Together this group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous creatives have developed community of skill-sharing and knowledge exchange, built on a foundation of caring for Country.
Partners: FIDO - the watchdog of K’gari, Butchulla Aboriginal Corporation (BAC) and Butchulla Native Title Aboriginal Corporation (BNTAC).
Opposite page: Image courtesy of Zela Bissett.
