2019 Exhibition Calendar Jan-Aug

EXHIBITIONS

23 NOV 2018 - 20 JAN 2019

30 NOV 2018 - 20 JAN 2019

UTOPIA TROPICAE: THE SPIRIT OF THE NORTH

Perc Tucker Regional Gallery

North Queensland exudes an energy unlike anywhere else in Australia. This is a difficult essence to pinpoint; an enigmatic and allembracing aura reflective of climate and environment.

This energy has engendered an authenticity of artistic expression amongst local artists, whose work reflects a sense of loyalty and identity to their environment, community, heritage, and future.

Utopia Tropicae: The Spirit of the North seeks to celebrate these artists, who reside in, or, who have a strong connection to Townsville, Cairns, and the wider NQ region, and who have made an enduring commitment towards the area’s visual arts and cultural conversation.

Curated by Lucy Belle Tesoriero and Jonathan McBurnie.

CHROMA: THE JIM COBB GIFT

Perc Tucker Regional Gallery

In keeping with his wish that the public should have access to high quality original artworks, renowned paint maker Jim Cobb donated 35 remarkable paintings and two sculptures to Orange Regional Gallery in February 2013. Known as the Chroma Collection – this exhibition includes works by some of Australia’s most celebrated modern and contemporary artists.

An Orange Regional Gallery touring exhibition, with support from The Gordon Darling Foundation.

Glen O’Malley, Kelso 2007, digital photography, 40.5 x 61.5 cm. City of Townsville Art Collection

Euan Macleod, Jim Cobb at factory [detail] 1998, oil on canvas, 124.4 x 100.2 cm

ROSS MANNING: DISSONANT RHYTHMS

Pinnacles Gallery

Dissonant Rhythms is Brisbane-based artist and musician Ross Manning’s first-ever survey exhibition. Manning’s exhibition features sculptures that repurpose everday materials and engulf the entirety of the spaces they exist in, capturing viewers in mesmerising experiences with light and sound. Working across experimental music and immersive installations, Manning’s sonic and luminous works have put him at the forefront of national and international art.

OBJECT brings together a group of works from the City of Townsville Art Collection that fall outside of the traditional paint on canvas and ceramic, and in doing so, encapsulates a unique expression of art that is worthy of attention. These works challenge the traditional idea that certain materials are suitable or unsuitable as a work of art while questioning the notion of what art can be.

A travelling exhibition organised by the Institute of Modern Art (IMA), toured by Museums & Galleries Queensland.

Ross Manning, Bricks and Blocks 2016, LCD TV, video camera, fluorescent lights, and mirror. Installation view, Dissonant Rhythms, Institute of Modern Art, 2017. Photography: Carl Warner

Perc Tucker Regional Gallery

Curated by Lucy Belle Tesoriero.

Alan Peascod, The Salesman 1997, hand-built, polished porcelain ceramic with timber base, 38.5 x 28 x 12 cm. Purchased 1997, acquired with the assistance of the Visual Arts and Craft Board, Australia Council. City of Townsville Art Collection

FOR

COUNTRY, FOR NATION

Pinnacles Gallery

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have a long standing tradition of fighting for Country, and continue to serve with honour among our military forces. They have also worked in ancillary, industry, and other homefront activities and their communities have been thrust into the front line of theatres of war. The touring exhibition For Country, For Nation highlights these stories and explores themes of remembrance and tradition through family histories, objects, art, and photographs from across Australia, drawing inspiration from cultural traditions and symbols of warrior’s discipline, knowledge, leadership, and skill.

An Australian War Memorial touring exhibition.

15 FEB - 7 APR 2019

EXPRESS YOURSELF

Perc Tucker Regional Gallery

Express Yourself is drawn from the National Portrait Gallery’s Contemporary Collection and highlights portraits of Australians whose unique life experiences symbolise social and cultural themes. The portraits attest to the facility of photographic portraiture to convey compelling psychological depth. The exhibition will premiere a newly commissioned portrait of Rosie Batty by photographer Nikki Toole. Recognised as a spokesperson for combatting domestic violence, Rosie Batty was awarded Australian of the Year in 2015. Short interviews with sitters and artists complement the portraits displayed.

A young Reg Saunders surrounded by his mates of the 27th Battalion, AIF, in Queensland in 1943. Image courtesy of the Australian War Memorial

A National Portrait Gallery touring exhibition.

John Tsiavis, Christos Tsiolkas 1998, type C photograph. Purchased 2009, National Portrait Gallery Collection

15 MAR - 28 APR 2019

5 APR - 26 MAY 2019

DONNA BENINGFIELD: MIGRATING SOULS

Perc Tucker Regional Gallery

Donna Beningfield’s Migrating Souls comprises of over fifty works on slate tiles and canvas, depicting local personalities and one of their many past lives. These past lives include a 500,000 year old hunter-gatherer, a falconer, a fisherman, a knight from the Middle Ages, as well as a range of contemporary personalities.

Pinnacles Gallery

Curated by George Main, Haunting explores the dramatic agricultural history of southern Australia, gently traversing often emotional terrain that’s created at the intersection of technology, history, objects, and place. This exhibition presents a fascinating body of work by Vic McEwan, encompassing photography, video, and text, demonstrating how objects and people can be brought to life, allowing various interpretations of the past, and its ever unfolding consequences on our contemporary world.

A travelling exhibition from the National Museum of Australia and CAD Factory, with support from a Create NSW Regional Fellowship.

Donna Beningfield, Albert Abdul-Rahman Scribe 2016, 100 x 76 cm, acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy of the Artist

Vic McEwan, typewriter belonging to poet and activist Dame Mary Gilmore projected onto the bank of the Murrumbidgee River at Lambrigg near Canberra. Installation view, July/Aug 2015. Photography: Vic McEwan

VIC MCEWAN: HAUNTING

contributing directly to the exhibition, a chance to learn from and collaborate with one of Australia’s

Rosie Deacon, My Girl 2017, mixed media, dimensions variable. Installation view, Kangasouvenir Picnic 2017, Hawkesbury Regional Gallery. Photography: Silversalt

CONNIE HOEDT: MICROCOSM TO DELFT BLUE

Perc Tucker Regional Gallery

Connie Hoedt is one of North Queensland’s most significant and influential potters, specialising in non-functional sculptural fantasy pieces influenced by her Dutch heritage as well as her environment in Far North Queensland. This long over-due retrospective exhibition solidifies her important place in the history and development of Australian ceramics.

Curated by Ross Searle.

Connie Hoedt, Microcosm 1-3 1985, hand-built, hand-painted, glazed porcelain, 3 parts: 18.1 x 18.1 x 18.1 cm; 18.4 x 18.4 x 18.4 cm; 20 x 20 x 20 cm. Acquired 1992, City of Townsville Art Collection

GRAPHIC TENDENCIES

Pinnacles Gallery

Townsville has long been a melting pot of graphic practices, encouraged for many years by artists who were at ease in a variety of media, bringing their unique vision with them. Curated by Jonathan McBurnie, himself an artist fascinated with the visual lexicon of drawing, Graphic Tendencies draws works from the City of Townsville Art Collection. These works all grow from a graphic process, the artists extending the drawing discipline into painting, print, collage and other media.

Many of these works have not been shown in decades, and will be viewed with fresh eyes in this post-digital world where the graphic has become an everyday language.

Robert Preston, A la Bolero 1976, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 138 x 246 cm. Gift of Graham Denovan 2001, under the Cultural Gifts Program, City of Townsville Art Collection

CHRISTIAN FLYNN: UNFAMILAR THEATRE/UNKNOWN STAGE

Perc Tucker Regional Gallery

The landscapes of Unfamiliar Theatre / Unknown Stage are the landscapes of not knowing. They are conversations between opposing painterly forces and capture an engagement with a subject whose form is determined in part by the consciousness by which it is observed. However, this subject looks back and is sensitive to the observer’s preconceptions and it has sway over how it is seen. These paintings are full of contradictions, nonsense, and misinterpretation, and most importantly, play. They are concrete, yet the things they attempt to stand in for are fleeting and ethereal. Unfamiliar Theatre/Unknown Stage is a tangible expression but there is no essence here.

Christian Flynn, Conversation/Argument/Non-Human Theatre 2018, acylic on khadi paper, 21 x 30 cm. Courtesy of the Artist.

Rosie Deacon, Tree Top Tweety Bird Pop Egg Design Living 2018, mixed media, dimensions variable. A collaboration with Studio A artist Emily Crockford. Installation view, Project Space, Cement Fondu.

Photography: Document Photography