2022 Exhibitions TOWNSVILLE CITY GALLERIES July - December
July - December
2022 Exhibitions TOWNSVILLE CITY GALLERIES Perc Tucker Regional Gallery Pinnacles Gallery
Perc Tucker Regional Gallery Corner of Denham Street and Flinders Street, Townsville QLD 4810 (07) 4727 9011 galleries@townsville.qld.gov.au Pinnacles Gallery Riverway Arts Centre 20 Village Boulevard, Thuringowa Central QLD 4817 (07) 4773 8871 galleries@townsville.qld.gov.au
Townsville City Council acknowledges the Wulgurukaba of Gurambilbarra and Yunbenun, Bindal, Gugu Badhun and Nywaigi as the Traditional Owners of this land. We pay our respects to their cultures, their ancestors and their Elders – past and present – and all future generations.
Image front cover: Cutler Footway Delta after a Flood [detail], 2020-21 Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 150 cm Image courtesy of the Artist
CONTENTS Pat Hoffie: Hi-Vis
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North Queensland Ceramic Awards
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Facing North: Cutler Footway
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67th Townsville Art Society Awards
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People, Culture & Country: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Project
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TAFE North Queensland Graduate Exhibition
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Julie Fragar: Biograph
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City of Townsville Art Collection: Recent Acquisitions
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One foot on the ground, one foot in the water
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PAT HOFFIE: HI-VIS 16 July – 11 September 2022 Perc Tucker Regional Gallery Under the ongoing series Fully Exploited Labour, the subject of work has been an important theme within Pat Hoffie’s practice for some decades. The exhibition Hi-Vis is part of that series. The large paintings feature construction workers building frameworks across and within the Australian landscape. The idea of ‘landscape’ or ‘country’ is a contested topic in Australia; nowhere more passionately fought over than in North Queensland, where battles over the rights to mine for coal, coal seam gas, fossil fuels, uranium and minerals have repeatedly divided the nation. Yet the rising interest in environmental consciousness has tended to ignore the problems of continuing to separate the idea of landscape as a ‘constructed site’ from the idea of an untouched ‘wilderness’, even though writer-scientists like Bruce Pascoe and Bill Gammage have reasoned that nothing could be further from the truth. The Australian landscape, they argue, is the product of thousands of years of cultural belief systems based on Indigenous agricultural practices. That is, they argue that mankind creates what we call landscape, and always has done. This body of work situates working men and women in the process of actively reconstructing and re-structuring their environment; it raises questions about the ongoing interactions between people and place, and the outcomes and consequences of their endeavours.
Pat Hoffie Hi Vis (home building #1), 2018 Acrylic on canvas, 107 x 107 cm Image photography: Louis Lim
PERC TUCKER REGIONAL GALLERY
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NORTH QUEENSLAND CERAMIC AWARDS 22 July - 25 September 2022 Perc Tucker Regional Gallery The Biennial North Queensland Ceramic Awards has long aimed to increase public exposure to a high standard of pottery from around the nation. A showcase for both well-known and emerging artists, this competition displays the diversity of ceramic art currently being produced in Australia. The City of Townsville Art Collection Award of $10,000 continues to provide both opportunity for artists to become a part of one of the nation’s most significant ceramic collections, as well as ensuring the continued growth of this important subsection of the City of Townsville Art Collection.
Mahala Hill Armoured Mist Frog 2020 Bone china, porcelain, stoneware, volcanic glaze, 8 x 17 x 15 cm Major acquisitive prize winner of the 2020 Biennial North Queensland Ceramic Awards. City of Townsville Art Collection Image courtesy of the Artist and Townsville City Galleries
SPONSORS
PERC TUCKER REGIONAL GALLERY
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FACING NORTH: CUTLER FOOTWAY 16 September – 27 November 2022 Perc Tucker Regional Gallery Cutler Footway’s Facing North comprises of three bodies of work reframing the artist’s last two decades of practice into a compelling and cohesive whole. These series include a clutch of small, erotically charged images recording the painter’s attempt to resume the natural and psychological environs of his birthplace after an absence of many decades. The second section of the show explores the gradual maturing of Footway’s picture-making. Despite once describing himself as "a Sunday painter who paints every day", a conspicuous authority in conception and handling is discernible in the landscapes, still life and figure subjects finessed by Footway in this period. The concluding section of the exhibition introduces a miscellany of life drawings, all in the medium of oil crayon on paper. These transcriptions of models posed in Footway’s verandah studio attest to an ongoing campaign of graphic home-schooling. Enlisting sitters from his family and friends, and from Ayr’s backpacking community, his viewpoint is close-up and therefore fragmentary. In showcasing the life and work of a late-blooming regional painter in Queensland, this exhibition contends that compelling art is not infallibly the product of Australia’s cities and urban centres. It can and does emerge remotely from them, and at no disadvantage either to itself or to that wider cosmopolitanism whose features it reflects - and interrogates - in its mirror of truth. Curated by Gitte Weise
Cutler Footway Delta after a Flood [detail], 2020-21 Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 150 cm Image courtesy of the Artist
PERC TUCKER REGIONAL GALLERY
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67TH TOWNSVILLE ART SOCIETY AWARDS 30 September – 23 October 2022 Perc Tucker Regional Gallery The Townsville Art Society Inc proudly presents the 67th Townsville Art Society Awards. The Townsville Art Society has held an annual or biennial arts exhibition since its inception, and the Townsville Art Society Awards exhibition is now a major exhibition in the cultural life of the city. Held in Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, it provides an opportunity for North Queensland artists, who are affiliated with an Art Society, to display their work in a major gallery and to compete for prizes.
Margaret Crawford Banksia – Life After Fire 2021 Ceramic, 16.5 x 17.5 cm diam, 23 x 11.5 cm diam, 21 x 12.5 cm diam Major acquisitive prize winner of the 66th Townsville Art Awards 2021. City of Townsville Art Collection Image courtesy of Townsville City Galleries Accession number: 2022.0045.000
PERC TUCKER REGIONAL GALLERY
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PEOPLE, CULTURE & COUNTRY: ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER ART PROJECT 28 October – 13 November 2022 Perc Tucker Regional Gallery People, Culture & Country: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Project, is proudly supported by Townsville City Galleries, Townsville City Council. In this program, small groups of Upper Primary and Junior Secondary students from schools across the North Queensland region, work collaboratively (in their own school) to produce contemporary wearable artworks to be showcased to the wider community. Students are taught traditional and contemporary skills and techniques (e.g. weaving, printmaking, painting) by First Nations artists in order to create the wearable artworks. They then prepare for a photoshoot experience where one student models the outfit and other students help with hair and makeup design and application. This project supports the linking of emerging First Nations artists with professionals in the Creative Arts Industries, and offers the wider community an insight into First Nations history, traditions, and culture through new works of art. This year Perc Tucker Regional Gallery is proud to host the People, Culture & Country: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Project, exhibition. East Ayr State School Majesty 2021 Photography: Kayla Burrows Part of the 2021 People, Culture & Country: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Project.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Project: People, Culture & Country is an initiative of the Department of Education - North Queensland Region. This project is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland. This project is supported by Townsville City Galleries, Townsville City Council.
PERC TUCKER REGIONAL GALLERY
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TAFE NORTH QUEENSLAND GRADUATE EXHIBITION 28 October - 13 November 2022 Perc Tucker Regional Gallery The annual exhibition of TAFE North Queensland visual art student’s works boasts an array of approaches and media. This year’s exhibition once again promises to be an exciting glimpse into the future of Townsville’s emerging artists.
Tenielle Edmonson Saints, 2021 Gouache and stencil, 53 x 73 cm Image courtesy of the Artist
PERC TUCKER REGIONAL GALLERY
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JULIE FRAGAR: BIOGRAPH 2 December 2022 – 19 February 2023 Perc Tucker Regional Gallery One of the most acclaimed painters in Australia today, Julie Fragar’s work reaches into her own life via personal photographs and fascinating family history, resonating with audiences in a profound and personal way. Contemporary life is lived by many through social media, lending Fragar’s work has an autobiographical, almost universal appeal— however— this is misleading. Like social media, like autobiography, Fragar’s work is the result of careful selection, editing, and obfuscation. It is a meticulous construct capable of embracing, as well as distancing viewers through their own memories and associations. Biograph, Fragar’s first major survey exhibition, sets out to present fresh selections of work according to these instincts. Narrative, autobiography, identity and memory are all dissected and reassembled through process and the lush materiality of paint. With works from throughout the artist’s career, Biograph will itself question the intricacies of autobiography as closely as the artist herself. Curated by Jonathan McBurnie
Julie Fragar The single bed, or cheers to forty years, 2017 Oil on board, 135 x 100 cm Griffith University Art Collection. Purchased 2017. Image courtesy of the Artist Photography: Carl Warner
PERC TUCKER REGIONAL GALLERY
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CITY OF TOWNSVILLE ART COLLECTION: RECENT ACQUISITIONS 2 December - 12 February 2022 Perc Tucker Regional Gallery City of Townsville Art Collection: Recent Acquisitions showcases a selection of artworks recently acquired for inclusion in the City of Townsville Art Collection, including purchases, gifts, and Cultural Gift Donations of significance in line with the collection priority areas of the City of Townsville Art Collection Policy, including Australian Art/ Art of North Queensland, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, Modern and Contemporary Art, and Australian Colonial and Historical Art. It includes artworks by Wendy Bainbridge, Hermannsburg artists, Joe Furlonger, Mark Thompson, Tom Risley, Robert Emerson Curtis, and William Jamieson Allom. The City of Townsville Art Collection is at the heart of Council’s efforts to engage, educate and enrich the diverse populations drawn to the Townsville region.
Jun Chen Townsville City (through the castle mountain), 2013 Oil on canvas, 150 x 150cm Image courtesy of the artist Jun Chen. City of Townsville Art Collection. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Jun Chen. Accession number: 2021.0045.000 © Jun Chen
PERC TUCKER REGIONAL GALLERY
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ONE FOOT ON THE GROUND, ONE FOOT IN THE WATER 9 December 2022 – 12 February 2023 Pinnacles Gallery At a time when many are experiencing complex feelings about the frailty of life and future uncertainty, the exhibition One foot on the ground, one foot in the water turns to the subject of our own mortality. Eleven contemporary artists present paintings, sculptures, installations and sound works that invoke experiences of loss, impermanence, transience, remembrance, memorialisation and their own expressions of grief. Each artist offers insight into the ways we let go of death, or hold it close, as a continuing living presence in the world. Artworks and other objects can reflect these kinds of present-absences, allowing the departed to continue to resonate in our memory, and in objects that outlive them. One foot on the ground, one foot in the water is a La Trobe Art Institute exhibition toured by NETS Victoria. Curated by Travis Curtin.
Catherine Bell Final resting place [detail], 2018-20 100 vessels hand-carved from floral foam, 100 digital photographs, digital photo display installation, dimensions variable Image courtesy of the Artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Photography: Ian Hill Exhibition Partners
Exhibition Supporter
The exhibition has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body, as well as receiving development assistance from NETS Victoria’s Exhibition Development Fund, supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.
PINNACLES GALLERY
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Contact Us To find out more about our Community Access Spaces, becoming a Gallery Volunteer, or signing up to our e-newsletter, you can visit our website, phone, or visit the gallery and speak to our staff who will be happy to assist. Perc Tucker Regional Gallery Corner of Denham Street and Flinders Street, Townsville QLD 4810 (07) 4727 9011 galleries@townsville.qld.gov.au Pinnacles Gallery Riverway Arts Centre 20 Village Boulevard, Thuringowa Central QLD 4817 (07) 4773 8871 galleries@townsville.qld.gov.au
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