GOULBURN.- Goulburn Regional Art Gallery has this announced its 2021 exhibition program, comprising the Gallery’s inaugural international group show curated by Berlin-based Lauren Reid; a series of solo exhibitions from some of Australia’s most cutting-edge artists – photographer David Ryrie, Paris-based contemporary artist Mel O’Callaghan, Indigenous trans-disciplinary artist Dean Cross, and painting, textile and ceramic artist Harriet Body; plus a group show celebrating local ceramicists, curated by Hannah Gee.
On view now, and running throughout the summer school holiday period, Infinities explores works that defy our human-scale conceptions of time, from the microbial-scale of bacterium inside our bodies, to the planetary-scale of the spinning of the Earth and beyond.
Curated by Berlin-based curator, Lauren Reid, this immersive group show comprising contemporary video works, sculptures, installations and new commissions, brings art and ideas from across the globe together in Goulburn for the very first time, providing a richly diverse interpretation of the often imperceptible processes, environments, life forms and experiences around us.
The exhibition includes pieces by Basel-based Egyptian artist Basim Magdy, Thailand’s Chulayarnnon Siriphol, Berlin-based Finnish artist Jenna Sutela, Adelaide-based Irani-Australian artist Hossein Valamanesh and German artist Markus Hoffmann; alongside Australian artists Harriet Body, Serena Bonson and Tina Havelock Stevens.
For their first major solo of the year, opening February 5, Goulburn Regional Art Gallery presents a series of new works from renowned Australian photographer David Ryrie.
Ryrie’s artistic practice is resonant of the encounter at its most bare and honest. With great sensitivity to the physical world and photography’s uncanny ability to level the ontological plain of objects, he expands scale and turns proportion, making the banal poignant, and drawing out the familiar to unnerve and arrest.
In his latest series of works, Otherwise Arbitrary Moments, Ryrie plays with our usual understanding of being present, positing our assumed relationship to things as fluid, changeable and dreamlike. Just as we may remember an event or a fleeting moment in a new way each time we recall it, this series of largescale images offer new detail and revelations at every encounter.
On April 16, Goulburn will be the launch venue for Museum and Galleries NSW’ national tour of Paris-based Australian contemporary artist Mel O’Callaghan’s acclaimed Centre of the Centre.
A major new commission tracing the origins of life and its regenerative forces, iterated through video, performance and sculpture, Centre of the Centre plunges audiences 4km below the surface of the Pacific Ocean to encounter fascinating lifeforms in extreme environments.
The concept for this unique show was inspired by a gift from the artist’s grandfather, renowned mineralogist Albert Chapman: a small mineral containing a small pocket of water - possibly millions of years old, holding traces of the elemental forces responsible for all life on earth. Moved by the potentialities and extreme conditions within this primordial liquid, the exhibition submerges the audience in a highly visceral experience.
Mel O’Callaghan’s Centre of the Centre was curated and developed by Artspace and is touring nationally with Museums & Galleries of NSW. Centre of the Centre is co-commissioned by Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers; Artspace, Sydney; and The University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane. With Commissioning Partners Andrew Cameron AM & Cathy Cameron and Peter Wilson & James Emmett; and Lead Supporter, Kronenberg Mais Wright. The development and presentation of Centre of the Centre is supported by the Fondation des Artistes; the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its funding and advisory body; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the US National Science Foundation.
Centre of the Centre will tour to nine regional galleries around Australia over the next two years, until April 2023.
In 2020 Goulburn Regional Art Gallery announced The Good Initiative, a new privately supported $20,000 biennial award for a local artist/ artist collaborative, born or living within 120km of the Goulburn CBD, in the first 15 years of their career.
In addition to the financial award, the recipient receives ongoing support to produce a solo exhibition. Thus, it is with considerable excitement that the Gallery presents the work of inaugural recipient, acclaimed Indigenous trans-disciplinary artist Dean Cross, opening July 2.
Born and raised on Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country and of Worimi descent, Cross is renowned for his powerfully expressive work - both political and poetic, across a variety of media, from painting to ephemeral installation.
For this, his first major solo in the area he once called home, he turns to the ancient Greek tragedy of Icarus and Daedalus, with a multi-media installation, Icarus, my Son. The exhibition will be iterated at Carriageworks, Sydney in late 2021. As exhibition partner, Carriageworks further invests in a major commission of new work from Dean Cross.
Opening September 10, Under My Glaze, curated by Goulburn Regional Art Gallery’s Program and Exhibitions Coordinator, Hannah Gee, looks beyond the functional nature of ceramics, to new ways of experimenting with surfaces, glazes, texture and scale. The Goulburn region is home to a wealth of ceramic artists, many of whom continue to extend their practice in new ways. For example, Collector-based master ceramicist, Kate McKay’s beautifully hand-crafted objects speak to the moments we often forget to savour and return us to a process of slowness, in which we can pause and revalue the vessels that hold our morning rituals of tea and toast.
For their final 2021 exhibition opening November 5, Goulburn Regional Art Gallery has invited local artist Harriet Body, to collaborate with the Goulburn community.
Throughout 2021 Body will present a series of creative workshops for seniors and young people, exploring memory, lived experience and storytelling. The workshops will in turn inform Body in the creation of a new body of work titled Yours, celebrating local stories and people.
Running alongside Goulburn Regional Art Gallery’s main exhibition program, a series of smaller shows in Gallery 2 focus on local Goulburn area artists. In 2021 these will include solo exhibitions from painter John Hart, photographer Tamara Dean, printmaker, sculptor and site responsive artist Mary Lou Burnet Chagnaud, installation artist Emma Hodges, and drawings from Genevieve Swift.
Whilst “The Window”, a special space designed to highlight holdings from the Gallery’s permanent collection, showcases artworks selected by guest curators.
An easy two-hour drive from Sydney, and an hour from Canberra, Goulburn Regional Art Gallery presents a rolling program of exhibitions across three exhibition spaces; alongside special events, and a year-round education and outreach program. In November 2020, the Gallery’s Permanent Collection was deemed of National Significance. The collection comprises 488 contemporary artworks, including pieces by Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello, Ben Quilty, Jasper Knight and Del Kathryn Barton.
Goulburn Regional Art Gallery also commissions new works for the city’s public art program, comprising 38 sculptures and installations, that can be experienced via a curated Public Art walk.
In 2021, the Gallery’s recent survey exhibition, Barbara Cleveland Thinking Business, celebrating one of Australia’s most fascinating artist collectives, will tour to regional NSW and across Australia, through Museums & Galleries of NSW.
