BENDIGO.- Bendigo Art Gallery celebrates its 130 year anniversary with a dynamic new exhibition of historic, contemporary, curious, significant, and much-loved favorites from the Gallery’s renowned collection.

The exhibition explores the gallery’s vast collection in the context of social, artistic and community change as well as the evolution of the Gallery itself. Works that have subject matter, theme, style or medium in common will be brought together, offering a fresh approach to the gallery’s immense collection.

New acquisitions by leading contemporary Australian artists including Hany Armanious, Michael Cook and Polixeni Papapetrou are being shown alongside some of the first ever works acquired by the founders of the Gallery in 1887. These have been joined by long-time favourites and lesser-known gems from the collection.

Highlights and themes include:

· The topic of landscape has fascinated artists for centuries. Bendigo Art Gallery has a significant holding of European and early colonial renderings of the landscape, including local works that depict the decimation of the landscape in the gold rush era. These are being shown alongside more recent works by Indigenous Australian artists such as Brook Andrew and Michael Cooke, who depict country with an abstract, deeply spiritual language, as well as those with a determined environmental message, by artists including Fiona Hall and Polixeni Pappapetrou.

· From the exalted to the eccentric, Bendigo Art Gallery’s diverse collection of portraiture demonstrates the long held allure of this particular subject matter. Works such as Abdul Abdullah’s Abdul-Hamid bin Ibrahim bin Abdullah referencing the artist’s Muslim and Australian identity, to subtle emotive works including Winifred McCubbin’s Sick child, speak to the diversity of this aspect of the Gallery’s collection.

· Collective Vision also presents a selection of works that depict allegory, myth and narrative, as well as those that use animals either literally, symbolically or figuratively. Significant pieces from the gallery’s extensive decorative and porcelain collection, including the rococo inspired, c1840 Meissen vase, is also being shown.

Founded in 1887, Bendigo Art Gallery was officially launched in refurbished Volunteer Rifles orderly rooms in 1890. Two new courts were added eight years later, designed in the grand European tradition with polished wood floors and ornate plaster arches and cornices. Since then, two contemporary wings have also been added, including a major new $8.5 million extension in 2014, which more than doubled the Gallery’s exhibition space.

Today, Bendigo Art Gallery is Australia’s largest regional gallery, known for delivering an ambitious exhibition program as well as significant cultural and economic benefits for the city.