Sydney Printmakers

to 30 January 2012

Since its inception in 1960 and its first exhibition in 1961, the Sydney Printmakers group has played an important role in the revival and promotion of original prints as being a vital part of Australian artistic expression and culture.

Members of Sydney Printmakers demonstrate dedication and talent in through regular exhibition in Australia and abroad. Reciprocal exhibitions with artist printmakers from other countries allow for an exchange of techniques and viewpoints.

The printmakers’ exhibition at Moree presents new works in many new and old printmaking mediums.

 

 

Kate Ford: new work

NSW painter and printmaker: minimal abstractions and found objects

14 October – 5 December 2011

Kate Ford is a highly-respected artist who long fostered the Euraba Papermakers and Artists at the famous Euraba arts centre at Boggabilla. Until recently she has been a senior tutor in art at the Boggabilla campus of TAFE. Kate has worked in many mediums, from painting and sculpture to printmaking and paper intaglio. Her works are minimal with subtle, finely-manipulated surfaces. She exhibited widely across New South Wales, especially in art prizes.

 

Archibald Prize

17 September – 23 October 2011

Now in its 90th year, the Archibald Prize is one of Australia's oldest and most prestigious art awards. It was established in 1921 under the bequest of Jules Archibald who was founding editor of The Bulletin. His primary aims were to foster portraiture, support artists and perpetuate the memory of great Australians .

The Archibald Prize showing in Moree confirms the calibre of this Gallery. There are over 100 public regional galleries across Australia and yet the Moree Plains Gallery managed to be included as one of just seven galleries to be included in the 2011 tour.

The Archibald Prize this year is better than ever. And, it is especially relevant to Moree. Ben Quilty, painter of the winning portrait, is connected with Moree's famous Quilty family. As well, there is an outstanding portrait of Dr Ann Lewis that was painted shortly before she died. Ann grew up in Moree and gave our Gallery its magnificent collection of contemporary Aboriginal art.

This exhibition is generously toured to selected regional by the Museums & Galleries NSW. The Art Gallery of NSW Archibald Prize is one of Australia's oldest and most prestigious art awards. Since its inception in 1921 the Prize has been awarded to some of Australia's most important artists. The Archibald Prize continues to attract record audiences.

 

 

 

Richard Dunn

Four paintings after Albert Namatjira

13 August – 8 October

Richard Dunn first saw Namatjira’s gap and gorge paintings in 2002 in a large exhibition called Seeing the Centre: The Art of Albert Namatjira 1902-59 at the National Gallery of Australia. Dunn was greatly impressed by the paintings and started his own versions soon after as a tribute to the artist.

 

Dunn’s pictures are not landscapes as such, but are “thought” paintings and address the complexity of Namatjira’s art that conveyed Aboriginal meaning through European means: that is, watercolours in the western style of many early 20th century artists.

Richard Dunn has long been a leading Australian artist whose works are represented in many Australian public art collections. In recent years he has been Professor of Contemporary Visual Art and University Artist-in-Residence at The University of Sydney and Guest-Professor at Düsseldorf’s Kunstakademie.

Exhibition compiled by Benalla Art Gallery

 

David McBride

24 June – 12 September 2011

Although most of the pictures in this exhibition are seemingly abstract, they are clearly influenced by the shimmering plains of the artist's country at Mendooran north of Dubbo. McBride has a deep understanding of changes in weather, shifting moods and light moving across the landscape, which he interprets in his paintings.

McBride was born in Sydney in 1949. He completed a Bachelor of Science (Hons) at the University of New South Wales in 1973 and gained a Diploma of Education at the University of New England in 1975. He started painting and drawing at the age of 33 and has since frequently staged solo exhibitions of his work in Sydney and regional centres.

This exhibition was compiled by the Tamworth Regional Gallery .

 

Gooch's Utopia
17 December 2010 – 15 February 2011

Gooch’s Utopia is a collaborative project between Flinders University Art Museum in Adelaide and the Riddoch Art Gallery in Mt Gambier. The exhibition surveys art produced at the outstations of Utopia in the latter decades of the 20th Century, especially the period from the late 1980s until the early 1990s. The exhibition highlights the unique mark-making and iconography used by painters in the community during a time, which can now be recognised as formative years for some of Australia’s leading indigenous artists.

 

William Yang
1 October – 14 November 2010

William Yang is one of Australia’s foremost photographers who is well known for his portrait work and recording of imagery of places and events he has encountered through his career. During the 1970s and 1980s he achieved fame for his imagery of Sydney’s gay community. His enigmatic works on the theme of sadness are interwoven with links to his Chinese heritage. Yang has recently been producing a film documentation on Kamilaroi people in Moree. Yang has exhibited widely in Australia and abroad. His retrospective exhibition in 1998 showed the extent of his importance as a recorder of social history.

 

Leo Robba
1 September – 30 September 2010

Leo Robba’s landscapes of the Australian countryside have an enigmatic quality that verges on the surreal. Leo Robba is based in Springwood, in the Blue Mountains and recently was awarded a Masters of Fine Art (The University of Newcastle) on the subject of regionalism in Australian landscape painting. The Newcastle Maitland and Dungog areas have been the driving force behind his work.

Margaret Adams
1 August – 31 August 2010

Margaret Adams is one of the finest Kamilaroi artists in Moree. She paints the traditional stories to keep, as she says, “remnants of the Dreaming alive”. She is a prolific painter — images of people and inland animals flow readily onto her canvas, which and reflect the blend of pathos and humour that runs through her conversation.

She has a fund of stories at her fingertips, especially about the "Hairy man" who had yellow eyes when he was good and red when he was bad. Adams describes herself as being one of the first generation Aboriginal Catholics in Moree.

At school she and her peers learned "white man's art” — the depiction of homes, trees and scenery in European style. It was many years before she acquired her unique, vivid painting style.

Arone Meeks
5 August – 30 August 2010

Arone Meeks is a Kuku Midigi man who was born in 1957. He grew up near El Arish in far north Queensland and now lives in Cairns. Since 1985 he has forged an impressive national and international career for his painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking and public art commissions.

The Moree Plains Gallery has important works by Meeks in its collection. They were acquired in 1994 when the artist’s first Moree solo exhibition was staged. The Australia Council and Arts NSW have generously funded this 2010 Meeks exhibition enabling us to transport his work from Cairns and for his travel to Moree to give printmaking workshops.

His indigenous links are with the Kokomidiji of Cape York, around Laura, the site of renowned rock art galleries filled with graceful drawings of quinkans (traditional ancestral spirits). Laura is known as a place of Aboriginal magic and sorcery. This country has a palpable effect on the artist’s imagery. He feels a physical reaction to sacred country that helps forge relationships with kinship, a sense of self and, as he said, “renewing the dreaming”.

The artist had a traditional as well as formal art education. He was taught by his grandfather and other relatives before his Bachelor of Visual Arts studies at Sydney’s City Art Institute. He later returned to Queensland to study with tribal elders, including the Lardil people of Mornington Island.

Meeks is famed for his illustrations for children’s books, including “When the world was new”, “This is Still Rainbow Snake Country” and “The Pheasant and Kingfisher”. He wrote and illustrated “Enora and the Black Crane” for which he won the 1992 UNICEF: Ezra Jack Keats Award for International Excellence in Children’s Book Illustration.

Meeks is represented in many national and international public and private collections.

Kathy Golski
15 June 2010 – 31 August 2010

Golski has long been admired for her lyrical and airy watercolours of the Australian landscape. For her new exhibition at Moree the artist has painted large-scale works that show her considerable confidence and panache in handling the medium of watercolour.Golski’s accomplishment at portrait painting has been well-recognised and, over the years, she has received many significant commissions. 

Alongside her art Golski is well-known as a writer and has published books including My two husbands (Penguin Australia) and Watched by Ancestors (Hodder Headline). 

Golski trained at London’s Camden Institute and Goldsmith College and received in 1963 her Bachelor of Arts Degree at Sydney University.

John Morris
15 June 2010 – 31 August 2010

Newcastle artist John Morris is famed for his dark and mysterious and highly detailed landscapes. Some of his new work however, uses abstracted geometric forms, such as prisms, with strong reflections. The new pictures were the result of a difficult family time. Morris lives and practices in Newcastle, NSW. His work is held in the collections of Artbank and many regional collections including Maitland Regional Art Gallery and Newcastle Region Art Gallery. The artist is currently head of the school of art at Newcastle TAFE.

Elaine Russell
9 April – 15 June 2010

Elaine Russell was born in 1941 at Tingha in northern New South Wales near Moree. She spent most of her childhood on the Aboriginal mission at Lake Cargelligo, where her father was a handyman. In 1993, she enrolled in a visual arts course and was finally able to realise her lifelong ambition to be a painter. Her work is represented in many public galleries, including the Moree Plains Gallery. Russell has published several books, including
“A is for Aunty” (ABC Books, 2000). 

Stephen King
9 April – 16 May 2010

Stephen King is a prolific sculptor who lives in Walcha, NSW. His tough and roughly-hewn works in timber have a strong connection with the land. His work bears a relationship to the innovative carved trees (or dendroglyphs) created by the Aboriginal people who have lived in north-west for hundreds of years. King was a chief instigator of Walcha’s impressive public art program whereby artists from across Australia have created and installed significant works of art and furniture throughout the town. King’s work is represented in the collections of Newcastle Regional Art Gallery, Tamworth Regional Art Gallery and Canberra’s Parliament House.

Ken O'Regan
1 March – 6 April 2010

Ken O’Regan is well known in the Hunter region of NSW through regular exhibitions, works of art in public places and education projects. He uses waste materials, especially plastics, to create powerful assemblages and installations. His work is conceptual, but is strongly connected to the physicality of the materials and to the processes necessary to convert them to his aesthetic needs.