Tamara Dean’s major solo show High Jinks in the Hydrangeas opened to audiences in November 2021. This landmark exhibition had the inaugural distinction of showing at Ngununggula, the newly established Southern Highland Regional Gallery located in Retford Park. Ngununggula means ‘belonging’ in the Gundungurra language which Dean’s new series echos. 

High Jinks in the Hydrangeas explores Dean’s desire to be in and of nature during the first global lockdown in 2020, and how interior dialogues around isolation was inextricably linked with the escape into the exterior world.

In the edit I was ready to see my body with all of the criticisms I would ordinarily inflict upon myself, but instead I saw something in myself that I had never seen before. I saw courage, agility, humour and strength. Traits that will carry me through the challenges of these times.

In pushing myself both emotionally and physically to create these works I feel that I have come away with the most personal body of work I have ever made.

-Tamara Dean, 2021

Following eight months of rural travelling chased with uninterrupted work in her Lismore studio, Lucy Vader presented a most remarkable and ambitious collection of landscape paintings in One Fine Day.

Lucy Vader spends a large portion of her year travelling regional Australia in pursuit of artistic inspiration. Excursions to Springfield in Young NSW, Millers Creek of the Merriwa Ranges and mini-residencies on the sheep farms of friends all supply Vader with creative fuel for her paintings. Vader’s travels and continual pursuit of the perfect landscape sees her work remain unmatched in its authenticity.

Vader’s eye is attuned to rural landscape in a way that only lived experience can bestow. In her paintings, the shapes of trees endemic to particular climates and regions are brought to us by immeasurable knowledge. Drifting clouds and promises of rain, azure blue heavens and patterns made by cattle and sheep are all made lively through her gestural but considered layers of paint.

Taking its title from Sylvia Plath’s 1959 poem Witch Burning, Petrina Hicks’ 2021 exhibition at Michael Reid Sydney explored the female position in contemporary society. Fly through the candle’s mouth like a singeless moth followed the artists landmark international exhibition Gothique Blanc, a mid career survey which took place at the Australian Embassy in Paris.

Historically women with knowledge, power or talent were swiftly labelled witches; a dangerous sentence which justified their murder. Most renowned are the stories of Joan of Arc and Anne Boleyn who suffered such destinies. Fast forward to today and we see women in power cast much the same: Hilary Clinton, and closer to home, Tony Abbot’s 2011 campaign against Julia Gillard, ‘Ditch the Witch’. In Fly through the candle’s mouth like a singeless moth, Hicks explores the female position in contemporary society.

Sylvia Plath’s 1959 poem Witch Burning reveals for Plath being ‘burnt at the stake’ is a metaphor for self-transformation. Plath’s poem considers that just like a knife can both harm and heal, being considered a witch was both the ultimate freedom yet her perilous demise.

By contrasting semiotics of the witch hunt, the whistleblower and the Joan of Arc figure, Hicks reveals the absurdity of our perceptions and how much we have changed throughout history or perhaps how we haven’t…

Betty Chimney & Raylene Walatinna are a mother and daughter artist duo based in the Iwantja Arts Indulkana Community in South Australia. They have exhibited together since 2016, showcasing strong collaborative paintings which are about their home country, their rich family history and more broadly important Tjukurpa (cultural history) for the Yankunytjatjara people.

Iwantja is the name of a creek where the Indulkana Community was established. The creek runs from high up in the rocky ridge all the way down to the community. There’s tjukitji (soakage), different tjukula (rock-holes) and a very special site: a specific tree that holds the Tjurki (native owl) Tjukurpa. Chimney and Walatinna’s paintings include many of these sites, and their vibrant colour choices and shimmering marks making reflect how the landscape changes from the rocky ridge to the sandy creek beds in this ancient land.

‘Sharing the process of painting with my daughter Raylene is really special. As we work I share stories with her about what it was like here when I was growing up, how it has changed over the years. When I was younger, the older ladies here taught me all about the important cultural stories and I love sharing these with my daughter through our paintings… We love making these beautiful big paintings together, we’re showing the next generations how special this place is.” Betty Chimney speaks about her close relationship with her daughter and collaborator Raylene Walatinna.

“Our collaborative paintings are about the country around Indulkana Community on the APY Lands in north-west SA. This is our home, there is a lot of important family history here for us, and this country holds a lot of important Tjukurpa (cultural history) for us Yankunytjatjara people too.’

In 2020 the latest solo exhibition from Brisbane-based artist John Honeywill opened at Michael Reid Sydney. Of his realist, sensitive oil paintings John explains, ‘I paint the quiet visual conversations between everyday objects; paintings that explore presence and stillness in the genre of the still life– ​a genre that links the intimate world with the public.’

Catherine Nelson’s latest suite of photographic artworks Future Memories was an extension of her 2010 series of the same name which speaks to the undeniable links between climate change and human activity. With the tumultuous events of 2020 presenting new challenges daily, the undeniable link between the destruction of the natural world and mankind can no longer be ignored.

It felt timely to return to the themes from that series [Future Memories, 2010] which talks about our planet, ecology and the importance of protecting what we have.
-Catherine Nelson

The large format photographic composites of Future Memories are created using a database of images captured during excursions spanning three years across four continents. From the lush, tropical flora of Costa Rica and far-north Queensland, to the rolling hills of the Greenland tundra, the fragile worlds that Catherine Nelson creates rouse cultural and environmental debates that are more critical than ever.

Catherine Nelson chose to present this exhibition using a recently developed print and paper technology that allows the works to be dry mounted and framed without glazing. By removing the need for acrylic or glass glazing, the rich colour and textures captured in Future Memories present with remarkable depth and detail, and crucially with no reflective surface.

Spéirling was Luke Shadbolt’s 2020 exhibition which took place at our former Surry Hills Gallery. Following on from his previous series Maelstrom and Acquiesce The Front, Shadbolt has drawn from sculptural and painterly influences to capture an intriguing frontier, creating a resonant point somewhere between art and raw nature.

Inis Meáin is the location of these striking images, located in the middle of the three Aran Islands off the Western Coast of Ireland. A land of sharp contrasts carved over eons; of pristine temperament punctuated by moments of crushing violence. The sheer power of the surrounding ocean attested to by the boulders littered atop the island’s mighty cliffs, tossed over 150ft from the very depths of the dark waters below.

Jospeh McGlennon’s Eclectus Australis series and Audubon Portfolio made their worldwide debut at Melbourne Art Fair 2018.

The 19th Century saw a rapid evolution in the publication of natural history books. Magnificent large-scale tomes, sumptuously bound and illustrated with hand-coloured plates, celebrated all the latest discoveries of exotic birds and animals around the world. The ornithological genius that was John James Audubon (1785-1851) had as his magnificent contribution to the world, an “elephant folio” of such engravings entitled; The birds of America: from drawings made in the United States and their Territories, 1840-1844.

It was however, Audubon’s user-friendly far more accessible library folios, of bird studies that circulated his reputation across the globe. The contemporary artist Joseph McGlennon, drawing on Audubon’s twin notions of the grand and lavish alongside the lavish and accessible – inspired the artist to undertake Australian Bird Studies from McGlennon’s Audubon Folio, 2018.

Capturing many of the birds to be found in the large-scale series Eclectus Australis, 2018, the McGlennon folio channels the 19th century notion of art as an intimate collecting pleasure. An older style of viewing to be experienced in the art of now. A viewing to be experienced slowly, colour plate by colour plate; to be savoured in private and at the collector’s leisure.