2020 Past Exhibitions
Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery
Emerge 2020
Emerge 2020 is a showcase exhibition featuring artwork created by secondary school students from across the Bundaberg region.
As the name suggests, Emerge 2020, is committed to fostering emerging talent, and strengthening public understanding of the integral role the arts plays in developing resilient, innovative and engaged community members.
The exhibition includes a broad range of approaches and expressive forms, including ceramics, drawing, graphic design, photomedia, printmaking, sculpture, textiles and paintings.
Emerge 2020 also gives an insight into the social isolation experienced by students during the COVID-19 lockdown, and the effects this has had on mental health, relationships, learning, and connectedness.
These themes are explored further through the Emerge Fringe Festival which sees the activation of public spaces through a range of art genres over the December / January period.
Bundaberg Regional Galleries encourage and acknowledge the importance of art in the community, and we are proud to offer a platform for the talented artists and creative professionals of tomorrow.
HERE + now 2020 | Artist from the Region
HERE + now 2020 celebrates the strong and vibrant visual arts practices that exist in the Bundaberg region. This exhibition, part of the Gallery’s annual program, features painting, drawing, photography, sculpture and digital works and provides the viewer with a snapshot of our creative community.
Artists: Adrienne Williams | Alice McLaughlin | Ann Grocott | Carmel Birchley | Carmen Maybanks | Debby Talan | Cate Verney | Chris Lynagh | David Booth | Edward Willes | Elaine Lyons | Emma Woodbright | Helen Francis | Ian Glenwright | Jane Marin | Jassy Watson | John Andersen | John Olsen | Julie Hylands | Kevin Aldcroft | Lesley Perk | Kym Connell | Maggie Spenceley | Marlies Oakley | Rebecca McPherson | Samantha Ephraims | Sandy Scarborough
Found! Studio Dog Exhibition & Art Trail | Adrienne Williams
Local artist Adrienne Williams has curated the works of 40 artists in the Gallery One and Vault spaces, creating a major central exhibition to launch FOUND! Studio Dog. This vast visual arts project allows us a small glimpse into the lives of artists, the solitary nature of their work, and the lovable companions who guard their studios, or live in their memories. This challenging year has brought us all to the conversation of isolation and, for some, animals have played a key role in their physical and mental wellbeing through this time. With an additional 70 artworks in 55 shop, business and cafe windows across Bundaberg and Bargara, FOUND! Studio Dog extends beyond the Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery, out into the heart of our community. The artworks and the accompanying stories embody joy, deep contemplation, and mirth, and honours the commitment all artists give to their making.
A Bridge Through Time
Image: A Bridge Through Time Exhibition
Image: A Bridge Through Time: A Brief History of Bundaberg’s Iconic Bridges – with thanks to Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads. Image courtesy of Sabrina Lauriston Photography
The Brothers Gruchy | Tim & Mic Gruchy
Highly Acclaimed digital artists Mic & Tim Gruchy bring their innovation and art to Bundaberg Regional Galleries for a spectacular show and some hands-on learning.
Image: © The Brothers Gruchy, Bub promo-A4-1
Finding Vera
This exhibition, containing fifty artworks loaned from the Bundaberg community, celebrates the incredible life of environmentalist and botanical artist, Vera Scarth-Johnson and her ties to the Bundaberg region. Renowned for her passion for conservation, and significant contributions to Australian botany, Scarth-Johnson spent many of her adult years as a cane and tobacco farmer in the area. Her colourful personality, coupled with her love of flora, is captured in this exhibition with the inclusion of some of her finest botanical illustrations of flora from the Queensland coastline, as well as rarely seen floral arrangement paintings, personal photographs, and memorabilia.
Image: Ray Peek, Vera Scarth-Johnson portrait, photograph. Image courtesy of Patricia Peek
Tradelines | Bundaberg
Using traditional and contemporary trade lines such as the Burnett River (Bural Bural), stock routes and the Bruce Highway as points of cultural exchange the exhibition Tradelines featured First Nations artists connected by these paths from this region and beyond. Curated by Dr Anita Holtsclaw and Dylan Sarra. Tradelines was held across the Bundaberg Regional Galleries in Bundaberg and Childers. It will run throughout the summer with a range of public events from workshops to artist talks, children’s programs and yarning circles.
Image: Dylan Sara, Not your king, 2018, Brass Etching
Snog of the Beast | Leah Emery
Leah Emery is an artist based in Brisbane whose practice is concerned with packaging often difficult content in a shell of mirth and whimsy to pursue her storytelling.
Her works serve as a protest to the cultural etiquette of withholding a healthy public access on topics surrounding gender identity, sex and intimacy despite being so quintessential to the human experience, as well as an objection to cultural tendencies to promote and reward an unhealthy manipulated, homogenised body aesthetic.
Image: © Leah Emery, Snog of the Beast #5 (detail), 2019, Archival inkjet print on cotton rag + Snog of the Beast 3
Childers Arts Space
Tradelines | Childers
The Tradelinesexhibition features over thirty artists with a connection to Wakka Wakka, Gubbi Gubbi, Butchulla, Gooreng Gooreng, Taribelang Bunda, Gurang, Byellee and Darumbal country. Showcasing the diverse range of Indigenous art practice found in Southern and Central Queensland this exhibition is not to be missed.
Image: Dylan Sarrra, Portrait 1, 2 and 3 (detail) 2019, printed on Japanese Kitikata Select
Image: Bianca Beeston, Bunya Nut Necklace, 2019
Art as an Act of Optimism
Art as an Act of Optimism is a retrospective of the #artsbundyathome initiative and the artworks created by various artists and members of the community during the galleries shutdown due to COVID-19.
Structures in a Landscape
Combining thoughtful consideration of composition and attention to detail, Sybil Curtis’ paintings present a survey of a moment in time, capturing the serenity and personality of industrial, agricultural and mining structures that are mostly made from simple geometric forms.
Through use of a process comprised of seeking out city-based and regional locations for subject matter, many of which have since changed drastically or no-longer exist, to then taking preliminary photographs to capture built environments which then inform the underlying structure of each painting. Addition and subtraction methods are then used to produce a coherent and visually intriguing artwork.
Presenting a body of work from a career spanning decades, each painting is intriguing and rich with detail, exploring the history of the artist’s practice along with the history of our changing industrial landscape.
Represented by May Space Gallery.
Image: Sybil Curtis, Modules (detail), 2016, oil on linen, 125 x 125cm
Image: Sybil Curtis, Komatsu Again (detail), 2011, oil on linen - triptych, 90 x 90cm