Saturday, June 25, 2016

New NERAM exhibitions - Views of Landscape and Home

On Friday, the New England Regional Art Museum in Armidale opened its latest series of exhibitions.

Views of Landscape looks is a new exhibition looking at the traditional genre of landscape. The painting from the exhibition is Elioth Gruner's Winter afternoon, Bellingen 1937.

Views of Landscape explores a number of themes related to landscape painting including a feature wall of rare paintings of local landscapes dating back to the 1930s including depictions of Bellingen, Coffs Harbour, Uralla and other New England locations .

“In 1921 the artist Elioth Gruner passed through the New England region on his way north, setting up his easel, painting the landscape as he went and reputedly staying with farmers and graziers in return for giving them an artwork to keep,” said curator Robert Heather, Director of the Museum. “Later in the 1930s he returned to the region and obviously travelled along the Waterfall Way because a series of gorgeous landscapes he painted then are now in the Howard Hinton Collection here at NERAM.”

“The Howard Hinton Collection was originally assembled as a teaching collection for Armidale Teachers College and Hinton wanted to make sure that it included all of the key painting themes of his era,” said Mr Heather. “Looking through this collection of over 1000 artworks we have wonderful examples of portraits, still life, nudes, landscapes and seascapes to choose from for our exhibitions.”

“In this exhibition we explore the way in which artist’s views of the landscape have evolved from the traditional English countryside of nineteenth century painter Samuel Palmer through to the contemporary interventions of Christo around Sydney Harbour in the late 1960s and the work of contemporary urban artists today such as George Gittoes.”

“This exhibition includes works by leading Australian artists including Arthur Streeton, Elioth Gruner, Adrian Feint, Margaret Olley, Lloyd Rees and many others that will enable our visitors to experience a range of high quality landscape painting, prints and drawings.”

A second exhibition explores the idea of Home. This is Raphaela Rosella's One day I’ll go home and meet my mother 2016, colour photograph.

This exhibition brings Armidale’s international communities together with the Aboriginal and broader communities by creating connections around the idea of ‘home’ through art, music and stories.
The exhibition opened with a welcome to country by Aunty Barbra and a performance by the HOME drumming group.

It features large scale photographic portraits by award-winning photographer Raphaela Rosella with images, personal stories and creative contributions collected from and created by community members during Beyond Empathy’s HOME project in 2015.

HOME was a multi-arts project that included the creation of a community choir and drumming group, photographic portraits and storytelling, with the choir and drumming group creating a forum for connection by meeting and performing regularly.

“Raphaela Rosella’s powerful photographic portraits form the heart of this exhibition which explores how a number of different communities have made their home in Armidale and the New England region,” said NERAM's Robert Heather.

Beyond Empathy use ar tforms that resonate with participants and aims to disrupt old ways of thinking and empower marginalised people to engage with their communities, create new narratives and shift perceptions.

The HOME project was supported by the Multicultural NSW Unity Grants program and will be on show at NERAM until Sunday 14 August 2016.

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