Artists capture marks of time
LOCAL and regional exhibitions interpret nature and the world in different and personal ways that are thoughtful and evocative, spectacular and impressive, individual and entertaining.
THE TOOWOOMBA REGIONAL ART GALLERY
is presenting the exhibition Duration comprising works drawn from the gallery’s Toowoomba City Collection.
Here, duration meaning the continuation of something, references the marks of time upon the landscape.
In Judy Watson’s series of etchings there is a symbolic ritual engagement with landscape.
Relics signalling an ancestral presence are fused with place and underpin a sense of Country.
Her Holes in the Land pieces allude to repatriation issues of sacred artefacts appropriated during European colonialism.
Watson’s artworks become statements about the marginalisation of cultural heritage and identity that compromises the feeling of belonging to place.
The ceramic vessels by Kevin Wright are tactile entities, objects of sacrament and ceremony that are the fecund embodiment of Mother Earth.
The succulently surfaced painting Consciousness rising from a shallow grave by Michael Tierney can be read as a vertical landscape like works by Mark Rothko.
It is a landscape that evokes the passage of time in which place and space merge as memory.
The focal point of the exhibition is the big painting by David Rankin.
Life along the ridge is a saga. It tables the ravages of time on the scrubby detritus of a forest floor.
It is a transitory landscape that could trace a day, a year, or a millennium.
It is outside time, yet it captures and holds time in moments of stillness on the edge of frenetic movement.
THE FEATHER AND LAWRY GALLERY,
4 Russell Street, is featuring work by Sydney based botanical artist, Jenny Fusca.
The large scale floral portraits of exaggerated realism are impressive studies in light, shadow, and exquisite detail.
Blousy peonies on the verge of collapse are sensuous, delicate, and pictorial.
In the popular and quite crowded genre of flower art, it is refreshing to see works that are beautiful paintings that happen to be of flowers.
They are decorative, visually appealing, and have little secrets to discover.
THE LOCKYER VALLEY ART GALLERY
in Gatton is hosting Home Grown an exhibition by eighteen locally based artists.
The participants could submit subjects of their choice, a diversity which probably challenged the installation team.
But the resulting exhibition is a coherent presentation that is bright, lively, and full of interest.
Animal studies proliferate including a little seal by Lyndall Dooley, stylized cats and dogs by A J Gogas, a multi-coloured bull by Gweneth Litfin, and a swan by Marilyn Leitch.
Particularly entertaining are the fishes by Joanne Joyce.
Careful pencil studies by Helen Terrauds, portraits by Zeny Vallier, flowers by Rhominy Janke and Margaret Holt, and flow patterned abstracts by Jean McNeil contribute to the variety of the show.