Art exhibitions capture beauty
LOCAL and regional exhibitions reflect process as an exploration of form, capture fleeting moments in time, share a sense of discovery shaped by journeys, and translate youthful perceptions into artistic statements.
No Comply Gallery, 6 Laurel St, is presenting “Semiprecious” an exhibition of paintings by Karri McPherson and Katie Wagner. The structure of the environment is explored through geometric analysis in which the hard edge process offers clean, fresh areas of demarcation. In McPherson’s dynamic canvases human intervention can be read in architectural planes and streetscape-like grid patterns. Wagner’s tondo format suggests an illusion of landscape, a template of clouds and waves that shapes memory as a code of expression linked to colour symbolism and where Euclid’s line as “breadthless length” defines form.
The Arts Gallery at the University of Southern Queensland is hosting the 29th annual Heritage Bank Photographic Awards exhibition.
This prestigious event attracts entries from across Australia so it was particularly exciting that two Darling Downs photographers took out top awards. Janine Waters from Dalby won the Open category with her dramatic “Gobi Splendour” and Terry Charles won the Alwyn Kucks Memorial Prize for the best image by a Toowoomba regional photographer. Liam Hardy from Coff’s Harbour took out the Bruce Mackenzie Award. This competition is open to professional and amateur photographers and encourages youthful participation with the 7-9-year-olds forming the youngest category. Creative composition, an eye for detail, and the capturing of a precious moment have produced a strong and polished exhibition for which actually being selected is another form of winning.
The Clifton Library Foyer is providing space for another photographic exhibition, “People of Peru,” a visual portrait diary by photographer and inveterate traveller, Nelma Ward. The works are blessedly devoid of intrusive reflections as they are presented in un-glazed frames. The people are beautiful: proud, wary, happy, curious, serene, dignified, and downright cheeky. The portraits offer an insight into the history of a culture written in their faces and told in the colours and patterns of the costumes.
The Lockyer Valley Art Gallery in Gatton is showing “Perceptions”, the annual exhibition by students from Lockyer District High School. The impressive body of work happily fills the large exhibition space with diversity, colour, ideas, and messages. From meticulously decorated skate board decks to papier-mâché masks, from portraits to paper dresses, from installations to paintings the exhibition reflects thoughtful concerns, an emerging skill base, creative concepts, and constructive teaching and mentorship.
The Berghofer Centre on Baker Street is holding the 14th Southern Hemisphere Felt Makers Convergence. Local textile artists are in for a treat as an exhibition of felted artworks by local, national, and international artists will be open to the public next week on September 27-28 from 9.30am until 3pm at the Berghofer Centre.
CORRECTION: The painting “Valley of the Gorge” featured in last week’s column was by William Church.