Event Type: Exhibitions

Presented by Rick Crossland

Daily opening times:

September 7 – 18, 2023

9am – 6pm

“A diverse collection of images that suddenly caught my eye, that I found beautiful, transformed by the light and atmosphere at that time. The scene can change ‘In the Blink of an Eye’ but in my paintings I try to catch an impression, a memory of time and place.”

Whilst trying my luck at fishing on a family holiday on Flinders Island I caught sight of the late afternoon light on the waves. It was breathtaking. I dropped the rod and ran to the car to grab my easel and painting gear to record the image before the light changed. I had to work fast as the sun dropped behind the dunes at the back of the beach. ‘In the Blink of an Eye’ the scene had changed but luckily, I had caught an impression, a memory, a feeling of that particular time and place.

This exhibition is a collection of plein air work done over the year at various places, coastal, rural and urban in Tasmania, including Flinders Island. Despite the many challenges of plein air painting – fickle weather, tides that can’t be controlled, light that is always changing and curious passers-by, I prefer to paint in front of my subject. All the answers are there in front of you, you see people and stuff you just can’t invent. It’s always about the effects of light. I must work fast to capture the image before the conditions change and for that reason, most of my paintings in the exhibition will be small. However, some of the collection will be larger paintings that required repeat visits to the same location, when the conditions were similar.

The subjects are diverse, images that suddenly caught my eye, that I found beautiful, transformed by the light and atmosphere at that time. I want to convey to the viewer the real colours, mood and feeling of the place or object. The way I paint is very challenging. However, I love it and get tremendous joy when others connect with my paintings and ‘see’.

Presented by Margaret Skowronski

Daily opening times:

August 24 – September 4, 2023

10:00 AM – 4:00 PM

In this exhibition I show a variety of calligraphy images in Sumi ink (2014 – 2023) full of suggestions, hints of nature, animals and human forms – often elusive, partly revealed, but mostly concealed so that they just tug at the viewer`s imagination.

Inspired by travelling to Japan and China I present my unique way of exploring art calligraphy with freedom of expression and subconscious artistic interpretation of feelings emerging in my soul in response to unrest in the world and the ever-changing Universe.

Presented by Resource Work Cooperative

22 – 30 July 2023 | 10am-5pm

Opening event: July 21st, 6pm

Since 1995 Art from Trash has helped highlight the vast amount of usable resources sent to landfill through artistic endeavours and shown the beauty that can be found in what is traditionally thought of as waste.

Since 1995, Art from Trash’s goal has been to encourage a deeper discussion about reuse and the negative outcomes of our consumer driven society and how to reduce the vast amounts of usable items sent to landfill every day.

Artists and makers both established and emerging, schools, community groups and everyone in between are invited to explore all types of materials through creative reuse. A horse made from salvaged wire? A sculpture made from crockery? Clothes created from old photographs? Almost anything is possible and probable when, instead of thinking outside the box, we use the box to create something completely new.

Art from Trash is one of the only exhibitions where you could see all these plus a cornucopia of other amazing works all created from something someone else thought was waste.

Resource Work Co-operative is proud to present Art from Trash 2023 at the Long Gallery from July 22 to July 30 2323 and would like to thank our partners the City of Hobart and Salamanca Arts Centre.

Presented by Mark Lleonart

Daily opening times:

3 – 27 August, 2023

9:00 AM – 4:30 PM

Variations to Daily Opening Times :

Saturday and Sunday 10 am to 5 pm.

Except Saturday 5 th August 9 am until 6 pm.

Step into a world of tree climbing lobsters, mischievous echidnas, quirky street art, palm frond sculptures … and a musical flower cart.

With a degree in zoology and PhD in marine science my art practice is informed by the natural world, its inhabitants, and issues relating to these. Conservation themes and aspects of biology I find amusing or fascinating are topics of my art as, is the way we humans view our fellow life-forms. My major art & philosophic influences are David Attenborough, Charles Darwin and Dr Seuss.

The exhibition ranges over a diversity of media, playfully depicting native, non-native and imaginary fauna, vegetables & flowers … and through a combination of art and science: singing plants.

Incongruous echidnas and the occasional marsupial mess with European art still life tropes; “street art” fence paling works sit alongside sculptures combining storm-tossed palm fronds and tip-shop finds. There are unlikely signs (welcome to the Bahamas Dugong Polo Club) and adjustable gauges to monitor the performance of one’s vegetables!

In recent years my art practice has expanded from painting on canvas, painting on timber, and sculpture to interactive kinetic art using light, sound and occasionally vegetables. My plant music art is intended to bring the audience closer to the vegetal world through a mix of science, art & music. Variations have been exhibited in Science festivals and the parks of Hobart during summer.

Presented by Tasmanian Ceramics Association

Opening Event:

Aug 3, 2023 – 6pm

Daily opening times:

Aug 3, 2023 – Aug 21, 2023

10:00 AM – 4:00 PM

Variations to Daily Opening Times :

21st August closing at 1pm

To evolve – to develop gradually by a natural process.

Over time ceramics has seen a phenomenal evolution – from the simplest of forms used in

functional vessels by our earliest ancestors to the modern-day interpretations of

contemporary art. Today we use much the same processes to turn earth into baked clay.

Evolved – the 2023 TCA 51 st Annual Members Exhibition, encourages its members to take

inspiration from all areas of ceramics – sculptural, imaginative, and functional, to showcase

the extensive and diverse methods that today’s ceramicist uses to express creativity across

our island.

Presented by Scott Livesey Galleries

3 – 13 August 2023

OPENING NIGHT

Aug 4, 2023 – 6pm

RSVP ESSENTIAL: info@scottliveseygalleries.com

OPENING HOURS

10:00 AM – 4:00 PM

Variations to Daily Opening Times :

3 August, 12-5pm

13 August, 10am-2pm

Jennifer Riddle’s atmospheric landscapes depicting the remote Southwest wilderness of Tasmania. Driven by her relationship with nature, Riddle conveys a sense of intimacy, awe, and connection through the ephemeral sublimity of light and weather on the land. Riddle was the 2022 winner of the prestigious landscape art award, Glover Prize.

This exhibition draws upon what our world has lost and forgotten – opening up conversations surrounding our most ancient and rare landscapes and the emotional impact of their presence in the context of today’s rapidly changing world. With concerns surrounding humanities growing disconnection from our natural world and the growing vulnerability of wilderness landscapes, I aim to evoke a sense of unity and peaceful harmony, reuniting our innate relationships with the sublime and humbling landscapes of Bathurst Harbour and Port Davey in Tasmania’s remote Southwest.

I’ve been returning to this region, studying the light, changing weather conditions and observing the unique geological and ecological presence that pulses

throughout this time-weathered land for over eight years. Each return visit births a series of new paintings,

deepening my love, appreciation, and emotional connection to this place. Through this ongoing relationship, I focus on the silent atmospheric beauty that hangs in the air – the same transcendental awe that has helped me through a time of loss, enriching my spiritual growth and informing my art practice for the past two decades. It is here, in these quiet moments, where I’ve found myself deepening my senses to the volume of air before me – surging an awareness no longer of oneself but a consciousness that extends well beyond.

Through this connection, I hope to create an informed representation that evokes a sense of place – honouring this land’s past and the deepening vulnerability of the wilderness landscape as we grapple with the realities of climate change on our most precious environments. With sentiments surrounding our innate connection with nature and the importance of strengthening this relationship, I reflect on this land’s ancestral heritage and acknowledge the traditional owners of this country, the Needwoonee and Ninunee Peoples and their deep reciprocal relationship with the Land, Sea, Waterways, Sky and Culture.

As this landscape confronts a new dawn in its long history, I examine the intensity of emotions that have surfaced collectively during the recent epochal events

surrounding global warming and the lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic. As the flaws of high-density urban living and our growing segregation from green living spaces revealed our collective innate response to seek nature and slow our rhythms in its presence. As a result, our national parks, beaches, and bush trails became a refuge from their urban confines – exposing our primal need to escape and immerse ourselves within its natural beauty. A sense of realisation filtered through the chaos and mayhem, and our need to be with nature became the clarity from which we found hope.

Today, more and more studies confirm what many cultures have known for thousands of years, in that we are a part of nature, not separate from it, and immersing in a natural environment provides health benefits to both our physical and mental well-being—proving how imperative it is to rethink how we live our lives, not only for the health of ourselves but for the health of our future generations and our most vulnerable species and ecosystems that inhabit this great earth.

Through empirical observations, empathy and love for this raw and rare wilderness, I hope to provide a soulful space within these paintings. One that offers a quiet place beyond the foreground and into the depths of the horizon, illuminating lost memories and renewing the innate threads that bind us to this earth and together.

Presented by David Hearne

Daily opening times:
13 – 16 July, 2023
10am – 4pm

Medieval Madness gone rogue in the Tasmanian Gothic

Tasmanian Gothic is a cliché of fantasy, surrealism, modernism, appropriation, abstraction and expressionism mashed together into a contemporary vulgarity. This vulgarity is defined by the question, has anything changed since the medieval times?

These cliched movements and themes have been pummelled together and placed on a broadsheet that is suggestive of the current and contemporary Tasmanian landscape (figuratively and metaphorically). A Gothic element of decay and horror is fused into that landscape through its subject matter which is full of medieval inklings. Literary evocations of stalked and baked creatures fuelled by the works of Lord Byron’s (Darkness) and Mary Shelley’s (Frankenstein) litter the picture plane. On occasion the players have left the scape and melted into abstraction and tactile formalism. To enhance the horror and repugnance, anti-processes and anti-techniques have been successfully and unsuccessfully explored through risk and experimentation.

When dark and surreal imagery explore the darker aspects of life the unbridled and innate pessimism of a peasant painter screams out for a deeper meaning to the term Tasmanian Gothic.  As life imitates art and art imitates life, the fall and broken nature of the characters throughout these scapes, are all faced with or have faced sin and temptation. It is we who mirror this same fear and terror in our own making of this new contemporary Tasmanian Gothic.

Jonny Scholes

20 July – 1 August 2023


Opening event:

July 20 – 5.30pm

Daily Opening Times :

Monday-Thursday: 10:00am-4:00pm

Fridays: 10:00am-5:30pm

Saturdays: 10:00am-3:00pm

Sundays: CLOSED (open by appointment)

‘Interpreted’ is a series of woven tapestries portraying a year’s worth of global news as seen through the eyes of artificial intelligence (AI).

‘Interpreted’ is a series of woven tapestries portraying a year’s worth of global news as seen through the eyes of artificial intelligence (AI).

With a gaze fixed on the future, ‘Interpreted’ has its roots in the past. Since medieval times, woven tapestries have been used to record significant events. They portrayed truth as seen by the powers that commissioned them, and often contained mistakes made by weavers. The makers of AI products also have their own biases and ulterior motivations, which are invisible to the consumer. They, too, can make mistakes. With the use of AI tools growing at an alarming rate, ‘Interpreted’ raises timely questions about how facts are gathered, curated and presented to us in the new world we already inhabit.

Although the exhibition consists of physical tapestries, at its core ‘Interpreted’ is a new media project. Drawing on a decade of experience as a software developer, Scholes has created an automated program which continually reviews all news articles as they are published around the world. An AI tool is employed to create a single image that represents each day. Using generative art techniques, the days are collected into months, and incorporated into a unique tapestry design. The result is autonomously sent off to be woven and eventually delivered by post to Jonny Scholes’ studio.

‘Interpreted’ attempts to illustrate the erosion of information as it is captured, distilled and re-disseminated. To understand the works in this exhibition, the viewer must unpick each piece with a critical eye. There are potential inaccuracies at every step – commissioner, maker, distributor and consumer all play a hand. Scholes’ exhibition asks us to consider how the artificial curation of information will impact our future years, days or minutes – and whether we are happy for AI to become a core part of the way we record our history.

Step into the mesmerizing world of Tasmania’s Colonial and Federation period, where art, history, and symbolism intertwine to shed light on the aspirations, and interactions of individuals during a transformative era of exoticism, identity quest, and societal change..

Delve into the emotions and aspirations of Tasmania’s residents during this transformative era, where  the allure of the unknown opportunity were intertwined with the quest for a distinct Australian identity. Through a fusion of art, history, and symbolism, this exhibit sheds light on the complex lives and interactions of individuals during a time of great change.

Dominating the space is a sketch of an 11 metre tall Palm tree (Canary Date Palm Phoenix Canariensis), standing as a symbol of the allure and mystique associated with the faraway colonies. These non-native Palm trees, thriving amidst Georgian and Federation buildings, evoke a sense of foreign aesthetics that captivated the imaginations of European observers. Planted over a century ago, likely from seeds sourced from the Botanical Gardens, they now embody the visions of those who meticulously tended to them. At the base of the Palm tree, a collage reminiscent of 19th-century wallpaper depicts exotic motifs that were popular during that period.

An architectural marvel featured in this exhibition is the Trinity Chapel building in Brisbane street Hobart, which witnessed multiple transformations—from army and convict barracks to a prison and court. This structure exemplifies the aspirations of many to create an ordered and refined life in Tasmania, even amidst the chaotic and occasionally violent circumstances. Nestled amidst the breathtaking natural beauty and Georgian elegance, Trinity Chapel becomes a poignant symbol of the pursuit of a better future.

Beyond the realm of history and architecture, the exhibition hints at themes of choice, personal relationships, growth, and identity. It acknowledges the role of tourism in shaping Tasmanian society, where early settlers embarked on leisurely trips up the Derwent River to New Norfolk, basking in the scenic vistas and embracing a sense of relaxation. The closure of Port Arthur in 1877 propelled it into a popular tourist destination, solidifying the long-standing connection between tourism and places of suffering. This fascination with dark tourism, prevalent in Europe until the late 1800s, persists today, with ghost and prison tours captivating audiences worldwide.

Tourism allows for contemplation of the built and natural environment, fostering a deeper understanding of the past and shaping individual and collective identities. It becomes a lens through which social structures and hierarchies are observed and evaluated. Drawing inspiration from the grand European tours, originally undertaken by idle aristocrats but later embraced by the middle and upper lower classes, tourists partake in customs and acquire “relics” that define their experiences. These judgments manifest through clothing choices, accents, manners, and the depth of engagement with the surroundings.

The exhibition also explores the phenomenon of artefact and memento collection, an enduring tradition in tourism that continues to resonate worldwide. However, this practice has led to the depletion of natural resources, such as shells on beaches and historic convict bricks, and the influx of low-quality imported products, diminishing the significance of genuine artefacts. Amidst this discussion, a group of ambiguous figures symbolises the complexities of human interaction and affections, inviting viewers to reflect upon the intricate dynamics at play.

The term ‘black swan’ meaning an unlikely or impossible occurrence is used here

As part of this experience, the exhibit  offers a little Trinity Chapel paper model, following the tradition of tasteful tourist mementos, these provide an opportunity for reflection on one’s journey and make perfect gifts for those who were unable to attend the exhibition but wish to capture its essence. Available for renowned French Loire Valley castles and major European cathedrals, these educational and portable keepsakes offer a tangible memory of a visit to Hobart Town.  

References:

“Tourists” by Lucy Lethbridge

“Hobart Town” by Peter Bolger

“Van Diemen’s Land” by James Boyce

Materials: Cartridge paper, watercolour, transparent film, LED lighting 

Model kit available at Miss Bond Salamanca and National Trust Penitentiary Chapel Site Campbell. Street Hobart $22

Presented by Amalea Smolcic

Opening times:

Friday 30 June – Sunday 30 July 2023

Sunday – Thursday 10am – 5pm
Friday – Saturday 10am – 6pm

This exhibition addresses portraiture as a form of self-expression.

I am Amalea Smolcic, a twenty-six-year-old artist living on a farm in Richmond. The environment I inhabit influences my creative process, and I draw inspiration from the picturesque beauty of the land. To me, life is more than a mere transaction with time, it requires a touch of grit, and playfulness.

This body of work delves into the portraits of fifty strangers, seeking to capture the essence of being human—our thoughts, emotions, and dreams. Instead of fixating on appearances, I explore the imaginative side of what a face represents to me, though my own lens. I strive to break down the bias that separates strangers from our loved ones, recognizing the importance and inherent goodness in every person.

The fifty canvases are arranged randomly, echoing the arbitrary nature of their selection. Each portrait stands as a unique entity while contributing to the interconnectedness shared by everyone. Colour and light take precedence over realism in my work, transcending the confines of shadows and illusions. By embracing spontaneity in material selection, I allow for the unfettered expression of artistic freedom.