The news this week that the Margaret Olley Arts Trust will be contributing $500,000 towards the redevelopment of Lismore Regional Gallery not only highlights the late artist’s ongoing commitment to Lismore, but also her commitment to regional galleries generally.

Philip Bacon, Executor of Margaret’s Estate, presented a cheque of $500,000 to Lismore Mayor Jenny Dowell on Friday, 18^th March, at Lismore Regional Gallery. In recognition of the support of the Margret Olley Arts Trust, we will name the main gallery space in the new Lismore Regional Gallery ‘The Margaret Olley Gallery’.

Bacon said, that “This was a project very close to Margaret’s heart, going as it did to her love of, and belief in, the value of regional galleries to their communities, with of course the added attraction that Lismore was her birthplace.”

‘Spare Bedroom’, one of Margaret Olley’s paintings at the Lismore Regional Gallery.

The Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Arts Centre artgallery has been a boon for the area, and while we are not replicating what Tweed has so successfully achieved, we see that being part of this network of spaces supported by Olley (which includes the New England Regional Art Museum)  neram.com.au will have fantastic benefits in the cultural tourism space. The contribution also cements this artist as one of the most philanthropic in the Australian art world.

Notwithstanding the fact that she was born here, Olley had a longstanding relationship with Lismore. She won the acquisitive Lismore Art Prize in 1958, and then, under the Directorship of Steven Alderton, supported the establishment of the Margaret Olley Arts Centre in Lismore from 2006.

While obviously disappointing at the time, the establishment of the Margaret Olley Arts Centre in Tweed was a chance for me to reconsider the Lismore project, and seek alternatives for a facility for Lismore.

Margaret Olley in the full glory of her Sydney studio.

The result is the Lismore Quadrangle development, a $5.8 million redevelopment in Keen Street, which includes a relocated Lismore Regional Gallery, café and bookshop, public piazza, and new car parking. The project gained certainty in December 2015 when $2.85m from the National Stronger Regions Fund was announced. This is due to open late 2017.

Mayor of Lismore, Jenny Dowell said of the gift: “Our community, like many artists and galleries that have been beneficiaries of Margaret’s generosity, is so grateful for her commitment to nurturing cultural life particularly in regional Australia. Margaret Olley will always hold a special place in Lismore’s heart and through this gift from her estate; she will have a presence in the heart of our city forever.”

For more information on the gallery go to: lismoregallery

The post Margaret Olley Arts Trust donation for Lismore appeared first on .

copyright Judy Cassab, Licensed by Viscopy 2015

Judy Cassab is one of Australia’s most recognised artists, and the first female artist to win the Archibald Prize twice, and is famous for her portaits of well-known Australians. At the age of 95, Cassab is no longer making art, but her reputation remains as strong as ever, writes Lismore Regional Gallery director Brett Adlington.

When we develop exhibitions for Lismore Regional Gallery, we generally aim to connect our programs in some way to the local region. When developing this exhibition on Cassab, we were well aware of her link to the Northern Rivers, through her son John Seed’s residence at a number of multiple occupancies in the region. Seed was part of the first wave of arrivals in the early 1970s, seeking an alternative to a mainstream, city-based existence.

Cassab documented much of this, with her diary entries tracing John’s motivations, her trips north, and her developing relationship with her grandson Bodhi. As we were putting together this exhibition , we were delighted to see that Bodhi’s mother, Greta, had kept a folder full of letters and drawings sent to a young Bodhi Seed. These delightful letters chart a growing bond between Cassab and her grandson, and her growing affection for the Northern Rivers.

Juddy Cassab’s portrait of her grandson Bodhi, 1989, oil on board, 70.7 x 61cm, licensed by Viscopy 2015.

Judy Cassab, Self Portrait. 1988, oil on canvas on board, 95.5 x 77.5cm  licensed by Viscopy 2015.

Never before shown publicly, these letters form the launching point for this exhibition, with their whimsical depictions of community life, and made-up stories to charm a young boy. The exhibition is extended through work Cassab is more known for, portraits of family members, and landscapes of this region. We have also presented extracts of Cassab’s diaries from the 1970s on a rolling screen. This evocative portrait of a changing region is a final ode to family and place.

Judy Cassab – Dear Bodhi at the Lismore Regional Gallery:  18 April – 23 May 2015

The post Cassab creates a connection, and the seeds grow appeared first on .

Like many regional galleries, we tend to change over our exhibitions on a four to six weekly basis. Generally this works pretty fine, but occasionally I get hankerings to try things a bit differently and rethink how we do things. Part of this thinking is that it would be good to try some quick programming, and to ‘try’ a few things out. So from the February 7 we will be presenting a short two week programme of various projects, which will be followed up by a longer, more traditional approach (the 2014 Archibald Prize no less).

The main project is by Sydney-based artist, Keg de Souza. (allthumbspress.net/art) I first became aware of Keg’s work a few years ago, and was intrigued by the playfulness she brought to her practice, and the way in which audiences are invited to become part of the work. Primarily her work uses inflatable domes, which become spaces in which she engages with audiences over locally relevant topics.

When I started discussions about this project with Keg, she was on an Asialink residency in Jogjakarta, Indonesia. While she was there she became interested in a squatter settlement, or ‘kampung’, which was under the threat of being destroyed as a result of ubiquitous gentrification. This particular kampung was built on an old graveyard, thus the people living there had a unique relationship with the after-world. Indeed there is even a local ‘ghost buster/negotiator/expert’ who attempts to ‘move on’ these ghosts. Now however, the local inhabitants themselves are in the same situation, with the city moving them on.

Keg De Souza, If There’s Something Strange In Your Neighbourhood… 2014
Installation image (site Ratmakan kampung Indonesia), image courtesy the artist.

This project was first presented in Ratmakan kampung in October 2014 as an inflatable ghost house, Rumah Hantu, with an embroidered interior that was created from drawings by the local kids of their ghost stories and the film If There’s Something Strange In Your Neighbourhood…

Lismore Regional Gallery will be the first Australian venue to experience this wonderful work. On Friday February 20 at 11:30am, Keg will be at the Gallery to discusses If There’s Something Strange In Your Neighbourhood … and the ideas, community engagement and creative processes from which this work was built.

From the Lismore Regional Gallery’s permanent collection: John Witzig, Arcadia, 1969, black and white photograph (reprinted 2012)

Running alongside this project is The Lucinda Awards: Amazing Myths and Legends, weird and wonderful short films by local children in years 4, 5 and 6, exploring the theme of Amazing Myths and Legends; and Australia Fair, works from the Gallery’s permanent collection showing character the Australian landscape, as artists have seen it. This will include artists such as Neil Frazer, James Burgess, Albert Namatjira, Hector Gilliland, Hal Missingham, Valerie Fay Smith, John Witzig, Tim Storrier, David Strachan and Robyn Sweaney.

Showing upstairs at the gallery is Dreamer by Daphne Kal-Ma-Kuta Dux. Daphne was born in Brisbane in 1928, her people are the Joondoobarrie from Bribie Island. She began painting at the age of seventy-seven while recovering from an illness and began to feel for her Aboriginal identity which had been withheld from her throughout her life. For her, art not only healed the body, it also healed the soul – as indeed art does.

The post Something strange in the neighbourhood appeared first on .

2014 marks 60 long years for Lismore Regional Gallery. Like many regional areas at the time, it was the potential of hosting an art prize that brought a group of committed arts supporters together. Casting our minds back, if you lived in Lismore in the 1950s there was little access to what was happening in the wider art world. There were few art magazines available, and travel to Sydney and Brisbane was markedly different than it is today. And of course the internet wasn’t there to provide instant access to international culture as it does today.

Art prizes therefore were great opportunities for local communities to see artwork from across the country, and to meet the judges who were invited to come and decide the works that would become the nucleus of the gallery’s collection. The early years of the Lismore Art Prize art prize saw the likes of artists such as Herbert Badham, Lismore-born Margaret Olley, and Jon Molvig acquired for the collection.

Jon Molvig: The Child 1953, oil on board 63 x 47.5 cm

These adventurous decisions at times shocked the community, but set the collection up as an important cultural asset. My previous role as curator at Gold Coast City Art Gallery revolved working with a collection that was also initiated through an art prize. The first prize, in 1968, was won by Lismore artist Michael Taylor. The Gold Coast community reacted quite strongly about Taylor’s work, but now it holds an important place in one of Australia’s great contemporary collections.

That a Lismore-based artist won that award, against the likes of William Delafield Cook, Roger Kemp, Guy Grey-Smith, William Robinson, John Firth-Smith, Jon Molvig, Elwyn Lynn, Desiderius Orban, John Coburn and Elizabeth Cummings to name just a few, is testament to the creative energy that existed in the region at the time, and continues to do so today.

Further, it is no surprise to know that when Lismore Regional Gallery opened in 1954, it was the only public gallery on the eastern seaboard between Sydney and Brisbane – predating public galleries in Newcastle, Tweed and Gold Coast.

And yet we remain in our ‘temporary’ accommodation. However, after many ups and downs, we are continuing work towards relocating the gallery into suitable accommodation. Lismore City Council is   currently working with Arts Northern Rivers to move the Gallery into shared facilities on the old Lismore High School site – the Lismore Quadrangle.

An architect expression of interest process is now underway and funding options being investigated. The recent amazingly successful redevelopment of the Tweed Regional Gallery to incorporate the Margaret Olley studio has not stymied our resolve, instead it has ensured that what we propose is unique and embodies the culture of Lismore.

An upcoming exhibition, Lismore 2074, is a project we have embarked on to look 60 years into the future, whereby artist Duke Albada posed the question: ‘How do you imagine Lismore to be 60 years into the future?’.

Hal Missingham with 1954 Lismore Art Prize winner Edward Morris

Meeting to discuss Lismore circa 2074 with Duke Albada

Albada worked with a number of community groups, with the resultant exhibition being a sound piece that will immerse the viewer in communal utterances of the future. We invite the community to continue the conversation with the #lismore2074 hashtag.  Join in!

Showing at the same time is a wonderful body of work by Lismore artist Raimond de Weerdt. Silent Speech is a group of photographic works made by the artist both locally and internationally. Playing with the idea of photography being an arbiter of ‘truth’, de Weerdt uses his work to transform the contemporary world into place of grace and strange otherworldly beauty, conjuring up the Gothic, Film Noir, and 17^th and 18^th Century European paintings. With formal compositions and bold contrasts between light and shade, they use some of the language of those genres of film and painting, pressing us to see the world differently.

The Raimond de Weerdt exhibition  Silent Speech and Lismore 2074: Our Future Present by Duke Albada run from November 1 – December 14 2014

The post Back to the future present past appeared first on .