Exhibitions on Slide
Childhoods Past
Children’s art of the twentieth century
A traveling exhibition from the National Gallery of Australia, featuring children’s drawings and paintings collected by Frances Derham (1894-1987), artist and educational pioneer. Her unique and important collection of children’s art from Australia and around the world, gathered over more than half a century, was donated to the people of Australia in 1975 and is held at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. The images in this exhibition (80 works on paper) portray personal and cultural identity, family and school life, social and political events by children from indigenous Australian communities, urban and regional Australia, former Australian territories New Britain and Papua New Guinea, and Europe.
Dreamtime to the New Millennium
An exhibition that surveys the development and artistic achievement of Indigenous artists. This exhibition traces the changes that have taken place in Indigenous art over the years, showing its diversity and capacity for innovation. The joint exhibition of more than 60 works has been assembled from the private collection of the Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University, Professor Di Yerbury, and the University collection.
In addition to outstanding works in the traditional genres of Indigenous art, including major paintings by leading Papunya artists, the joint exhibition is unusually strong in displaying a range of well known works that carry a socio-political message by important contemporary artists from urban locations.
Intimate Glimpses
Intimate Glimpses is an exhibition of 90 black and white photographs by three photographers, Effy Alexakis, Michelle Wilson and Mario Bianchino. The variety of images contribute to the many histories the inhabitants of this country hold, and serve to alter our perception of what it means to be an Australian in this year of the Centenary of Federation. The experiences of the people depicted are as diverse as Greek-Australians living in Queensland to the locals surfing at Avalon Beach and on to the strength of the Rainbow Serpent’s existence in Aboriginal Australia.
Women Looking at Women
A fresh look at this very popular exhibition which explores the diversity of women’s lives. It tackles the historical representation of women as the other and covers issues such as identity, sexuality, love, desire, motherhood, old age and death. The exhibition features artists such as Davida Allen, Linda Klarfeld, Wendy Stavrianos, Julie Rrap, Deborah Walker, and Jenny Watson, and includes some new works to the collection.
Palaeographia
Throughout history, fossils have always fired the human imagination. Palaeographia will be an exhibition of original Australian artworks and fossil specimens, drawing its inspiration from the rich Australian fossil record. It will illustrate the long and varied history of life on our ancient continent and its adjacent marine realm through exhibiting scientific illustrations, interpretative artworks and original specimens. A common focus to both scientific study and the artmaking process is the exploration of the world around us; Palaeographia will stand to enhance and project this fusion of art and science.
Errol Davis Retrospective
A major exhibition tracing the development of this outstanding sculptor over a sixty year period. The exhibition will look at the way nature and music has inspired his sculptural forms. As curator of the Macquarie University Sculpture Park he has worked and given much needed support to many of our well known sculptors whose works now reside at Macquarie due to untiring work by Errol Davis. The collection has grown from 25 to 65 and now boasts to be the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. The exhibition marks a tribute to Davis’ immense talents as a sculptor and shows the passion he has in order to produce the form and movement that are evident throughout his works.
Central Street Live
A major survey exhibition that documents the period 1966-70 of the infamous Central Street Gallery that brought the international to Sydney. The gallery was always in a state of aesthetic overdrive, it confidently introduced “hard edge” abstraction into the canon of Australian art and preempted the genesis of conceptual and performance art in the 1970s. But like a candle burning at both ends, Central Street Gallery was short-lived.
Artists include Gunter Christmann, Max Cullen, James Doolin, Barry Hirst, Michael Johnson, Tony McGillick, Ian Milliss, Harold Noritis, Alan Oldfield, Wendy Paramor, Rollin Schlicht, Joseph Szabo, Vernon Treweeke, Dick Watkins, John White & Normanna Wight. The display contains paintings, sculpture, installation, letters, photographs & posters.
Roland Wakelin: Master of Colour
This is the first survey exhibition of Roland Wakelin’s work since 1967, who is one of the most admired painters of 20th Century art in Australia. The exhibition will show his diversity and talent through the many subject areas he chose such as portraits, landscape and still life. Colour and its masterful use and control was one of the major aspects of his genius. He was the founder of the modern movement in Australia, which is clearly indicated in this exhibition, where he continually strove to represent his conviction of artistic honesty and directness.
Significant Tilt: Art and the Horizon of Meaning
Interesting things happen around the edges, off stage and in the margins; confessional scribblings, larger shadows, the signs for map reading, all the hints of a wider horizon of meaning outside the frame. This exhibition draws on the strengths of the Macquarie University Collection in indigenous art and is supplemented by a range of contemporary artists exploring this range of interests. Themes will include the mapping of meaning, acts of erasure and mark making, the slippage of cultural edges, the re-mythologising of the landscape and apocalyptic visions of the future.
Artists: Peter Booth, Marion Borgelt, Leonard Brown, Andrew Browne, Gordon Bennett, Kate Briscoe, Richard Byrnes, Liz Coats, John Coburn, Charles Cooper, Nicole Ellis, George Gittoes, James Gleeson, Tim Johnson, Emily Kngwarreye, Lindy Lee, Hector Jandanay, Ginger Riley Munduwalawala, Noelene Lucas, Paul Miller, Trevor Niickolls, Lin Onus, Marita Sambono, Wendy Stavrianos, My Le Thi, Rosemary Valadon, Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal) and Susan White.
Proof: Portraits from the Movement 1978 – 2003
This historic exhibition of more than 70 portraits is a unique collection of both an historical and retrospective nature that chronicles the cultural and political struggles of two generations of Indigenous Australians and their continuing testimony to gain autonomy. The striking black and white photographs included in the exhibition feature many of the key figures central to the struggles - activists such as Marcia Langton and Gary Foley; Mum Shirl and other community leaders; artists Wandjuk Marika and Thancoupie; and writers, dancers, filmmakers and photographers. The portraits on display in Proof are testament to Gemes’ engagement with the people who make up the Movement – the immense relationship between the photographer and subject is unmistakable in every portrait.
The Northwood Group
The Northwood Group of painters consisted of Roland Wakelin, Lloyd Rees, George Lawrence and John Santry. On the fringe of this group of close friends was Douglas Dundas who frequently tagged along.
The group derives its name from the suburb of Northwood on the lower North Shore of Sydney, where these four painters lived roughly 1940 until 1960. The group did not constitute a united movement nor did it necessarily adhere to any one common aesthetic; each artist painted in his own style and each conceived and interpreted the landscape quite differently. However, all were united by a common enjoyment of landscape painting and of plein air sketching. North Ryde provided the subject for many of their paintings of the 1940s and 50s.