Ok, so the first one off the ranks is Burrinja situated in the leafy Hills suburb of Upwey. So its not exactly regional but a good pit stop if you’re on your way up further into the Yarra Ranges.
In the last few years Burrinja has had an upgrade to their theatre and carparking facilities.
Operating as not-for-profit gallery, Burrinja houses art, artist studios and has all sorts of live performance. They also have a cafe/restaurant and a kids playground area.
The annual Dandenong Ranges Open studios Festival is on this weekend. Makers from around the hills will open their studio doors to the public. See the brochure here.
Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) will present both new and major existing works by highly regarded Melbourne-based artist Greg Creek in its leading winter exhibition The Desktop Drawings from 30 May to 9 August.
The catalyst for this exhibition was SAM’s acquisition in 2014 of The Melbourne Desktop Drawing, originally commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in 2003.
Shepparton Art Museum Director Kirsten Paisley said:
‘Securing The Melbourne Desktop Drawing for SAM has been very exciting due to the scale and importance of this extraordinary work.
‘This exhibition provides the first opportunity to really understand a major part of Creek’s practice, in the desktop drawings. Initially beginning as the throw away blotting sheets for Creek’s large allegorical oil paintings, the desktop works have since become a focus of his practice, significant in their own right. The exhibition will also present ChatterShapes, a 52m wall-based work previously shown only in Scotland, and a body of approximately 40 new drawings Greg is making specifically for SAM’s show, that explore Love, Death and Politics.
‘Greg Creek: The Desktop Drawings will map associations with a life-time of remembrances, knowing, observances and longing. The exhibition works like a junk shop of ideological symbolism whereby the act of collectivism, architecture, language, consumerism, national politics and daily life all become the one subject, a poetics of life.’
Created on modest scaled desks and yet sometimes beguiling by their incredible length, Greg Creek’s drawings focus upon the richness of a studio process that captures the interaction between the incidentals of everyday events and universal contexts.
Greg Creek: The Desktop Drawings brings together a selection from Creek’s extraordinary drawing practice now spanning 20 years – ranging from Melbourne via Europe to Shepparton with a highlight the growing body of new drawings commissioned specifically by SAM for The Drawing Wall #19, showing from 30 May to 30 August 2015.
An architectural wonder, TarraWarra is set in beautiful Healsville and worthy of a visit. After your visit to see some art get your self a glass of wine and roll down the big hill!
Current Exhibition
EARTH AND SKY
JOHN MAWURNDJUL AND GULUMBU YUNUPINGU
The exhibition Earth and Sky curated by Hetti Perkins, features a selection of bark paintings by John Mawurndjul and Gulumbu Yunupingu, two of the most outstanding Australian artists of our time. In bringing the work of these two artists together, the exhibition offers a panoptic view of ‘country’ from an Indigenous perspective. Both artists engage with and represent the natural world in a highly sophisticated and conceptual aesthetic form. Their work distils the spiritual nature of this engagement in work that resonates with a power that is both ceremonial and celebratory.
Part of ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2015 11 April–17 May 2015, a Melbourne-wide Festival of art exhibitions, forums and talks seeking to harness the creative power of the Arts to
inform, engage and inspire action on climate change.
For more information: www.artclimatechange.org
Check out the website to see what’s on in this great town!
I haven’t visited this little town for many years but I’m always hearing great things about this gallery. It’s up Gippsland way, so take off for a lovely day trip!
