Using textiles to explore the visual language of urban architectural facades, Vicki Ames’ solo exhibition Traces highlights the ageing surface qualities of buildings and the histories they reveal.
Tend/er is an interactive exhibition that brings people together to encourage thought about ways of caring within communities. Physical and online components are woven together into an immersive and reflective experience.
Local photographers celebrate the local natural and built environment of the Shire of Mundaring in the Explore and Expose Photography Exhibition (E² Challenge). A partnership between Shire of Mundaring, Neami National, Mundaring Arts Centre and Mundaring Camera Club, the competition is designed to encourage the community to rediscover and share stories of the wonderful place in which they live
Exploring the role of pollinators in ecosystems, with a focus on local native birds, bats and insects, school children from across the eastern region have explored the theme Things with Wings for the annual Mundaring Environmental Art Project.
Surface Tension sees ceramic artists Stephanie Hammill and Andrea Vinkovic explore how clay transforms when interacting with other materials and echoes the journey of discovery, collaboration and skill sharing these senior practitioners have undertaken over the past two years. Manipulated in non-traditional ways, the resulting ceramic creations are complex and unconventional, yet beautiful.
For her latest solo show, Brisbane based artist Kate Hallen combines memories and histories with the fallible effects of dementia, blurring her own recollections with those of her late Grandfather, who suffered from the disease.
Connecting to her Norwegian heritage, Hallen explores the effect dementia has had on her understanding of her family history. A family horse, a return to the sea, and a country’s invasion are among the plethora of collected objects and memories left in his wake. These details are combined as poignant images which explore the inextricable connections between memory and identity.
A loved one with dementia. The emotions swirl, the innate pursuit of evocative responses obsesses the mind. Is this person just a shell? Or are there thoughts and feelings within? In this exhibition Johnson explores the roller-coaster relationship between carer and dementia patient - a relationship torn apart by the differing brain behaviours of each participant. Will there ever be a cure? In the meantime, the determination to find a flicker of recognition or a smile conjuring memories of the person’s past, showing they are present, becomes the fundamental quest.
40 artists, arts workers, and community members have looked back at their connection to Mundaring Arts Centre, and towards the future of arts in the eastern region for The Face of Fingerprints. The short film takes a moment on the 40th anniversary of the arts centre’s establishment to create an archive of the people and passion behind the organisation’s success.
Curated by Greg Sikich and Jess Boyce
Pairing emerging artists with established creatives who have been part of Mundaring Arts Centre’s journey, Continuity and Change; Future celebrates 40 years of nurturing creative potential. Twenty exhibiting artists have shared practice and the creative journey to create new collaborative and individual works informed by these relationships.
In her depiction of landscape, Rickman exploits the potential for mark making and layering inherent in the monotype process. Each layer alters the previous state, simultaneously creating and denying form. Her ambiguous landscapes evoke personal and collective memory: faint, forgotten or altered recollections.
Curated by Cathy Swioklo
Six artists with connections to Midland TAFE’s former Environmental Art course explore the concept of Survival: Fight or Flight. Using a variety of mediums the artists delve into issues that question our existence in a world fraught with challenges. An exciting exhibition evoking a juxtaposition of responses by recognised and mid-career artists Denise Brown, Peter Dailey, Bev Iles, David Small, Cathy Swioklo and Patricia Tarrant.
“Family stories beyond the dates of significant events are lost if not recorded.” Through contemporary textiles, Wells explored the changing roles, responsibilities and expectations across three generations of maternal women from her family, capturing shared history and the cultural structures that shaped the paths of their lives.
Claire Davenhall worked in residence to create an installation based on the first fleet of “lost souls”, shipped from England to Australia in 1788, complementing a series of sculptural works created prior to the show, exploring the stories of multicultural migration to Australia.
Rory Dax Paton, Adam Ismail and William Leggett shared insights into the industrial, multidisciplinary arts undertaken at Studio Payoka in the Perth Hills. Presenting two and three dimensional works demonstrating their prowess with constructed objects, experimental print and painting techniques.
Revisiting the Midland Railway Workshop’s significant contribution to the social and economic fabric of the Eastern region, works from the City of Swan Art Collection by Penny Coss and Nigel Hewitt were displayed alongside contemporary photographic works by Eva Fernandez. Historians Jude Carr and Lisa Buck presented historical photographs, oral histories and rail objects in juxtaposition to Futures Lab’s interactive digital railway pattern 3D printing installation. Capturing the aesthetic of the workshop patterns and reinterpreting local social history this exhibition brought together a blend of approaches and eras to ignite new discoveries.
Curated by Jude van der Merwe
Olga Cironis, Geoffrey Drake-Brockman, Kevin Draper, Stuart Elliott, Sarah Elson, Dawn Gamblen, Phil Gamblen, Peter Hill, Angela McHarrie, Denise Pepper, Monique Tippett and Tony Windberg reflected on the tools they employ in their arts practice and reminded us that, as makers and thinkers, tools are an essential part of an artist’s life. Works presented encapsulated the conventional and the technological to the metaphorical, with a number of artists drawn to concepts of an earlier history and tradition.
Tea and the sharing of tea is celebrated by many cultures in very diverse and often ritualistic ways. Tea drinking habits can be found worldwide. After water, it is the most widely consumed drink in the world. In conjunction with Antipodean Encounters, Western Australian ceramicists celebrated tea ware and food as a central point of cultural dialogue, presenting their vessels alongside loaned collections of Taiwanese tea ceremony sets.
Personal objects were the catalyst for conversation between local artists and members of the Perth Taiwanese community who recently immigrated to Western Australia. The artists translated and contextualized these dialogues, creating new works to help navigate the increasingly complex issues embedded in the hybrid cultural society in which we live.
Curated by Mikaela Castledine
The current trend towards fixing or reinventing, as a reaction to our throw away culture, acknowledges something that artists have always done, seeing the beauty in unexpected places. MAC celebrates the ingenuity of our members with an exhibition of works created from the discarded, the broken or the abandoned.
Promoting the creative expression and talents of young people aged 15 – 25 years from across WA, Home presented a diverse range of two and three dimensional works via film, traditional and experimental media. Investigating the theme, “What makes a home”, City of Swan staff provided young people with a platform to exhibit and speak about issues that not only affect them, but also their community via the Youth Out Loud public speaking competition.
Stephanie Reisch explored mystical and shamanistic precepts through notions of trace and essence whilst creating works in her residency. Grounded in animal alchemy and prehistoric rituals, her works encompassed experimentation in drawing, painting,
sound and digital media.
Curated by Clare Stroud and Lisa Hegarty
Renowned landscape photographer and State Living Treasure, Richard Woldendorp AM, shared his rarely seen early black and white images that launched his long and successful career in photography. Spanning three continents and almost twenty years, the retrospective included his first experimental images from 1956; his early award-winning portraiture from 1961; and photographs for one of his earliest books, ‘Indonesia’, taken in 1971.
400 students from Aveley, Caversham, Clayton View, Malvern Springs and Gidgegannup Primary Schools in the City of Swan immersed themselves in this year’s theme to create designs for the 2018 Swan Environmental Art banners. 12 students were selected, repainting their works on a large scale with artist Louise Cook. The works were then photographed to create 76 banners to be displayed throughout Guildford, Gidgegannup and Midland.
Nationally renowned Badimaya artist Julie Dowling presented an exhibition of new works highlighting the revival of First Nations languages within a local and global context. The suite of miniature portraits represented the importance of cultural preservation on a personal scale, while the larger works paid homage to the significance of the Whadjuk region to the Noongar people and illustrated Dowling’s exploration of Midland’s history and the individuals who contributed to its evolving story.
Fremantle artist Tim Maley informally worked with the Western Australian Museum in 2013 to draw and paint a selection of specimens from their natural history Collection. The series of works on paper shown in Specimens draws upon their collection as source material with meticulously illustrated examinations of the form, colour and texture of animals and insects.
Did you know that Mundaring Arts Centre also manages Midland Junction Arts Centre (MJAC)? If you are looking for even more arts and cultural experiences in the region visit the MJAC website for details.
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