2020 Past Exhibitions | Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery

Emerge 2020 is a showcase exhibition featuring artwork created by secondary school students from across the Bundaberg region.  

As the name suggests, Emerge 2020, is committed to fostering emerging talent, and strengthening public understanding of the integral role the arts plays in developing resilient, innovative and engaged community members.  
The exhibition includes a broad range of approaches and expressive forms, including ceramics, drawing, graphic design, photomedia, printmaking, sculpture, textiles and paintings. 
Emerge 2020 also gives an insight into the social isolation experienced by students during the COVID-19 lockdown, and the effects this has had on mental health, relationships, learning, and connectedness.  
These themes are explored further through the Emerge Fringe Festival which sees the activation of public spaces through a range of art genres over the December / January period.  

Bundaberg Regional Galleries encourage and acknowledge the importance of art in the community, and we are proud to offer a platform for the talented artists and creative professionals of tomorrow. 

HERE + now 2020 celebrates the strong and vibrant visual arts practices that exist in the Bundaberg region. This exhibition, part of the Gallery’s annual program, features painting, drawing, photography, sculpture and digital works and provides the viewer with a snapshot of our creative community.

Featuring:

Adrienne Williams • Alice McLaughlin • Ann Grocott • Carmel Birchley • Carmen Maybanks •  Debby Talan • Cate Verney • Chris Lynagh • David Booth • Edward Willes • Elaine Lyons • Emma Woodbright • Helen Francis • Ian Glenwright • Jane Marin • Jassy Watson • John Andersen • John Olsen • Julie Hylands • Kevin Aldcroft • Lesley Perk • Kym Connell • Maggie Spenceley • Marlies Oakley • Rebecca McPherson • Samantha Ephraims • Sandy Scarborough

Local artist Adrienne Williams has curated the works of 40 artists in the Gallery One and Vault spaces, creating a major central exhibition to launch FOUND! Studio Dog. This vast visual arts project allows us a small glimpse into the lives of artists, the solitary nature of their work, and the lovable companions who guard their studios, or live in their memories. This challenging year has brought us all to the conversation of isolation and, for some, animals have played a key role in their physical and mental wellbeing through this time. With an additional 70 artworks in 55 shop, business and cafe windows across Bundaberg and Bargara, FOUND! Studio Dog extends beyond the Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery, out into the heart of our community. The artworks and the accompanying stories embody joy, deep contemplation, and mirth, and honours the commitment all artists give to their making.

Image: A Bridge Through Time Exhibition

Image: A Bridge Through Time: A Brief History of Bundaberg’s Iconic Bridges – with thanks to Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads. Image courtesy of Sabrina Lauriston Photography.

Highly Acclaimed digital artists Mic & Tim Gruchy bring their innovation and art to Bundaberg Regional Galleries for a spectacular show and some hands-on learning.

Image: © The Brothers Gruchy, Bub promo-A4-1.jpg

This exhibition, containing fifty artworks loaned from the Bundaberg community, celebrates the incredible life of environmentalist and botanical artist, Vera Scarth-Johnson and her ties to the Bundaberg region. Renowned for her passion for conservation, and significant contributions to Australian botany, Scarth-Johnson spent many of her adult years as a cane and tobacco farmer in the area. Her colourful personality, coupled with her love of flora, is captured in this exhibition with the inclusion of some of her finest botanical illustrations of flora from the Queensland coastline, as well as rarely seen floral arrangement paintings, personal photographs, and memorabilia.

Image: Ray Peek, Vera Scarth-Johnson portrait, photograph. Image courtesy of Patricia Peek.

Using traditional and contemporary trade lines such as the Burnett River (Bural Bural), stock routes and the Bruce Highway as points of cultural exchange the exhibition Tradelines featured First Nations artists connected by these paths from this region and beyond. Curated by Dr Anita Holtsclaw and Dylan Sarra. Tradelines was held across the Bundaberg Regional Galleries in Bundaberg and Childers. It will run throughout the summer with a range of public events from workshops to artist talks, children’s programs and yarning circles.

Image: Dylan Sara, Not your king, 2018, Brass Etching.

Leah Emery is an artist based in Brisbane whose practice is concerned with packaging often difficult content in a shell of mirth and whimsy to pursue her storytelling.

Her works serve as a protest to the cultural etiquette of withholding a healthy public access on topics surrounding gender identity, sex and intimacy despite being so quintessential to the human experience, as well as an objection to cultural tendencies to promote and reward an unhealthy manipulated, homogenised body aesthetic.

Image: © Leah Emery, Snog of the Beast #5 (detail), 2019, Archival inkjet print on cotton rag + Snog of the Beast 3.