Christina Reid: In Plain Sight

Exhibition Opening: Thursday 20^th September at 4.00pm in the H.R. Gallop Gallery space at CSU of drawings and prints by Christina Reid, entitled In Plain Sight.

The work is a graduation exhibition towards completion of the MVPA (Master of Visual and Performing Arts) at Charles Sturt University.  Staff, students, and others all welcome.

About Christina Reid
Photography has always played a big part in her life, as both her brother and father work as photographers.  As someone who likes to draw she has always questioned if the way she produces an image was the best way it could be done.  Photography is a medium of the real, reproducing exactly what falls in front of the lens – whereas drawing is presupposed to be invented or imagined.  She began to question our assumptions about the “truth” of an unknown photograph.  She became very interested in the Tom Lennon Photographic collection, both for its value as art object and its connection with local history.  Her most recent work has been based on this imagery.  Rather than mimesis alone – the detailed copying of a photograph into drawn form – she is involved in what is “selected out” in this transforming act of making a drawing.  The “fact” of the photograph slides over into the narrative imaginings of the drawn image.  Her work is a questioning of the meaning we attach to a photograph – do we need to know its provenance, its date, where it was, or who is in it?  The moment before or after the photograph was taken is distant to us.  Like the boys leaning towards us from the edge of the road… can the drawing then make its own logics of mood, of how and who these unknown persons are.  In questioning the “meaning” of an unknown, or partially known, stray photograph – often of strangers, lost in the past – she would attest that drawings she has made from these are not a rote “translation” – but seek out a drawn narrative.  They are revisioned histories.  They construct the imagined story of place and purpose in these Wagga Wagga invented histories or hints of people and glimpsed events of the 1950s and 1960s.  The process has allowed room for her to explore some thought provoking arguments about identity, ownership and appropriation.

Kaleidoscope:

Kaleidoscope:

Information

Vic McEwan – Public Lecture (2010)

Vic McEwan – Public Lecture (download currently unavailable)
5th May (2010)

Vic has worked at all major art institution in Sydney including The Museum of Contemporary Art, The Art Gallery of NSW, The Powerhouse Museum, Carriageworks and Performance Space.

He has also worked with many theatre and arts organisations such as Shopfront Theatre for Young People, Pact Youth Theatre and The de Quincy Co.

Vic established The Cad Factory, an underground music, performance and exhibition space in Sydney Australia. It was the first underground space in the country to receive Presentation and Promotion funding from the music board of The Australia Council and is currently establishing a rural residency program in an old disused school house between Wagga and Narrandera for national and international visual artists, performers and academics.

Vic’s artistic practice often involves large scale site specific collaborations which involve sound, dance, installation, photography, video, live music and performance.

Vic is a multi instrumentalist who has toured shows to Europe, Britain, China and throughout Australia and has had his theatre productions programmed into the Edinburgh Fringe and The Brisbane Festival.

He is a sound designer who likes to miss-hear things whilst listening at the cracks and is a strong advocate for the establishment of an artist run initiative in Wagga to fulfil a gap in artistic development of local artists and cultural expression within the region.

Stephen Payne – Public Lecture

Stephen Payne – Public Lecture (download currently unavailable)
26th May (2010)

Research for exhibitions: using a collection One of the key priorities for any institution lucky enough to hold a substantial collection, in any media, is the need to ensure that this collection is made accessible to the public. This can be accomplished with permanent displays, which may change over gradually, or with temporary exhibitions, bringing out a number of works united by a theme or an artist. Both require the responsible curators to carry out constant research into their collections, using both the institution’s own resources and others. This seminar will examine this research process, drawing upon recent exhibitions at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery: Arthur Wicks: Inside/Outside: Forward/Backwards, April Glaser-Hinder: Works 1970-2000, and Crossfire 2: print & glass.