Future Exhibitions

Over recent years the Gallery has made a feature of solo shows by New South Wales artists, especially from the north-west region of the State and extending down to the Hunter Valley. The concept developed as a new focus away from group touring exhibitions. Our 2010 exhibitions program promises to be dynamic and stimulating. Key artists to exhibit include Hanna Kay from Blandford NSW, Newcastle’s Ken O’Regan, Walcha’s Stephen King, Leo Robba from the Blue Mountains , Moree’s Margaret Adams, as well as renowned artists William Yang and Euan Macleod.

Further highlights in our exhibitions program include works from private collections in the Moree Shire, from artists and collectors who were born in the region and now live elsewhere. For example, Dr Ann Lewis, AO, who was born near Moree, has one of the largest contemporary art collections in Australia. Dr Lewis was been most generous in lending the Gallery major exhibitions from her collection and she recently donated to the collection many of the Aboriginal works she has acquired.

Moree is surprisingly rich in visual art resources in private hands. Thus, each year we have mounted a series of exhibitions called Hidden Treasures for which we have borrowed major works from private collections including Aboriginal art, historic non indigenous art and historic photography.

	Ken O'Regan 1 March - 30 March 2010 Ken O’Regan is well known in the Hunter region of NSW through regular exhibitions, works of art in public places and education projects. He uses waste materials, especially plastics, to create powerful assemblages and installations. His work is conceptual, but is strongly connected to the physicality of the materials and to the processes necessary to convert them to his aesthetic needs.
	Stephen King 1 April -  16 May 2010 Stephen King is a prolific sculptor who lives in Walcha, NSW. His tough and roughly-hewn works in timber have a strong connection with the land. His work bears a relationship to the innovative carved trees (or dendroglyphs) created by the Aboriginal people who have lived in north-west for hundreds of years. King was a chief instigator of Walcha’s impressive public art program whereby artists from across Australia have created and installed significant works of art and furniture throughout the town. King’s work is represented in the collections of Newcastle Regional Art Gallery, Tamworth Regional Art Gallery and Canberra’s Parliament House.
	Elaine Russell 17 May - 15 June 2010 Elaine Russell was born in 1941 at Tingha in northern New South Wales near Moree. She spent most of her childhood on the Aboriginal mission at Lake Cargelligo, where her father was a handyman. In 1993, she enrolled in a visual arts course and was finally able to realise her lifelong ambition to be a painter. Her work is represented in many public galleries, including the Moree Plains Gallery. Russell has published several books, including “A is for Aunty” (ABC Books, 2000). Her exhibition will include pictures she painted for her forthcoming book to be launched in 2010.
	Arone Meeks 18 June - 31 July 2010 Meeks lives and works in Cairns and has made a considerable impact on the visuals arts scene in far north Queensland. As the catalogue for his Kick Arts exhibition said, “Arone has worked hard to make his way as a contemporary artist in a market that demands ‘reef and rainforest’ imagery on mass for the hungry tourist to take home as a memento of their visit. Arone however, has continued to create works of art that talk of spirituality, cultural interaction, gender, relationships, the environment and Cairnsas a gathering place”. The artist’s current works are highly coloured with clear but complex imagery and full of meaning. He continues to use the human figure as a basis for many of his works. The new work is a result of his many years of development working in several visual arts mediums.
	Margaret Adams 1 August - 31 August 2010 Margaret Adams is one of the finest Kamilaroi artists in Moree. She paints the traditional stories to keep, as she says, “remnants of the Dreaming alive”. She is a prolific painter — images of people and inland animals flow readily onto her canvas, which and reflect the blend of pathos and humour that runs through her conversation. She has a fund of stories at her fingertips, especially about the "Hairy man" who had yellow eyes when he was good and red when he was bad. Adams describes herself as being one of the first generation Aboriginal Catholics in Moree. At school she and her peers learned "white man's art” — the depiction of homes, trees and scenery in European style. It was many years before she acquired her unique, vivid painting style.
	Leo Robba 1 September - 30 September 2010 Leo Robba’s landscapes of the Australian countryside have an enigmatic quality that verges on the surreal. Leo Robba is based in Springwood, in the Blue Mountains and recently was awarded a Masters of Fine Art (The University of Newcastle) on the subject of regionalism in Australian landscape painting. The Newcastle Maitland and Dungog areas have been the driving force behind his work.
	William Yang 1 October - 14 November 2010 William Yang is one of Australia’s foremost photographers who is well known for his portrait work and recording of imagery of places and events he has encountered through his career. During the 1970s and 1980s he achieved fame for his imagery of Sydney’s gay community. His enigmatic works on the theme of sadness are interwoven with links to his Chinese heritage. Yang has recently been producing a film documentation on Kamilaroi people in Moree. Yang has exhibited widely in Australia and abroad. His retrospective exhibition in 1998 showed the extent of his importance as a recorder of social history.
	Euan Macleod 15 November -  14 December 2010 Euan McLeod is a New Zealand-born artist who is now one of Australia’s leading figurative expressionist painters. His work is represented in most major public Australian art museums and he won the Archibald Prize in 1999 as well as the Sulman Prize in 2001. McLeod’s poignant imagery of figures in the landscape hint at stories remembered from his childhood. His paint style is tough and exuberant.
	Gooch's Utopia 17 December 2010 - 15 February 2011 Gooch’s Utopia is a collaborative project between Flinders University Art Museum in Adelaide and the Riddoch Art Gallery in Mt Gambier. The exhibition surveys art produced at the outstations of Utopia in the latter decades of the 20th Century, especially the period from the late 1980s until the early 1990s. The exhibition highlights the unique mark-making and iconography used by painters in the community during a time, which can now be recognised as formative years for some of Australia’s leading indigenous artists.