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.

	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.