DISCOVERY: Tamworth Regional Gallery assistants Brian Bernays, left, and Phillipa Legg installing Samuel Tupou’s work, Bikini kill kill kill (2011) as part of the exhibition at the gallery. Photo supplied
A NEW, bright exhibition opened at the Tamworth Regional Gallery yesterday.
Discovery is an exhibition of artwork that broaches three ideas – island life, artistic romanticism and romantic ideas of islands and island culture.
Curated by Dr Colin Langridge, the exhibition draws attention to the idea that islands have been heavily romanticised through history and that this has skewed our relationship with them.
To put together the exhibition Dr Langridge selected 10 artists who had lived on islands and created artworks that revealed how they hadexperienced something beyond the brief island experience of the tourist or visitor.
Dr Langridge said the irony of the exhibition was that as viewers, we could never escape our learned cultural attitudes and values and so even when we look at these artists’ works we will still always see them only through our own eyes.
“The artists, too, cannot escape their cultural heritage and so the desire to see something pure or untainted by culture will always be in vain,” he said.
The exhibition runs until Saturday, May 4.