Hide and Seek will bring together 40 international and Australian artists in the pop surrealism and lowbrow genres, curated by Tamworth-based lowbrow artist Marie Larkin.

Mrs Larkin said the genre had its roots in pop culture, originally referring to ‘trivial’ or ‘meaningless’ art – but artists these days were making statements about many global issues. 

The established and emerging artists come from across the globe: Norway, Italy, France, Israel, USA, Japan, Russia and New Zealand.

Mrs Larkin said there was an “enormous variety” to their work, from surrealism to sculpture to “incredible realism”.

“The only cohesion will be the theme,” she said.

Mrs Larkin said some of the artists were exhibiting for the first time in Australia, where their less-mainstream genre was “an oddity”.

“To get a show of the kind of calibre of lowbrow artists that we have for this show would be a big thing for Melbourne or Sydney, let alone a rural show,” she said.

“There’s one gallery in Melbourne which shows this kind of work and there’s basically nowhere else that you can get a show here in Australia.”

Mrs Larkin said the heart of the art movement was on the west coast of America, but Australian audiences were more conservative and hadn’t really embraced it yet.

Gallery director Sandra McMahon said being able to host such shows was one of the perks of her job.

“It’s giving Tamworth and this region an opportunity to experience something completely different and I feel it’s my role to do that as a commercial gallery,” she said.

“One of the reasons I’ve always enjoyed working in the regions is you have a little bit more autonomy.

“So I’ve got the freedom and the ability to pick and choose the sort of exhibitions that I want to have and to provide artists with that opportunity.

“In city areas, the pressure is on them much more than in regional areas; they have so much more competition, and funding bodies, and a whole range of things.”

She said she previously hadn’t known much about the genre when Mrs Larkin had approached her about a show.

“Australia really doesn’t have much awareness of this type of art, so I thought ‘Why not?’” she said.

“I’ve always had this mantra of ‘fluid and flexible’ when you work in the arts: that you don’t be too prescriptive about it; that you’re always open to opportunities.”

LA-based artist Laura Catellanos is making the trip to Tamworth for the opening.

Editor-in-chief and co-founder of Australian-based international contemporary art magazine, Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, Danijela Krha Purssey, will open the show.

Mrs Larkin said she’d met many of the artists while exhibiting alongside them in the US and Portugal.

In November, she’s making her second trip to the US for the opening of Damsels in Distress, her exhibition with two other artists at Bash Fine Art in Las Vegas.