Page 61 - Tropic Magazine Issue 11

Lifestyle
Arts

Art Gallery vibes
All the cool stuff happening at
the city’s premier gallery this
April and May.

This is big. And best of all it’s free!
Currently on display at the Cairns Art
Gallery is the most important exhibition
of works by Fred Williams to have ever
been presented in Far North Queensland.
Now the Gallery is free entry, this is an
opportunity not to be missed.
Fred Williams: Weipa Series, Cape York
brings together thirty works from
Williams’ renowned Weipa series of
gouaches that have been borrowed from
public and private collections across
Australia, including five works from the
Cairns Art Gallery’s Permanent Williams had his first extensive view of Isabel & Alfredo Aquilizan
Collection. the land from a light plane. The Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan’s Project
Williams is recognised as one of experience of flying low over the country Another Country: Passage is an immersive
Australia’s most innovative and was just as brilliant as Williams had installation of more than two hundred
important twentieth century artists. He is always hoped it would be. handmade boats made by local Cairns
best known for his distinctive depictions Manggan community groups using recycled
of the Australian landscape, an approach Other exhibitions at the Gallery include cardboard. The exhibition is inspired by
that took Australian landscape painting Manggan – gather, gathers, gathered, which the Aquilizans’s stories of emigration
to a new level of modernity and brings together recent artworks, from the Philippines to Australia. Visitors
abstraction. are encouraged to view the flotilla of
weavings and ceramics by Girringun
Aboriginal Art Centre artists in Cardwell. boats from above and below the wooden
jetty structure, and to create their own
I have never seen country like Complementing these works are rarely handmade boats in the adjacent activity
seen objects and artefacts on loan from
it before. It is a remarkable the South Australian Museum, Adelaide. space, while exploring their personal
concepts of passage.
landscape and it has left an Del Kathryn Barton
indelible impression. Del Kathryn Barton: The Nightingale and TOP: Fred Williams, Bauxite Coastline II 1977, Gouache
the Rose is a fascinating exhibition that on arches paper. Donated through the Cairns Art
Gallery Foundation, through the Australian
Fred Williams brings to life an extraordinary Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Lyn Williams,
collaboration between two-time Archibald AM, 2014.
Speaking about the exhibition, Deborah Prize winner Del Kathryn Barton and BELOW LEFT: Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan: Project
Hart, Head of Art at the National Gallery acclaimed filmmaker Brendan Fletcher Another Country: Passage installation work in
of Australia and author of the supporting and traces the remarkable adaptation of progress. Image: Michael Marzik 2017.
publication essay explains that it was Oscar Wilde’s 19th century classic into a BELOW RIGHT: Del Kathryn Barton, Wilder grew her
song 2011-12. Acrylic, gouache, watercolour and ink on
during his time in Weipa in 1977 that hauntingly beautiful animated film. polyester canvas. Collection of Del Kathryn Barton.