NRCG Annual Program 2023

annual program 2023

About Us

Northern Rivers Community Gallery (NRCG) & Ignite Studios is a community-engaged cultural hub in the heart of Ballina, working with local, regional and national communities.

We collaborate with artists, creatives and organisations to build capacity, create opportunities and drive social change. We are a regional contemporary arts space providing a platform for important conversations in arts and culture.

Our professional facilities include four exhibition spaces, a retail outlet, creative studios, accessible workshop and event spaces enabling the production and presentation of culturally relevant programs and creative works.

NRCG - a place where community conversations and cultural celebrations happen.

Images: (cover) Sascha Bravery, Subsumed, 2021; (above) Marian Tubbs, Bouquet, 2022; (right) NRCG Exhibition Opening September 2022.

Mayoral Message

The 2023 program of upcoming exhibitions at the Northern Rivers Community Gallery promises to deliver an exciting year ahead of thought-provoking pieces from local, regional, and national artists.

Our new Gallery Coordinator, Imbi Davidson, leads a team of dedicated staff and amazing volunteers. Together they are set to make 2023 bigger and better than ever.

In 2023 the Gallery will host the 4th BAM National Art Prize, Byron School of Art Graduate Award, and Southern Cross University Graduate Award exhibitions.

The team will also curate a sculptural ceramics exhibition, and Ignite Studios will host a range of public programs including creative workshops with exhibiting artists, engaging community art projects, and launch the new ceramics studio and kiln firing service.

I can’t wait to see this exciting program unfold. The Gallery is sure to go from strength-to-strength and attract visitors from far and wide with the exhibitions and events planned.

Sharon Cadwallader | Mayor Ballina Shire Council

Welcome

On behalf of the NRCG team and volunteers, I’d like to invite you to get involved in all NRCG & Ignite Studios creative programs for 2023.

As the incoming Gallery Coordinator, I’d like to acknowledge the dedication of my predecessor, Lee Mathers, whose tireless work has established NRCG and Ignite Studios as a vibrant arts and cultural hub in the Ballina Shire.

The past year has seen some tough times for our region with the dual effects of Covid-19 and devastating floods severely impacting artists and many cultural organisations. As we recover and emerge, we hope to re-imagine new opportunities, create a thriving program of workshops and events, and engage audiences with a stellar 2023 program of exhibitions and events.

Sign up for our monthly newsletters, follow us on social media or visit our website to stay up to date with all upcoming exhibitions and public programs. We look forward to seeing you at the Gallery and Ignite Studios in 2023.

Imbi Davidson | Coordinator Gallery & Ignite Studios

Image: (left) Kai Gesco-Thorndycraft, Home, 2022; (above) Caitlyn Reilly, Light At The End Of The Road, 2021; (overleaf) Mark Isaacs, Fight Like a Girl, 2017.

Strategic Direction

NRCG & Ignite Studios has identified four priority areas as strategic directions to inform future planning and activities:

Creative Industry Capacity

Create spaces and initiatives where arts and cultural activity and entrepreneurship can thrive.

Arts & Cultural Infrastructure

Coordinated support of arts and cultural infrastructure to ensure cost effective future investment.

Engage our Audiences

Provide opportunities for cross-cultural, multi art form and intergenerational creative expression.

Strive for Excellence

Develop high quality programs connecting audiences and community with contemporary arts and cultural experiences.

Image: (above) Sprung!! Integrated Dance Theatre,Virtually Impossible, 2019, Image Ben Wyeth; (opposite) Miriam Saloman, In the Meantime, 2022.

Snapshot

Throughout 2022 NRCG & Ignite Studios has maintained its commitment to the creative industries, fostering renewed growth and support for artists and community participation.

Our goal is to build upon these upward trends across all areas of NRCG & Ignite Studios in 2023 and support and engage the creative local community in its recovery towards the future.

exhibition program

UNDERSTORIES: Things Fallen

Karena WynnMoylan

Karena Wynn-Moylan has spent her artistic life recording the beauty of the natural world in a variety of media. Understories:Things Fallen combines her mastery of the watercolour medium, transcribing to oil paint to produce works on canvas of a stunning glow and transparency. She shares with the viewer her fascination with what lies under our feet – the engine room of the landscape and environment.

Image: Karena Wynn-Moylan, Things Fallen #4 Azaleas, 2019

Mirror of Ink

Steven Giese reversible destiny Marian Tubbs

Local printmaker Steven Giese has been making work for over four decades, engaging in all the major print mediums; lithography, etching, screen printing and relief. This exhibition covers some of his recent output in linocut and monoprint. Best known for political and social commentary in his work, this show will focus on environmental themes; the delightfulness of birds and deep connection to ecology.

Image: Steven Giese, Conversation at Bosche’s Waterhole, 2021

Human Remains Hannah Massey

Human Remains is a collection of ceramic and mixed media sculptures reflective of icons, relics and monuments; physical reminders of societies and civilisations. It invites the viewers to reflect upon ourselves as a shared experience of humanity, who and how we have been in the past and in turn who we are in the present and wish to be in the future.

Image: Hannah Massey, Tombstone, 2021

reversible destiny is the first solo exhibition by Marian Tubbs held in the Northern Rivers. Comprised of new and recent works, the presentation sees the artist move through experimental methods in large-scale digital assemblage, screen-printing, and installation.

Image: Marian Tubbs, Bouquet (detail), 2022

Separate Realities

Dave Sparkes

In Separate Realities, Dave Sparkes distills and condenses essential elements of the landscape, using nuances of light and shadow, to convey the essence of terrains at a certain time, transforming everyday landscapes into magical places.

Image: Dave Sparkes, Broken Head Nocturne, 2021

Ice Cohabitation

Louise Grayson

BLOOM

Tracing Threads

In late 2019, Louise Grayson joined an expedition to the Antarctic where she captured images exploring the natural dance between animals and their environment, as the shadow of human intervention, and a warming environment, begin to stretch across this ice wonderland.

Image: Louise Grayson, Light on Ice Study 1, 2019

BLOOM is a moving image and photographic collection of botanical artworks, “replanting” Australian native flowers into surreal digital environments using time expanding digital techniques. Botanical arrangements are re-imagined using digital time expanding techniques, resulting in a series of still and moving image artworks.

Image: Mia Forrest, Red Flowering Gum (Video still), 2022

Katie Alleva’s new body of work zigzags through the family archives exploring the life of her Italian ancestors ‘pre-migration to post migration’ in order to find out how trauma affects emerging emotional cultural identities. Her work raises awareness of the impact of conflict on culture and society, investigating displacement, and intergenerational trauma.

Image: Katie Alleva, Saint Serafina, 2021

Katie Alleva

Mia Forrest

By The Side of The Road Caitlin Reilly

Ash, Mud and Tears

A Time for Stillness

Sue Davidson

The Acorn and the Zeitgeist

Kerry Elias Moore

In this series of paintings, Caitlyn Reilly explores the familiar yet evolving nature of our surroundings. Her works are an examination of the cycle of renewal and our part in the delicate balance of the universe. An opportunity to seek out better days no matter how worn the road behind us seems.

Image: Caitlyn Reilly, Light At The End Of The Road, 2021

Ash, Mud & Tears is the work of two artists, Michelle Walker & Jude White, marking the experience and recovery from bushfires, floods and the pandemic in the Northern Rivers and beyond. Including sculpture, prints and painting, the artworks are a response to the extraordinary events that have shattered a sense of safety and security, making many feel helpless and overwhelmed with the disruption, loss and challenge of rebuilding.

Image: Michelle Walker, Earth Marks, 2021

Shaped by geological processes, A Time for Stillness speaks of unknown futures and distant pasts. The layering of different materials creates a palimpsest of visual language, leaving traces of earlier ideas and forgotten stories. Through this somewhat apocalyptic narrative there runs a thread of hope and courage and acceptance that time will present what it will and that evolution is inevitable.

Image: Sue Davidson, A Reflection Of Our True Self, 2021

The Story of the Acorn and the Zeitgeist, celebrates the German artists, activists and gallerists that were part of the Post-War Zeitgeist which rose through the dynamic and charismatic teaching of Joseph Beuys and his students; Jorg Immendorff, Gerhard Richter, Blinky Palermo, Georg Baselitz and many others who ultimately influenced the art worlds’ dynamics.

Image: Kerry Elias Moore, Blinky and Hockney, 2021

Jude White & Michelle Walker

Imagining Peace in Afghanistan

Mark Isaacs

2022 SCU Graduate Award

Jemima PatchTaylor

This exhibition is a portrait of Afghanistan before the Taliban regained control of the country. The images were taken in 2016-17, at a time when people dared to dream in the Western occupation’s promises of peace, prosperity and freedom. This exhibition delves beneath the news reports to remind us that even in the most challenging circumstances, hope, love and peace can flourish.

Image: Mark Isaacs, Fight Like a Girl, 2017

Presented in partnership with Southern Cross University (SCU), this exhibition showcases the work of a recent graduate from the Bachelor of Art and Design (BAD) Undergraduate program. The award supports the promotion and development of outstanding emerging graduates from the BAD undergraduate program and presents exciting emerging art practices to local audiences.

Image:

The Making of Mohommadi

Prita Tine Yeganeh

The Annual Grace Cruice Memorial Exhibition BACCI

The Making Of Mohammadi captures the remarkable Qamar desert landscape in central Iran, as it transforms to a rose garden in spring, beginning the ancient ritual of hand making rose water. This custom is passed down over seven centuries through oral traditions, interconnecting Iranian people to land and place across the central deserts.

Image: Prita Tine Yeganeh, The Making of Mohammadi, 2021

Presented by the members of the Ballina Arts & Crafts Centre Incorporated (BACCI), this exhibition is a tribute to Grace Cruice and her vision showcasing the best works created by BACCI members.

Image: Andrew Watson, Access Trail - Bundjalung NP, 2022

Jemima Patch-Taylor Award Recipient, Luteal (detail) 2022

Unfolding

Kai GescoThorndycraft

In his new exhibition Emergence, Kai from Deaf Eye Art plays with childhood drawings that are interwoven throughout his latest paintings. Kai has always held a fascination for the natural world and as a deaf artist, uses his artworks as a form of expression.

Image: Kai Gesco-Thorndycraft, Protea, 2021

Covering Encompassing

Sascha Bravery

Making-Kin Ceramics Group Exhibition

Covering Encompassing is an installation exhibition of mixed media textiles comprising a patchwork of segments from dissected canvas artworks. The project began as a cathartic response to environmental and emotional trauma, re-purposing old artworks into a palimpsest of segmented portions as new works, carrying the trace and memory of the past.

Image: Sascha Bravery, Sense of Dread, 2021 Making-Kin is a group exhibition of local ceramicists that share concerns relating to human and nature relations. Through their respective works, each artist expands an understanding of ecology through speculative ceramic forms.

Image: Fern Bain Bertram, Baba Yaga, 2021

Living Water: Visiting Water Annique Goldenberg

In 2023 Goldenberg will undertake living water walks with participants, to gather field data, share water stories, and reflect on our interconnected relationships with the environment. This exhibition will be an interpretation of the moments and responses to emerge from those living water visits, embodied as memories of awareness, wonder, and care.

Image: Annique Goldenberg, Field Data - Water Notes, 2022

Balance

Zani McEnneally

BSA 2022 Graduate Award

2023 BAM Art Prize

Finalist Exhibtion

The exhibition, Balance, is a response to the powerful landscape of the West MacDonnell Ranges in the Northern Territory (NT), translating the transformative experience of this landscape into sculptural forms with clay and compositions using paint on canvas. The artworks encapsulate the experience of this awe inspiring place, utilising earthly colours, tones, patterns and rhythms as they occur in the NT landscape.

Presented in partnership with the Byron School of Art (BSA), this exhibition showcases the work of a recent graduate as part of the NRCG’s Annual Program. Now in its seventh year, the award supports the promotion and professional development of outstanding emerging graduates from the BSA three year course and presents exciting new talents to local audiences.

Presented by Byron Arts Magazine (BAM) in partnership with Northern Rivers Community Gallery (NRCG). The BAM Art Prize promotes awareness of the arts in the Northern Rivers by presenting a national art prize within the region. The exhibition showcases finalist artworks shortlisted for the 2022 prize.

Image: 2022 BAM Art Prize Winner, Cleo Wilkinson, Then IV, 2021

Todd Clare

Image: Zani Mcennally, Balance II, 2022

Image: BSA Graduate Exhibition 2022 Winner Todd Clare

ignite studios

IGNITE STUDIOS

Ignite Studios is a community-engaged facility comprising workshop spaces, low-cost creative studios, an Artist-in-Residence program with selfcontained accomodation and studio, offices, and a ceramics studio launching in 2023.

Each year Ignite Studios delivers a vibrant public program of workshops, artist talks and special events, and plays host to creative community events from pop up exhibitions, launches and film screenings to workshops, meetings and creative forums.

Artist in Residence (AiR)

Time and space for a single artist to expand their artistic practice for a period of up to twelve weeks. Ignite’s AiR program includes a working studio and small bedsit, and is open to Australian and international arts professionals. Applications are accepted year-round.

Ceramics Studios

Launching in 2023, Ignite Studios will encompass a six-wheel throwing studio and kiln firing service available for hire by qualified ceramic artists.

Creative Studios

Two airy, light-filled studio spaces are available for long-term, low-cost lease to creative practitioners, organisations, or businesses. Get in touch to enquire about availability.

Image: (previous) Light Graffiti Workshop, 2020, Image: Duke Albada; (left) Ignite Opening Cermony, 2018, Imgage: Ben Wyeth.

ignite studios

Public Programs

Drawing on the creative talents of artists and facilitators from the Northern Rivers region and further afield, monthly workshops, artist talks, master-classes, screenings and special events are presented by NRCG & Ignite Studios for the local community.

School Holiday Programs

Special holiday programs for young creatives are announced throughout the year.

School Tours to NRCG & Ignite Studios

Monthly behind-the-scenes tours of NRCG & Ignite Studios are available for students and school groups. Contact us directly to book your place. If lucky, you may get to meet an exhibiting artist, and hear about their creative process.

Workshop & Pop Up Event Spaces for Hire

Ignite Studios boasts two accessible spaces available to hire for workshops, creative events, pop up exhibitions, meetings, and special projects. Subsidised rates are available for artists and community organisations.

For more information about Ignite Studios contact our Creative Producer Programs at nrcg@ballina.nsw.gov.au or to view current public programs visit nrcgballina.com.au. Sign up for our e-news or follow us on social media for all program updates.

Images: (opposite, clockwise from top left) Artist in Residence; Workshop materials; Ceramics works; Ignite Studios; Painting Workshop; Ignite walls, Creative studios; School Workshop.

gallery shop

NRCG GALLERY SHOP

The NRCG Gallery Shop features a range of handcrafted jewellery, ceramics, quality art books, gift-wares and greeting cards and is a popular destination for locals and visitors seeking special and unique gifts and home-wares.

Local Suppliers

Suppliers for the Gallery Shop are largely sourced from across the Northern Rivers, offering a range of unique local products that reflect who we are as a region and community. The Gallery Shop offers an ever-changing selection of products from regional makers, with over 90% of our products sourced from local producers and suppliers.

Sell your products with us!

If you are a designer, artist or craftsperson and would like to apply to sell product in the Gallery Shop please contact the Gallery Services Officer at nrcg@ballina.nsw.gov.au or visit our website nrcgballina.com.au

Image: (previous) NRCG Gallery Shop; (left, clockwise from top left) Gallery shop stock; Books for sale; Gallery shop stock; Books for sale; Olive Gap Tea-Tree Oil; Brooke Clunie Ceramics; Sage and Soleil Jewellery; Suvira McDonald Ceramics.

Apply to Exhibit

NRCG welcomes proposals from artists, designers, curators, community and cultural groups that display innovative ideas and approaches to contemporary arts practice. Applications are accepted all year round and assessed once a year, at the end of August, for the following year’s exhibition period.

Annual Membership

From January 2023, an annual membership program will be initiated to expand our creative community and provide a range of benefits, opportunities and events for paid members.

Volunteering at the Gallery

Volunteering is a fantastic opportunity to further develop your skills, meet arts industry contacts and be part of our creative community. Volunteers are a vital part of NRCG & Ignite Studios programs and applications to become a volunteer are open all year.

Donations and Sponsorship

Donations assist NRCG & Ignite Studios to provide arts and cultural experiences that support, educate and inspire. All donations are tax deductible.

Subscribe to our E-News

Sign up to the NRCG & Ignite Studios monthly newsletter for regular updates on all upcoming exhibitions, workshops, programs, events and opportunities.

To get involved or for more information visit our website nrcgballina.com.au

Image: (previous) Beyond the Bucket List Exhibition, 2022. Image: Ben Wyeth; (left top) Gallery Volunteers Maria Suarez & Britt Balisager NRCG reception 2019. Image: Ben Wyeth; (bottom) Volunteer Event, Ignite Studios, 2022; (overleaf) In the Meantime Exhibition Miriam Saloman, 2022. Image: Jaka Adamic.