2026 Exhibition Guide
Hervey Bay Regional Gallery
About Hervey Bay Regional Gallery
Cover image: Sammy Hawker, Cymatic Figure from Humpback Whale Song (Pleiades #1), 2025. Created by an analogue ‘cymatic instrument’ that gives shape to whale songs as they vibrate through water.
Hervey Bay Regional Gallery (HBRG) is home to a thought-provoking program of exhibitions and events, staging internally curated exhibitions alongside touring exhibitions with strong resonances to local, Queensland and national arts discourse. The gallery manages the Hervey Bay Regional Gallery Collection and the Fraser Coast Regional Council Civic Collection.
Visit Us
166 Old Maryborough Road, Pialba, Queensland 4655
Free on-site parking available
Opening Hours
Monday: closed
Tuesday – Friday: 10am – 4pm
Saturday and Sunday: 10am – 2pm
Closed Good Friday, ANZAC Day and Christmas Day. Partial or full gallery closures may occur during exhibition changeovers
Contact Us
Email:
regionalgallery@frasercoast.qld.gov.au Phone: 07 4197 4206
Website: hbrg.com.au
/HerveyBayRegionalGallery @herveybayregionalgallery
Accessibility
The gallery is on one level, is fully wheelchair accessible and has on-site permit parking. For more access information visit hbrg.com.au/visit-us or call 07 4197 4206.
Staff
Director: Sarah Thomson
Exhibitions & Collections Coordinator: Joe Breikers
Engagement Coordinator: April Spadina
Indigenous Programming & Community Engagement Officer: Sam Raveneau
Gallery Officer: Lois Shoebridge
Exhibition Technicians: Morris de Bortoli, Hannah Stanton and Grant Tupp
Visitor Services Officers: Samira Keshtiar, Robyne Seers, Nicola Smart, Hannah Stanton and Bettina Stephan
Acknowledgement of Country
Welcome to Butchulla Country (land, sea and sky)
Djali Galangoor [lit. today good]
On behalf of the Butchulla people, welcome to Butchulla Country (land, sea and sky). It is with open hearts and a profound respect for people, place and protocols that we extend a warm welcome to all who journey through our lands, enjoy our seas and breathe the air under our beautiful sky.
Here, amidst the timeless landscapes of Butchulla Country (land, sea and sky), we honour the footsteps of our ancestors, ‘old people’, elders past-present emerging and embrace the spirits of the land, sea and sky, and our creator ‘Biral’. Our connection to this special place transcends time, echoing the wisdom and stories of our people passed down through generations.
As custodians of Butchulla Country, we invite you to share in the richness of our culture, to listen to the voices on the wind as it carries tales of resilience and to witness the vibrant fabric of traditions and practices of
our people’s continuity of existence and mind-body-spirit connection to Country.
May your presence here be a safe and harmonious experience between past and present, a celebration of diversity, unity and mutual respect.
May you find comfort in the beauty of our landscapes, our art, our culture, our language, our expression, our presence and inspiration in the strength of our diverse community.
All life is a shared journey, so let us walk together along this path, acknowledging the past, embracing the present and shaping a future where the echoes of our efforts ripple out for eternity to benefit all generations to come.
Biralunbar Galangoor [Many Thanks], again, welcome to Butchulla Country.
Veronica Bird
General Manager, Butchulla Native Title Aboriginal Corporation (BNTAC)
Image: HBRG exterior with façade commission, Shell Middens by Zartisha Davis (2025). Photo: Lumi Creative.
Welcome to our 2026 program
A message from the Mayor
I invite you to experience the inspiring and thoughtprovoking exhibitions on offer at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery in 2026.
The gallery delivered a strong year in 2025, welcoming more than 11,000 visitors, presenting 15 major exhibitions, hosting 70 events, and engaging 47 school and community groups from across the region.
In the year ahead, the program will continue to celebrate diversity while expanding learning and engagement opportunities through partnerships with schools, teachers, service providers and community groups.
Visitors can look forward to the popular Regional Spotlight exhibition, developed through an open call to artists from the Wide Bay-Burnett, alongside a mix of curated group and solo exhibitions. Highlights include Tracks, showcasing emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and leaders, and a solo exhibition by local artist Colin Reaney, celebrating creative talent from the Fraser Coast.
I hope you take the time to explore the gallery, immerse yourself in its vibrant exhibitions, and be inspired by the stories shared through art.
George Seymour Fraser Coast Regional Council Mayor
A message from the Gallery Director
In 2026, Hervey Bay Regional Gallery proudly presents a curated program of exhibitions that respond to our unique cultural and environmental context.
Across this year’s program, artists explore deep connections to the natural world, the continuation and evolution of cultural practice, significant local histories and stories, and innovative approaches to time-honoured techniques.
Our 2026 program celebrates the depth of creativity on the Fraser Coast, placing our creative community in dialogue with leading artists from across Australia through a dynamic combination of nationally touring exhibitions and original HBRG-curated projects.
This year we are proud to share our exhibitions with audiences across Queensland, touring Tyza Hart: Appearing to Gympie Regional Gallery and Cane to Rockhampton Museum of Art, strengthening our role as a leading regional gallery in the state.
We warmly invite locals and visitors alike to engage with art, ideas and creativity and look forward to welcoming you to the gallery.
Sarah Thomson Hervey Bay Regional Gallery Director
Plan your visit
Programs & Events
Hervey Bay Regional Gallery hosts a regular program of exhibition openings, artist talks, panel discussions, film screenings, tours, workshops and other events. Find out more about what’s on at hbrg.com.au.
Group Booking and Education
We welcome visits from community groups and classes of all ages. Get in touch to tailor your gallery experience: regionalgallery@frasercoast.qld.gov. au or 07 4197 4206.
Butchulla Seasonal Garden
Surrounding HBRG on two sides, the Butchulla Seasonal Garden showcases our native flora and how it is utilised by the region’s Traditional Custodians. Follow the illustrated signage to explore the garden at any time.
Gallery Shop
Our retail space stocks a curated selection of art, culture and history books as well as locally produced homewares, accessories, gifts and design products.
Image: opening of Girra 2025 and Strange Kinship. Photography: Cody Fox.
Until 21 February 2027
National Interests: Australian Art in the 20th Century
Hervey Bay Regional Gallery and the National Gallery of Australia present National Interests: Australian Art in the 20th Century.
This exhibition explores the cultural legacy of Australian Modernism in the 20th century, pairing artworks from the Hervey Bay Regional Gallery Collection with significant works from Australia’s national collection.
Featuring works made from 1936 to 1997, each grouping of works of art acts as an entry point into a thread of Australian art history. Considered together, the works in National Interests paint a picture of Australia’s search for a national identity in a rapidly changing cultural landscape.
Featuring artworks by Joyce Bott, Arthur Boyd, Robert Cambell Jnr., Marc Clark, Ken Done, Maureen Hansen, PJ Hickman, Jan Morgan, Keith Namatjira, Sidney Nolan, Elizabeth Paterson, Robert Prenzel, John Wardell Power, Margaret Preston and Brett Whiteley.
National Interest includes works on long term loan from the National Gallery of Australia with support from the Australian Government as part of Sharing the National Collection. #ArtAcrossAustralia
Image: Robert Campbell Jnr, Abo history (facts), 1988, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/ Canberra, purchased 1988, © Courtesy of the Artist’s Estate and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Colin Reaney objects in a situation: /fabrications according to measured drawings/
“The return of Sinbad. With my passport—and in my accent—the work in this exhibition draws on a series of visual and spatial anecdotes collected during my time as an ‘expat’ from 1997 to 2017, and the time since. This exhibition suggests ‘a reconfiguring of our world as a place of meeting, a place of co-existence, and one that sustains diversity’”1
—Colin G. Reaney
objects in a situation brings together recent works spanning drawing, sculpture and spatial installation, coalescing in an exploration of global and personal concerns and an examination of ‘belonging’ in an interconnected world. Colin Reaney’s interventions in the gallery conjure fragments of shared memories and experiences through an eclectic arrangement of symbols, quotes and objects.
Colin Reaney is an experienced artist and educator. Returning to his hometown of Hervey Bay in 2017, this exhibition marks Reaney’s first exhibition in the region after decades spent teaching and pursuing an art practice internationally.
Opposite page: Image courtesy of the artist.
1. Paul Carter, “Dark Writing Geography Performance Design”, University of Hawai’i Press, 2009
Anastasia Klose World without End
World without End explores intertwined ideas of ecological extinction and human mortality—and the tenacity of life to persevere beyond loss.
The exhibition brings together works shaped by Anastasia Klose’s involvement in environmental activism and conservation in Far North Queensland alongside new works responding to the life and recent death of a close friend.
Since relocating to Mossman from Melbourne, Klose has been involved in local conservation campaigns, advocating against the destruction of critical habitats. Her recent exhibition For thy sake I in love am grown (2024) reflected on these experiences from both political and personal perspectives, offering a “raw and reflective portrait of environmental advocacy through an artistic lens”.
World without End extends on this body of work, weaving together the artist’s passion for the environment and animals with a deepening connection to place and its creative community. Honouring her relationship with her late friend and local artist Andrea Collisson, with whom Klose shared a passion for singing, the exhibition offers a tender and playful reflection on life in regional Queensland.
The exhibition and publication Anastasia Klose: For thy sake I in love am grown were presented by NorthSite Contemporary Arts in partnership with the University of Sunshine Coast Art Gallery.
Image: Anastasia Klose, Flowers, 2025, coloured pencil and ink on Arches paper, 64.8cm x 101.6cm.
Rachel O’Reilly Northern Waters
Image: Leonard Andy on Djiru Country, Mission Beach. Image courtesy Rachel O’Reilly.
Northern Waters (2025) is a feature-length video installation exploring complex aftermaths of the 1967–75 Save the Reef campaign, which successfully protected the Great Barrier Reef from the global oil industry. At the time, Indigenous people in Queensland lived under apartheid conditions, and non-Indigenous artist/activists involved had no knowledge of the reef’s cultural heritage.
Today, as Indigenous governance is increasingly recognised in World Heritage reef and rainforest regions, hyper-real images of bleached coral circulate globally as symbols of climate crisis, while biodiversity policies continue to fail many at-risk species.
Across eight chapters, Northern Waters weaves together uneven Indigenous and settler testimonies of struggle surrounding industry, labour, tourism and environment ‘protection’, as history lived in the present-tense. Directed by artist, writer and researcher Rachel O’Reilly, the work is a sensitive portrayal of power imbalances, passion, care and action in a region that is rarely presented to global audiences outside of the lens of tourism.
Featuring: Phil Rist (Nywaigi), Sonya Takau (Jirrbal), Percy Neal (Guru Bana Kungunghj/Djungan), Leonard Andy (Djiru), Margaret Moorhouse (Alliance to Save Hinchinbrook), Rohan Lloyd (reef historian), Hillary Smith (marine biologist), Jacob Cassady (Nywaigi), Isaac Cassady (Nywaigi).
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body, and through the philanthropic legacy of Paula and Tony Kinnane.
Finding Eliza
Finding Eliza at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery marks the 10-year anniversary of Professor Larissa Behrendt’s (Yuwaalaraay/Gamilaroi) seminal book Finding Eliza: Power and Colonial Storytelling (2016). The book interrogates the story of Eliza Fraser, who was purportedly captured by the Butchulla people in 1836 after surviving the shipwreck of the Stirling Castle and the death of her husband, Captain Fraser.
Presented on Butchulla country, the exhibition revisits the story of Eliza Fraser, not to retell her account, but to examine how her version of events was elevated, amplified, and mythologised within colonial culture. These sensationalised narratives cast the Butchulla people as figures of fear and savagery, legitimising violence, dispossession, and massacre, while silencing Butchulla law, knowledge, and lived experience.
At its heart, Finding Eliza recentres Butchulla history, presence, and truth-telling. It foregrounds the voices and perspectives that colonial storytelling worked to erase, asking whose stories were believed, whose were ignored, and why. Rather than treating the past as fixed, the exhibition reveals colonial history as a contested and ongoing narrative, one that continues to shape public memory and power.
In 2023, Fraser Island was officially returned to its traditional name, K’gari—a significant and symbolic milestone that reignited national conversations about the myths and misrepresentations that have long distorted Butchulla history, culture, and presence. This exhibition sits within that broader movement of reclamation, contributing to national conversations about naming, memory, and the enduring authority of First Nations peoples over their own histories.
Finding Eliza has been developed in collaboration with Aboriginal lawyer, writer, and filmmaker Professor Larissa Behrendt and renowned Badtjala/Butchulla artist Dr Fiona Foley, bringing together works by Fiona Foley, Mia Boe, Sidney Nolan, alongside archival materials and historical accounts.
Image: Fiona Foley, Out of the Sea Like Cloud (video still), 2019.
Courtesy of the artist.
Tracks
Image: Zartisha Davis, Shell Middens, 2024, paper sculpture installation. Installation view: Caloundra Regional Gallery. Photo: James Muller.
Following the tracks of past, present and future.
In both history and Lore, tracks have allowed Indigenous peoples to navigate Country through trade, song and spirit.
The significance of tracks left by ancestors continue to be honoured today by our community through ongoing cultural practices of art, ceremony, storytelling and leadership.
Coinciding with Reconciliation Week and NAIDOC Week 2026, Tracks celebrates the achievements of young Indigenous creatives and custodians across our region, making visible the footprints these leaders follow and the new pathways they forge.
Showcasing traditional and contemporary artforms, alongside interactive activities for all ages, Tracks invites every member of the community to deepen their connection to Country.
Featuring artworks by Zartisha Davis (Kabi Kabi, Butchulla and Cobble Cobble), Tori-Jay Mordey (Torres Strait Islander, Meriam, Dauareb and Maluilgal, Wakaid), Kaile Clarke (Butchulla, Woppaburra, Gunditjmara), and more.
This project is proudly supported by the Regional Arts Development Fund, a partnership between the Queensland Government and Fraser Coast Regional Council to support local arts and culture in regional Queensland.
Regional Spotlight
The Regional Spotlight initiative is an opportunity for artists living across the Wide Bay-Burnett region to exhibit at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery.
Since 2024, the program has showcased local artists’ work in a group exhibition curated from an open call, providing a glimpse into the diversity of creative practices in the region—often spanning painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, ceramics and more.
Regional Spotlight offers professional development and opens new creative pathways for exhibiting artists through profiling, public programming and display.
Submissions are open to artists working in any medium and at any stage in their career.
Call out for submissions: 13 March – 6 April
Find out more: hbrg.com.au
Opposite page: Lou Millen, In Silence, 2024, photographic print.
29 August – 4 October 2026
Sammy Hawker Sound-Forms: Whale Song
Canberra-based artist Sammy Hawker’s Sound-Forms: Whale Song brings art and science into poetic dialogue, reinterpreting whale song recordings collected in the 1990s by Mark Franklin of The Oceania Project.
Established in 1988, by Dr Trish and Dr Wally Franklin, The Oceania Project supports the conservation of whales, dolphins and the ocean environment, with a long-term focus on the behaviour and ecology of humpback whales in Hervey Bay.
Cymatics (from Ancient Greek κῦμα meaning wave) is the study of making sound visible. For this exhibition Sammy Hawker worked with designer Sam Tomkins to develop an analogue ‘cymatic instrument’ that gives shape to these songs as they vibrate through water.
Hawker has documented these projected songs to create a hypnotic series of individual cymatic figures which conjure the mysterious and complex voices of our multispecies world.
Launching Saturday 29 August, coinciding with the Hervey Bay Whale Festival 2026.
Sound-Forms: Whale Song is an iteration of the exhibition Worlds Around Us, presented at Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Centre in 2025. Worlds Around Us was an outcome of the Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio program supported by benefactor Mr Tim Fairfax AC.
Opposite page: Sammy Hawker, Holding things lightly, feeling them deeply, 2024, pigment inkjet print on archival cotton rag.
5 September – 15 November 2026
Matters of Time: Contemporary Metal Practices
Matters of Time brings together Australian artists and designers who explore the evolving role of metal in contemporary practice and its relationship with time. Bridging traditional smithing techniques and contemporary metalworking approaches, the exhibition encompasses sculpture, furniture, drawing, jewellery, and installation.
Curated by Catherine Woolley, the exhibition features new commissions and recent works from Isabel & Alfredo Aquilizan, Elliot Bastianon, Bobby Corica, Wurrandan Marawili, Yioryios Papayioryiou, Vedika Rampal, Shireen Taweel, Kensuke Todo, Simone Tops, Zoë Veness, and Augusta Vinall Richardson.
Together, exhibiting practitioners provide timely perspectives on the use of metal in adornment and industry, its role in extractive economies, and its potential for reuse and reimagining. By investigating the histories and temporal possibilities inherent in working with metal, Matters of Time invites a deeper understanding of this ubiquitous material and its ongoing significance in contemporary life.
Opposite page:
Vedika Rampal, Forms of a Fermenting Fantasy, 2023, digital print hand-transferred onto copper. Courtesy of the artist and Dominik Mersch Gallery, Gadigal Nura/Sydney.
Photo: Chris Mulia.
A UNSW Galleries touring exhibition. Presented with the support of the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia program.
10 October – 13 December 2026
Archie Moore:
Image: Archie Moore, Mīal, 2022/23 (detail). Purchased 2023 © Archie Moore.
Archie Moore is a celebrated Kamilaroi and Bigambul artist whose practice is embedded in the politics of identity, racism and language systems. Mīal is a conceptual self portrait that counters expectations of what a self portrait should be. The title, the Bigambul language word for Aboriginal man, announces this group of geometric monochrome paintings as representative of the artist.
Mīal probes the politics and codification of skin colour, and the racist historical practice of classifying skin tone to determine the supposed legitimacy and proof of a person’s ‘Aboriginality’. Each painting relates to a part of the artist’s body and is named in his Ancestral languages. The colours of the glossy automotive paint were generated by the artist scanning parts of his body, then converting them to the Pantone colour scale.
In 2024, Moore became the first Australian artist to win the Venice Biennale’s prestigious Golden Lion award for best national participation for his solo presentation in the Australia Pavilion, kith and kin.
Supported by the National Portrait Gallery, Mīal will be exhibited at regional venues nationally in 2025 and 2026.
This exhibition is supported by the National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach Program, an Australian Government program aiming to improve access to the national collections for all Australians.
To invite the gods
To invite the gods explores the influence of Ikebana—the Japanese art of flower arranging—on contemporary Australian art. Rooted in a mindful, meditative process, Ikebana values considered use of found materials and compositions shaped by balance, line and form. Traditionally centred on plant materials arranged within a vessel, contemporary Ikebana has expanded to embrace non-organic elements and sculptural approaches.
Artists featured in To invite the gods respond to the principles of Ikebana in diverse ways. Inspired by the impulse to collect, arrange and recontextualise materials, this exhibition reveals how acts of composition can generate new poetic resonances and meanings. Featuring new and existing works by Jordan Azcune, Alrey Batol, Erika Scott, Trevor Spohr, Wendy Talbot, and more.
Installation view: Jordan Azcune, Post-Christian Camp, 2021, Seventh Gallery. Photography: Aaron Rees
Maryborough Printmakers: Impressed V
Impressed is a biennial printmaking exhibition established by the Maryborough Printmakers to showcase the vitality and breadth of printmaking practices in the region.
First held at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery in 2016, the exhibition returns to HBRG for a milestone fifth edition, marking over a decade of ongoing commitment to creativity and community.
Since its inception the Impressed exhibitions have surveyed a breadth of artistic approaches to printmaking, spanning a range of traditional and contemporary techniques and innovative forays into 2D, 3D and mixed media work.
The exhibition brings together artists from Maryborough, Hervey Bay, Bundaberg, Gympie and across Queensland, to celebrate the tactility, versatility and uniqueness of the medium.
The Maryborough Printmakers, based at a specialist print studio at Gatakers Creative Space, are the leading printmaking group on the Fraser Coast. Run by dedicated volunteers since 2013, the studio is a place of skill sharing, inspiration and shared passion. They host regular meetings and workshops teaching a wide range of printmaking methods.
Opposite page: Image courtesy of Gatakers Artspace, Maryborough
Amanda Bennetts: Carve Crevice from Grace
Carve Crevice from Grace is a short film by Sunshine Coastbased artist Amanda Bennetts that examines the capitalist ethos surrounding productivity, specifically for those who live with disability and chronic illness.
In the film, Bennetts, who lives with multiple sclerosis and a rare muscular disease, places herself within an constructed industrial worksite, echoing her former role in mining workforce planning. Tasked with breaking up and processing an imposing block of sandstone with seemingly no outcome, the film evokes a sense of absurdity and futility.
Through this repetitive and physically demanding task, Bennetts exposes society’s demands of people deemed ‘unproductive’ and challenges the equivalence between ‘usefulness’ and value in contemporary life. Through this evocative work, Bennetts creates an allegory between the erosion of both bodies and landscapes through extractive practices.
Carve Crevice from Grace was the Major Prize Winner of Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize 2025 at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery, joining the region’s art collection.
Carve Crevice from Grace was originally commissioned by Accessible Arts and Sydney Opera House.
Image: Amanda Bennetts, Carve Crevice from Grace (video still), 2024, video, 00:11:00. Hervey Bay Regional Gallery Collection.
