MSWPS visits Bendigo Art Gallery by Bus on 15 November 2024
It was a small miracle that 20 members and their friends and family arrived at the Bendigo Art Gallery in time for lunch on Friday 15 November. By luck rather than design, Jo Reitze heard her friend was ill and unable to come. Her friend also mentioned there were new parking restrictions in the Vision Australia car park. Rather than risk cancelling the trip at the last minute, or incurring huge parking fines, I got permission for MSWPS to park at the Habitat Uniting church on the corner of Mont Albert and Burke Roads. By another amazing coincidence, McKensie’s Tourist Services had supplied the phone number of the bus driver! Happily it was possible to re-arrange the new pick up point and contact all involved between the hours of 6 pm Thursday and 8 am Friday! The bus left on time and we arrived at Bendigo Art Gallery as planned.
Everyone enjoyed lunch and there was great interest in the paintings, ceramics, sculpture and drawings on show:
- Living Connections; Reflections on care, kinship and country.
Contemporary paintings including many by First Nations artists. They combined family rituals and daily life with ancestral stories and cultural relationships.
- New World order: A century of change.
From the end of the Victorian era in 1901 to the so called America Century following World War 11, population growth, migration, space exploration and a nuclear arms race were accompanied an explosion of mass media and pop culture. Art Deco and Art Nouveau emerged and women artists showed their talents in ceramics while First Nations art flourished gaining a now permanent position in today’s art landscape.
- Layers of Blak
Jewellery from eleven Victorian First Peoples’ artists was shown in celebration of the creative outcome of the Koorie Heritage Trust’s second year of the Blak Design program.
- Watercolour Dreaming; works from the collection of Dr Beverley Castleman.
Features Albert Namatjira and contemporary works by the Many Hands Centre and the Hermannburg School of watercolour painting.
- Rob McHaffie: We are family
The artist’s observations of everyday surroundings reflecting contemporary Australian life with colour, whimsy and humour.
- The School of Paris; Australian artists abroad.
The artists featured are from the later 19th and early 20th centuries whose works were influenced by living or working in Paris before the outbreak of World War 11.
- For the delight of the people: the origins of the Bendigo Art Gallery’s collection.
From a single room to Australia’s largest regional gallery, Bendigo Art Gallery now has a collection comprising 5000 works. Its founding motto, ‘For the delight of the people through beautiful art” still holds true today. Paintings from the mid-18th C to today are shown.
- Regimes of value: the politics of taste, trade and desire.
According to Bendigo Art Gallery, paintings displayed under this title “explore the ways in which value has been ascribed and signalled in the Western art tradition”. From a spectacular Meissen vase to contemporary metalwork by Shireen Tarweel, it was a fascinating array.
MSWPS bus trips are inspiring in many ways. It is an annual members’ event which represents great value and provides opportunities to network and establish friendships. Next year, we’ll visit a different gallery, so look out for details via email, the MSWPS Bulletin or the website.
Tessa Wallis President
The Bus Trip is an annual event and all members are invited. Generously supported by the original Annie Davison Oliver (1903-1997) bequest to our society. The Annual Bus Trip, the Annual Changing Perspectives exhibition and Major Award are financed by MSWPS investment dividends. Read more about Annie on Page 256 in More Than Just Gumtrees, A Personal, Social and Artistic History of MSWPS by Juliet Peers.
Image: Janet Laurence The Breath we Share at Bendigo Gallery
Top Row Anne Finkelde (centre) and friends Thais Keech and Sandra Spate - Annie Finkelde and Tessa Wallis - Jude Marganis (right) and friend Margaret - Jo Reitze, Marion Chapman and Carmel O'Connor
Second Row Jude 's friend Sharon Gammon -- always smiling - Keep on Keeping on - Liz Moore-Golding, Margi McLoughlin, Jude Marganis - Margaret Christianson enjoying a shady tree outside Bendigo Art Gallery
Third Row Randa Baini outside Bendigo Galleries - Sylvia Isaac and Angela Abbott enjoyed Bendigo Galleries