EXHIBITION DATES: 16 August– 12 October 2024
OFFICIAL OPENING: Friday 16 August, 6pm
Details
In Kambah Turns 50, artist/curator Louise Curham develops work begun during the Covid-19 pandemic exploring how Kambah is more than what it seems. That was a time when many of us paid much closer attention than normal to where we live and who we live with. Louise explains: ‘over the past four years I’ve been investigating the experience of Kambah. Our reputation is mixed yet I’ve found many Kambah people and alumni love this place. Much thought and care went into working out what would make a good life for 28,000 people in this beautiful part of the Tuggeranong Valley. I wanted to find out how Kambah shows up in our public collections, how some of you see Kambah as residents and how artists of the Valley see Kambah. I wanted to bring these different views together to see if we can recognise something of our own experience of Kambah.’ The exhibition is accompanied by a series of community-initiated and community-led events through August and September. More information about those events is provided below.
The public collections in the exhibition come from Archives ACT, the ACT Heritage Library, the Canberra and District Historical Society, the National Film and Sound Archive and the State Library of NSW.
Artists from Kambah and the Tuggeranong Valley have chosen or made new works that reflect on Kambah. Residents, alumni and visitors to Kambah have contributed some objects and images.
Tuggeranong Arts Centre has worked with Namadgi School and students in Years 8-10 have produced paintings of Kambah.
Public events in the Kambah Turns 50 community-initiated and community-led celebrations:
31 Aug Classic car show and Village fair
7 Sep Heritage Day – three location around Kambah
8 Sep Dogs’ Picnic, Woolshed
14 Sep Urambi Hills sunrise + sunset walk, bird walk
15 Sep Welcome to Country and community planting Urambi Hills, sunrise walk Mt Taylor
22 Sep Kambah Sustainability Fair
Learn more here https://kambahturns50.wordpress.com/ and on Facebook Kambah Turns 50
About the Artists and artworks
Louise Curham uses her art and her expertise as an archivist to explore how old media can help us understand our current predicaments in the face of climate change and late capitalism. Louise has a background in film, experimental film, film performance and photography. She trained in film and visual art as well as archives and heritage.
In the exhibition:
Louise Curham
Finding ourselves in the archives 2024
A central image from Archives ACT is surrounded by an evolving set of small images of my suburb by me and other residents and alumni including some images from collections. It investigates the difficulty of representing something as complex as a place where people live.
Leonie Andrews is a visual artist working in a range of media including stitch and print making. The movement of her hand and the gestures it makes on a surface either by stitching or drawing are central to her practice of observing and responding to the to textures and objects she sees around her. Since completing her studies at the Australian National University School of Art, Leonie has exhibited her work in both solo and group exhibitions. She has been a finalist in the Dobell Drawing Prize (2019), the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Art Award, the Gold Coast Art Prize and the Goulburn Art Award. In 2016 Leonie was awarded an Asialink Visual Arts Residency in Tokyo.
In the exhibition:
Kambah Mob 2024
The ‘Kambah Mob’ are the most widely recognized symbols of the suburb. The sheep, the work of local artist Matthew Harding, were commissioned in 2002. They are loved, and decorated by residents across the suburb. Most notably, up to 2022, Nan Miller decorated the sheep every Christmas. A tradition embraced by residents and people driving past alike.
I was inspired to make my own version of these iconic sheep, based on some of the many photographs I have taken of them in past years.
Domenic Bahmann is a multidisciplinary visual artist and designer. He is born in Munich, Germany and lives and works in Canberra, Australia since 2010. He is known for his whimsical illustrations, photography, and graphic design. In 2013 he started his creative challenge called ‘Stop, Think, Make’. The challenge was to come up with a creative everyday-related image or illustration at least once a week. Since then finding art in everyday situations has been an ongoing theme in his personal and commission based work.
In the exhibition:
Kangaroo 2014, Heart 2024, Treeceratops 2016
These three images connect playfully to our beautiful environment of the south. For over a decade, Domenic has been challenging himself to ‘stop, think, make’, committing to using everyday elements to make a new work every single week.
Ian Marr spent his childhood at ‘Mount Murchison’ station outside Wilcannia and still works there and at his small farm in southern New South Wales, combining farm work and work in ink, watercolour, oils and stone inscription. He studied Australian local history at the University of Sydney, and undertook master classes in drawing and letter-cutting in Australia and the UK. His reading in history and literature has fed and inspired much of his inscriptional work, including three recent public works, the Dhurga Rock, an acknowledgement of Indigenous dispossession, in Ryrie Park, Braidwood; commemorative marker for the lost cemetery at the site of the Sydney Town Hall, and the Woden Floods Memorial. He is represented in public collections in eastern Australia and in Ireland, and has exhibited in over eighty solo and group exhibitions over the last forty years.
In the exhibition:
Winter, spring, summer, autumn community garden
This series depicts the Canberra Organic Gardeners plots near the Woolshed on Springbett Street through the seasons. Ian is represented by Stella Downer Fine Art.
Cathy Morison is new to sharing art in public as she recently took up drawing and painting as a regular practice. Cathy’s work was part of Southfest 2023 in Tuggeranong town centre.
In the exhibition:
Cathy Morison
Springbett Street 1976, 2024
In preparation for this exhibition, Cathy spent lots of time walking around Kambah and she settled on depicting this lost shops, no longer there. You can see Cathy’s beautiful bird around the corner.
Rebecca Schaefer is a lifelong resident of Tuggeranong and is passionate about the history and the stories of the valley region. As a recent Diploma of Visual Arts graduate, Rebecca has taken to utilising significant amounts of experimentation and mixed media elements to add to the tactile and sensory elements of her pieces. While Rebecca often works with abstraction, her recent work has been in creating more realistic depictions by documenting places and moments in the region that we would usually never notice or give a second glance in more tradition printmaking methods.
In the exhibition:
Kambah Covid testing station in 2020
I chose a much more recent moment in Kambah’s history for the inspiration of my artwork.
Many of us would be very familiar with this view of the large Eucalyptus tree in the middle of the Kambah Covid-19 Testing Centre. Joining the seemingly never ending motorcade, we would slowly make our way through the labyrinth of rope and orange flags, with the hope of a short wait time, and that good news at the end would make the procession worthwhile.
Barak Zelig is a printmaker and sculptor. Barak has participated in many solo and group exhibitions in Australia and overseas exhibiting prints, drawings, photos, and sculptures. Barak uses found objects to create small sculptures and steel to create large sculptures. He is interested in hybrids, illusion, and the unexpected. Barak participated in sculpture exhibitions such as Sculpture for Clyde, Sculpture @ Show Canberra Murrumbateman, North Sydney Art Prize, Sculpture Bermagui, Lake Light Jindabyne, Hidden Rookwood Sydney, Yarra Valley Arts/ Yerring Station Sculpture Melbourne, Sculpture in the Valley, and Contour 556/18 Canberra. Barak won the 2014 Re-Use Award Clearwater Prize Queanbeyan, the 2018 Staff Choice Award and the 2019 Staff Choice Award, and the 2019 Commended Award respectively in Hidden Sculptures Rookwood. He also won prizes for 2-dimensional works. In 2013 Barak was commissioned to create a stainless sculpture as a gift for the Canberra Centenary.
In the exhibition
McTaylor Take 2024
‘Location, Location, Location!’ …the ‘bush capital’ for developers and builders, no matter what and where! Even at the top of McTaylor we need a ‘Sunday’, a burger, French fries and coke with ice.
A question for the children- Can you find the three large trees in this artwork?