Stories from Three Collections Grounding

For the first time, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Cowra Regional Art Gallery, and Orange Regional Gallery are sharing the richness of their collections to create three unique exhibitions, each with a different thematic approach: Grounding, Retrospection, and Affinities.

Presenting familiar and unfamiliar works in new contexts, each exhibition sparks fresh conversations, fosters community pride within the Central West, and strengthens cultural tourism across the three destinations.

Grounding: Stories from Three Collections at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery explores the ways in which artists respond to place and the ways in which regional collections reflect the histories and identities of place. Grounding looks at regional, national, and international artists across medium and time who consider the physical, emotional, and cultural significance of place. Importantly, the concept of ‘grounding’ is deeply embedded in Wiradyuri and First Nations culture through connection to Country.

The desire to create is central to the human experience with some art objects in Australia dating back at least 65,000 years. The act of making marks, images and symbols, builds visual languages which can transcend the spoken word. Artists use elements such as line, colour, shape, and composition as the words in these languages which form collectively and individually.

Wiradyuri Country and its three rivers (Wambuul, Galari, and Marrambidya), rolling hills and expansive skies have inspired and influenced artists for generations. Across the exhibition we see this tradition expand to other iconic attributes of the Australian landscape, its red earth and nostalgic manmade fixtures. And then we contract, to the intimate spaces, the personal memories and experiences of artists which can be strangely inclusive and familiar. And we reveal the artists who have chosen to live in this place, bringing with them marks, images and symbols from home – contributing a new visual language, and so the palette deepens, is more vibrant and is richer than before.

Permanent collections play a unique role in capturing the stories of a place with each acquisition a fragment of a continuum. Grounding is an exploration and celebration of 164 years of cumulative stories from the Central West.

Artists featured include GW Bot, Liam Benson, Grace Cossington Smith, Aunty Lorraine Connelly Northey, Elisabeth Cummings, Olive Cotton, Max Dupain, Rachel Ellis, Danie Mellor, Luke Sciberras, Merrick Fry and Lloyd Rees.