Now is a Beginning

Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) presents major solo exhibition, Now is a Beginning, by Tina Havelock Stevens.

A gentle epic, inspired by Bathurst – yet not about Bathurst, Now is a Beginning embraces magical thinking, place(s), architectural space, where you begin, the unknowns, new narratives in a place once familiar, improvisation, social and sensory engagement. Embodying a universal experience of the shifting, contemporary ‘now’, the exhibition offers a gathering point for reflection on the past as well as the current state of play of the world, marked by political urgencies and the ruptures of unforeseen, unpredictable events.

Tina Havelock Stevens presents an existential narrative of connections over time, borne from the adrenaline of riding motorbikes as a ten-year-old on her uncle’s farm, to the metaphysical experience of packing up her late mother’s house. Zones in the gallery, swathed in saturated colour, create charged atmospheres for exploration of light installations, video/film, photography, object-based works, sculpture and sound.

Prominent ultramarine blues and rich oranges gleaned from Havelock Stevens’ 2024 work Sonic Luminescence, a commissioned sound and light work for Muru Giligu (the new pedestrian link at Metro Martin Place Sydney) will form new links at BRAG. Orange Alert, 2025, an orange flocked drumkit, references the nearby city of Orange, but also the occurrence of a locust plague in Bathurst that the artist experienced as a child. The artist’s family lineage goes back to painter Roy De Maistre who explored the relationship of colour to sound. For Havelock Stevens, drum kits are conduits for loaded spaces, either through improvised compositions or as non-playable sculptural objects. “For me it’s about what colour can do: an overt gesture. It’s about the vibrations whether you see them or not.”

Another new work links light and life, Spectral Peace, 2022-25, considered by the artist a posthumous collaboration with her late mother. “After mum died, we sold the family home and when it was emptied, I did a self-imposed residency over two weeks catching the light moving through the house. I was conceived in that house and had nursed mum out of there.” Upon reviewing the footage of other works in the series, Havelock Stevens found she’d mistakenly captured herself, appearing ghost-like through a home she’d always known.

High Fashun, 2025 will be premiering at BRAG: a new performance video featuring members of Compareo, a Bathurst-based all-abilities performance group. Compareo means “be visible, be present.” Set on the grounds of Abercrombie House, a colonial mansion that always intrigued the artist on the way to her uncle’s farm, the backdrop riffs off European mansion fashion shoots.

Havelock Stevens has lived multiple lives: her punk-rock ethos developed early across a series of bands, including Plug Uglies and The Titanics with stints in Crow and Chicks on Speed. Currently, as drummer for art rock experimental improv music duo, derived from The Mumps, she recently opened for Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth fame) at The Tank, Art Gallery of New South Wales. In her undergraduate years she was a student of cultural studies, and film and philosophy classes with luminaries such as Ross Gibson (University of Technology, Sydney) before another year at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, after which she made her own documentaries for television as director and cinematographer. A resilient current of empathy continues to underpin her practice. She was also a youth worker for years in urban refuges, made community television and worked with indigenous communities in Papunya, Kintore and Cape York.

Alongside Now is a Beginning at BRAG is publication and public program including performance trail, talks, and workshops.

The project is supported by the New South Wales Government through Create NSW and by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.