WAGGA Art Gallery is proud to present a significant new exhibition project in The Long Paddock, featuring contemporary artistic responses to the vast network of Australia’s Travelling Stock Routes and Reserves.
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The Long Paddock is curated by Joni Taylor from the New Landscapes Institute, a nomadic research initiative that facilitates art and architecture collaborations.
The exhibition includes work by emerging, established and highly innovative artists including Zanny Begg, Megan Cope and Bill Buckley, Hayden Fowler, Future Method Studio, Grandeza, Josephine Starrs and Leon Cmielewski, and The Wired Lab.
Traditionally reserved for droving and pastoral activities, the status of the Travelling Stock Routes as “Crown” or public land is currently under negotiation.
Inspired by the Travelling Stock Routes, the New Landscapes Institute invited a group of artists, architects and designers to work on an experimental research project, and over two years have conducted site-specific fieldwork and workshops with Indigenous communities, environmental groups and cultural institutions.
This research informed the creation of field recordings, ephemeral sculpture, temporary architecture, land art, film and experimental spatial practices.
While the Travelling Stock Routes are a uniquely Australian phenomenon, they are located within a worldwide context of disappearing cultural routes and nomadic pastoral practices.
Just as in the urban centres of our cities, access to common, shared spaces, are also being eradicated in regional areas, making this a timely and important project.
The Long Paddock is accompanied by an extensive program of public activities and events including the launch of the exhibition catalogue accompanied by a performance of whipcracking by Emiliqua East on Saturday, June 17, and a symposium on Art & Agriculture on Saturday, July 15.
Canny Kinloch: Journey Among Lakes
JOURNEY Among Lakes is the new exhibition from one of Wagga’s most significant contemporary artists, Canny Kinloch. This fascinating show is the result of years exploring intriguing lake environments, presented as video performance, sculpture, sound, prints and paintings.
Discussing the themes and development of Journey Among Lakes, Canny Kinloch says, “Through performance and printmaking I began to revisit my childhood experiences of the loch and island my family enjoyed in Scotland, and I to incorporate some of the 8mm silent film my mother had shot during our holidays in the Highlands.”
“I was intrigued by the contrast of some lakes I found in Australia, not the calm reflective surfaces of my childhood but dry or ephemeral lakes.
“Several visits to Lake Mungo resulted in a series of paintings expressing the element of air, the clouds over the lake. Being in this ancient lake environment connected me with its history and its people.
“On another occasion, walking across the centre of a large empty pink amphitheatre, a salt encrusted dry lake, I felt a stronger than normal connection with the universe. Walking is a kind of performance, perhaps a ritual.
“Recording these events amplifies the experience of being.”