2021 Exhibition Program

Albany Town Hall Gallery

Current Exhibition

MIX IT UP Contemporary artists respond to the City of Albany Art Collection

Intriguing and imaginative – these two words sum up this fascinating exhibition for which contemporary artists have created artistic responses to treasures in the City of Albany Art Collection.  The MIX IT UP exhibition is presented by MIX Artists Inc and is on at the Albany Town Hall from August 20 to September 23, 2021.

Seventeen artists from the MIX Artists group have taken on the challenge of responding to six historical and contemporary paintings and prints.   Visitors to the exhibition will see each of the six artworks from the Collection surrounded by the contemporary responses, in an inspiring presentation.  

Indra Geidans, Visual Arts Officer and Curator of the City of Albany Art Collection, made the initial selection of artworks, choosing historical and contemporary artworks with a range of subject matter, and which include paintings in oil, acrylic and watercolour, prints, pastels and mixed media works. 

The MIX Committee then randomly allocated each participating artist to a Collection artwork.  MIX Artists Chairperson and exhibition Co-ordinator, Annette Davis, explained

“As a group, we agreed that we wouldn’t get to choose which work we wanted to respond to, and that instead, names would be drawn out of a hat to allocate artist to artwork.  This is part of the idea of mixing it up – it has challenged us to move out of our comfort zones.”

Indra Geidans commented “This exhibition is taking the Art Collection out of its comfort zone as well.  It will be exciting to see how the artists have responded to, and been inspired by, the Collection.  I think it will encourage visitors to look closely at all the artworks to find the connections.”

Some of those visitors will be preschoolers and their parents.  In a first for an exhibition in the Town Hall, the Albany Public Library is holding a Storytime Session in the exhibition, on Tuesday September 7 from midday to 1pm.  Bookings can be made at the Library.   For visitors of a slightly older age, there is an opportunity to hear directly from the contemporary artists in a session titled “Inside the Artist’s Mind” on Saturday August 21 commencing at 1.30pm.   In addition to these sessions, an activity sheet will be available at the exhibition to help people of all ages explore the art. 

The MIX exhibitors are Susan Angwin, Kerrie Argent, Christine Baker, Ann Copeman, Jenny Crisp, Annette Davis, Catherine Higham, Pradip Griffiths, Anne Grotian, Paul Moncrieff, Jill O’Meehan, Nat Rad, Lizzie Riley, Margaret Sanders, Renee Tan, Shaun Wake-Mazey and Jo Wassell.  

The artworks selected from the Collection are all 2D artworks.  In responding to the artworks MIX Artists have worked in a range of media and the final artworks include sculpture, textiles, paintings, photography and installations.  

Catherine Higham has created an ink painting in response to the Collection’s painting by Shandell Cummings of the wattle seed pod.  For Higham, this painting brought back memories of the fast-growing red-eyed wattle trees she planted on her farm, which provided a hiding place for children and assorted animals over the years.

Upcoming Exhibitions

Coming soon..