PAST EXHIBITIONS 2025
ALBANY MARITIME ARTS EXHIBITION
3 - 28 July 2025 | Vancouver Arts Centre
As part of the 2025 Maritime Festival, the Albany Maritime Art Exhibition returns to the Vancouver Arts Centre this July with a captivating display of maritime-inspired artworks.
Running from 3 – 28 July, the exhibition invites visitors to explore the ocean’s beauty, power and mystery through the eyes of talented local and regional artists. From crashing waves and coastal life to nautical heritage and deep-sea imagination, this annual exhibition celebrates the spirit of the sea and Albany’s rich maritime culture.
The exhibition forms part of the City of Albany’s Maritime Festival, a month-long celebration featuring events, performances, food experiences and family-friendly activities that honour Albany’s coastal identity and connection to the ocean.
Image Credit: Vashti Innes-Brown
GENERATIONS COLLECTION
27 June - 19 July 2025 | Albany Town Hall
Drawing on a private collection of over 80 Indigenous Desert paintings, this exhibition features second and third generation women artists who, whilst retaining the inherited conventions of traditional tribal lore, are now freely exploring individual stylistic innovation.
Image Credit: Vashti Innes-Brown
john toohey: TERRA
29 May - 21 June 2025 | Albany Town Hall
Terra is a solo photographic landscape history of Western Australia, based around three narratives, South Land, Blood and Bone and Basin and Range. At its core is the evidence, depicted through panoramic images and text panels, of the reconstruction of landscape since colonisation as a cultural act (hence the pun in the title).
Basin and Range tells a story of the landscape from deep time to the present through panoramic sequences. These split frame scenes combine a reading of both time and space in the one image, extending from the early formation of the landscape to the present. South Land recasts the coastlines the Dutch named in the seventeenth century, De Witt’s Land, Eendrachts Land, D’Edel’s Land, Leeuwin Land, and Nuyts Land. These were names given to parts of the coastline that had been charted but were essentially imagined as the Dutch seldom made landfall. Leeuwin Land and Nuyts Land belonged to the coast between Cape Naturaliste and the border with South Australia, encompassing King George Sound, though nothing in surviving documents indicates that either expedition was close enough to the coast to enter the Sound. The landscapes are reimagined through a series of panoramas, snapshots and postcards. Blood and Bone challenges the standard depiction of early settlers as resilient in the face of hardship, recasting the history through acts of violence and madness reported through the press.
Image Credit: Vashti Innes-Brown
ALLEN KENNEDY: BEYOND THE SURFACE
23 May - 20 June 2025 | Vancouver Arts Centre
Beyond the Surface invites you to explore the raw materiality of paint, shifting the focus from narrative to the physical presence of the medium itself. Through thick layers of oil, acrylic, and enamel, the works celebrate texture, dimension, and depth.
This exhibition offers an intimate, sensory experience where meaning emerges not through interpretation, but through direct engagement with the materials. Each piece evolves organically, reflecting Allen Kennedy’s personal gestures and subconscious responses.
Join us and go beyond the surface, embracing paint in its purest, most tactile form.
Image Credit: Vashti Innes-Brown
KARLEE BERTOLA: A CELEBRATION OF POLLINATION
1 May - 17 June 2025 | Vancouver Arts Centre
Come and join us for a celebration of botanical pigment making and investigation into the vital process of pollination.
Pollination is more than just the transfer of pollen from one flower to another; it is the process that ensures the continuation of plant life.
Pollination involves a careful orchestration of interactions between plants and pollinators. Bees, butterflies, birds, bats, flies and even the wind serve as nature’s messengers, transporting pollen from flower to flower, ensuring that genetic diversity thrives. Without these vital exchanges, many plant species would not be able to reproduce, disrupting not only ecosystems and our food security, but also the artistic and cultural traditions that rely on plant-based inks and dyes.
The process is both fragile and essential—an intricate web that connects forests, fields, and gardens across the world. Over 75% of flowering plants depend on animal pollinators, making them the silent but crucial collaborators in the natural pigment-making process. Without pollination, there would be fewer fruits to yield the rich berry dyes, fewer flowers to extract brilliant hues, and fewer plants to sustain the landscapes that inspire artists and ink-makers alike.
Just as a painting is incomplete without its final brushstrokes, the cycle of nature remains unfinished without pollination. It is the invisible force that keeps the botanical colour palette alive, ensuring that each season brings a new canvas of vibrant flowers, nourishing ecosystems, and continuing the ancient practice of natural ink and paint making. The world itself is the gallery, and pollination is the delicate brushwork that ensures the exhibition never ends.
Image Credit: Vashti Innes-Brown
JO WASSELL: MEMOIR
1 May - 12 June 2025 | Vancouver Arts Centre
‘Memoir’ is a collection of works on paper, inspired by memories, happenings, and imaginings.
They are personal to the artist but express something universal: these moments we gather make up the stories of our lives.
Image Credit: Vashti Innes-Brown
THE SHINING - HI VIZ IN FOCUS
17 April- 23 May 2025 | Albany Town Hall
High viz clothing has stepped out of the mining and construction industry and today, it serves as a universal symbol of alertness in many walks of life. It is no longer just seen in industrial settings and can now be found on traffic wardens, tradespeople and kindergarten children on excursion.
This exhibition brings together five regional artists from the Great Southern and five Perth based creators to engage with this as a concept and as a medium. The artists transform everyday materials into artworks that reflect on contemporary life.
Image Credit: Vashti Innes-Brown
Linda Chambers & Collyn gawned: 100 Chawan
10 April - 8 May 2025 | Vancouver Arts Centre
100 Chawan (tea bowls) is a collaborative installation reflecting the studio-based practices and common interests of Albany ceramic artists Linda Chamber and Collyn Gawned.
With reference to historic and cultural use, the tea bowl became their inspiration for individual exploration into form, surface decoration and functionality.
They have worked the elements of earth and water, firing in gas, electric and wood-fired kilns, to create unique and considered pieces for this exhibition, complimented by an original soundscape meditation compiled by Albany sound designer, Nat Rad.
Image Credit: Vashti Innes-Brown
THE HUXLEYS: FANTASTIC VOYAGE
22 February - 22 March 2025 | Albany Town Hall
The Huxleys are a dynamic duo of cataclysmic proportions, presenting queer spectacle and disco-infused wizardry across the visual art, performance, and fashion worlds. Their photography and performance art traverse the realms of costume, film and recording.
With a visual assault of sparkle, surrealism, and absurdity, The Huxleys saturate their practice with glamorous, androgynous freedom, aiming to bring escapism and magic to everyday life.
Embark on a surreal journey through the luminescent landscapes of the glamorous art deviants as they look back on 10 years of photography, film, costume and chaos. This exhibition offers a magical detour from everyday life, inviting you to surrender yourself to a queer wonderland where too much is never enough.
Content Warning: This exhibition contains some adult themes, nudity and a lot of fabulous sparkle. Minors must be accompanied by a parent or guardian
Be sure not to miss the opportunity to experience The Huxleys live at the opening night on Friday 21 February, and join us for an insightful in-conversation artist talk event on Saturday 22 February.
Content Warning: This exhibition contains some adult themes, nudity and a lot of fabulous sparkle. Minors must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.
Albany Pride Festival 2025 is thrilled to present The Huxleys: Fantastic Voyage at Albany Town Hall, proudly supported by Albany Community Bank and with thanks to the generous curatorial support of Fremantle Arts Centre.
Image Credit: Vashti Innes-Brown
HARRY FREEMANTLE: LINE OF FLIGHT
30 January - 27 February 2025 | Vancouver Arts Centre
Harry Freemantle’s work focuses on perfecting technique, materials, and space for visual impact. Some pieces are carefully planned, using drawing and chiaroscuro, while others embrace chance and experimentation.
Line of Flight merges his philosophical and artistic insights, grounded in embodiment.
Image Credit: Vashti Innes-Brown
SHAUN WAKE-MAZEY: PAINTINGS
17 January - 15 February 2025 | Albany Town Hall
Wake-Mazey’s imposing large-scale abstract oil paintings fill the gallery with passionate use of violent colour and harsh tonal contrasts charged with emotion.
They conceptually occupy the space between the earth and the heavens – a transcendental space affirming that the artist is seeking the essence of spirit that is universal.
Image Credit: Vashti Innes-Brown
AMANDA KEESING: ENTWINED
15 November - 20 December 2024 | Vancouver Arts Centre
An exhibition by Amanda Keesing.
Discover the enchanting world of Amanda Keesing at her upcoming exhibition, Entwined, at the Vancouver Arts Centre. This exhibition showcases two captivating aspects of the natural world through the mediums of photography and weaving.
Photography: I use my camera every day to capture the delights of the natural world I am so connected with. I focus on revealing the hidden or often unseen beauty of nature. Everywhere I see patterns, textures, symmetry and wonders. I strive to take photos of these, to open other’s eyes to the splendor around them.
Weaving: I have become obsessed with the urchin shape and love to forage on the beach, at tips and in gardens for unusual materials to create woven urchins. Most of the urchins have taken many, many hours to create. For example, it takes around 100 hours to weave a large seagrass piece. And my practice involves lots of problem solving too. Try juggling 80 fine wires as you start a woven wire urchin. The solution was a paper plate with 80 slits round the edge.
I can’t guarantee the longevity of some of the woven pieces and colour change is inevitable especially if they are exposed to sunlight. And perhaps you can detect a fair hint of the sea emanating from some of the seaweed urchins. All part of the fun.
Image Credit: Vashti Innes-Brown
Tania Ferrier: Angry Underwear Albany
14 December 2024 - 11 January 2025 | Albany Town Hall
Tania Ferrier’s art project Angry Underwear began in New York in 1988 after she witnessed the assault of a dancer at a club where she worked as a bartender. She painted underwear with vicious animal faces for the dancers to wear on stage. The media got hold of the story and celebrities like Madonna and Naomi Campbell bought her brazen bras.
In 2018 the Art Gallery of Western Australia acquired Tania’s work which was shown in the “Know My Name” exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in 2021.
In 2024 Tania has been working with creative Sewist Dana Stoll to create new work for the Albany Town Hall exhibition.
Image Credit: Vashti Innes-Brown