A summer of art

The Northern Rivers region hosts some of Australia’s best regional and community galleries. The 2024/25 summer program is diverse and impressive, with great masters, First Nations creators, prize winners, and emerging and established artists in a summer rich with art and creativity.

Tweed Regional Gallery, Murwillumbah

In Sharing the National Collection, the rock star is Claude Monet’s Meules, milieu du jour (Haystacks, midday), one of five works shared by the National Gallery of Australia. The Haystacks series explored the nuances of light, shade, tone and colour across the seasons and at different times of the day. This 1890 work from the series is filled with dazzling light and luminous colour and is on display until October 2025.

Selected from the gallery’s collection, A Delicate Terrain explores the irreversible impact on Australia’s natural beauty and the environment due to changes in ecosystems, waste and detritus of modern society. Colonisation’s imposition and impact on land and Country, told from First Nations perspectives and contemporary artists, runs until January 26.

Drawn entirely from the Tweed Regional Gallery collection, Stillness: And a touch of reticence highlights the beauty of stillness through a selection of portraiture. The exhibition includes a selection of works by leading Australian artists, including Olive Cotton, Max Dupain, Tracey Moffatt, Greg Weight, and Michael Zavros, until March 16.

The Wynne Prize for the best landscape painting of Australian scenery in oils or watercolours or the best figurative sculpture includes, for the first time, the greatest number of First Nations finalists in the prize’s history. Bringing unique perspectives to landscapes and figurative sculpture, the exhibition runs until February 2.

gallery.tweed.nsw.gov.au Northern Rivers Community Gallery, Ballina

The NRCG has launched its 2025 annual exhibition program, presenting four exhibitions exploring our connections to, and associations with, place and memory from January 9 to March 2.

The Meteorologist’s Daughter – Watching the Skies by Lesley Ryan reflects her fascination with the sky since childhood, its ever-changing moods, its ability to frighten or calm, and its impact on everyone.

In passing place, Col Mac responds to his connection to the Ballina region and explores the ways in which boundaries of time, place, biography and history can poetically overlap creating a brief plurality of cultural memory.

Shanti Des Fours presents The Black Lake – a series of small, quiet monotypes offering abstract glimpses and fleeting flashes of memory. The works respond to the lingering visual and emotional resonance of both a place and a former life.

Holly Ahern and Eden Crawford-Harriman draw from Australian and Sri Lankan perspectives in Princess of the Night, exploring existential narratives, cultural spirituality, and the ephemeral beauty of nocturnal blooms – an immersive, technology-driven enquiry of the Epiphyllum oxypetalum.nrcgballina.com.au/v1/Lismore Regional Gallery, Lismore

Tim Fry’s exhibition Local Knowledge is a homage to Bundjalung Country. The artist reflects on the double rainbow region, the plants, animals, places, and sayings that define this microcosm of culture in these works on show until March 2.

The 2024 Koori Mail Indigenous Art Award features the 25 finalists and is a testament to the vibrancy and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artistic practice. Attracting entries from established, mid-career, and emerging artists across the country, the finalists will be on exhibit until February 2.

In I am Not Me, the Horse is not Mine, South African-born William Kentridge’s work draws connections between art, ideology, history and memory, revealing how ideas and images echo across time and between different cultures. The ambitious, moving image work is arguably the most significant work by Kentridge in an Australian museum, and is showing until February 16.

Works From the Collection shares restored works from the permanent collection salvaged from the 2022 Lismore floods for the first time. While creating a pause to reflect on this time, new works gifted to the gallery will also be celebrated and on show until February 2.

lismoregallery.org