Showcasing her true colours

Robe & Bordertown hosting two very different exhibition by Mount Gambier based artist Gina Raisin

“You have to let go of your old expectations to make room for new possibilities.” It is a mantra that encapsulates the past few years for Mount Gambier artist Gina Raisin. The disruptions of COVID aside, her life too an unexpected turn and her journey over the past three years is now showcased on the walls of Karatta Wine Room & Gallery, in Robe, and Bordertown’s Walkway Gallery. They are two very different exhibitions – a culmination of mentorships and residencies under a Country Arts SA grant – but both reflect her personal and professional experiences.

It was in 2019 that Gina secured the $10,000 Step Up grant from the Australian Regional Art Fund, though Country Arts SA.
“This good fortune coincided with a life changing event when my husband Mick and I became permanent kinship guardians to our three grandchildren,” she said.

“Our world was tipped upside down and I thought my art practice had finished before it had even started.”
But it wasn’t. The staff at Country Arts SA worked closely with Gina to still allow her to undertake her funded project and time with mentors James Dodd and Heath Franco ensued, along with a 10 day residency at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (ACE).
The newly formed young family then headed south to Tasmania at the beginning of 2020 but that sabbatical was cut short and in November that year, Mount Gambier was again home for Gina, Mick and the children, now aged 9. 7 and 5.
The time in Tasmania was prolific for Gina, though. Lockdowns might have meant she could not access her studio but eventually opportunities presented themselves.

“It was just nuts but when we came out of lockdown there was a café that said I could have a space in their shop and there I was painting for an audience,” Gina said.

“It was a new experience for me but I loved the interaction with the kids and others and I sold a considerable amount of work from there.”
It also meant she was putting into practice the work she had done alongside her mentors – Adelaide’s James Dodd and Sydney’s Heath Franco, who has previously exhibited in Mount Gambier.

Those two mentorships along with her 10 day residency at ACE, where Gina was able to immerse herself in her work, laid a solid foundation for what became preparation for two exhibitions – the Karatta Wine Exhibition, which is inspired by her time in Tasmania, and the Walkway Gallery, where she is the first Limestone Coast based artist to have a solo exhibition, which is an in depth study of the personal and professional challenges of the past three years.

“The process for both exhibitions was completely different for both of them and I painted them both quite separately,” she said.
“Although at the start of the process the feeling was the same – I have to paint two exhibitions in amongst raising three children.” Gina’s acrylic and oil paintings hanging in Karatta Wine Room & Gallery are all about her time in Tasmania.
“It is inspired by the things I loved and the people that I loved in Tasmania,” she said.

“When people live on an island they are quite different – they are resourceful and they are interested in people, especially when new people come to the community.

“We lived in a fantastic little neighbourhood and we’ve been back since and stayed with both lots of neighbours – that’s how close we became. It is definitely a place I love.”

The Robe exhibition is titled Earth, Sea and Beyond and runs until February 26.

The Walkway Gallery solo exhibition is arguably even more personal and is rooted in the death of her mother.

“When I collected her belongings from Boandik there was a crochet rug,” Gina said.

“One day I pulled at a thread and it started unravelling so I made a ball of yarn out of it and that has come with me everywhere I go – it has become a symbol of life.

“If you pull at a thread, things can unravel very quickly. What I thought my life was going to be and what it has become is very different. The exhibitions is all about unravelling and ravelling.”

It sees an exhibition where the works are either in pairs or groups of three as they explore the polar opposite of the human experience – the sublime and the ridiculous being just one example of the polarised human condition.

There is also an added interactive facet to the Walkway Gallery exhibition. There are balls of wool on offer for people to make into something and rugs for people to unravel.

As for her works, Gina thrives on having conversations with visitors to her exhibitions.

“My works are abstract, they tell a story but it is about what do you see,” she said. “That’s what I love about art – people can find their own story in it.”

The Walkway Gallery exhibition runs until February 4.

Both exhibitions basically mark a decade since Gina embarked on her own art practice – taking what had long been a passion for all things creative and turning it into a career.

It was an August 2014 exhibition at the Riddoch Art Gallery in the Margaret Scott Gallery that marked Gina’s emergence as a serious artist and a look back at her story to that point only makes you wonder how this artistic career didn’t start earlier.

Anyone who knew Gina when she was a teenager wouldn’t be surprised to see how this story of ger artistic pursuits has unfolded.

It was her passion at high school and she was set to pursue a career in fine arts, being accepted to a university course in Melbourne.

But financially, tertiary education and moving so far from home just wasn’t an option and so the paintbrushes were all but packed away.

So, while the story of Gina, the painter, started almost four decades ago, it really only took flight in 2014 and no one was more thrilled that she has returned to her first love than Gina herself, setting aside two days a week in the studio.

Juggling a new marriage, her job as a partnership broker and taking care of her aging mother, she has still managed to put together that first solo exhibition for South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Week that August.

Art might have returned to her repertoire a decade ago but her career in general always had a creative component, with much of it spent in the media space.

“I always had that creative bent so I guess that’s why the media was a good fit in the end,” Gina said.

After an apprenticeship at the local radio station, she worked as a producer at Adelaide’s 5DN and then at NWS9 where she worked in the production department on everything from Here’s Humphrey to the Grand Prix. Gina also did freelance work, working alongside Gabrielle Kelly making documentaries for the BBC in the early 90s.

Gina also enjoyed stints at the ABC, again in production, working on shows like Couch Potato and again dabbling across the full spectrum including sport.

Then came the amazing opportunity to work with respected Australian film maker Rolf de Heer – Gina was a producer on his acclaimed movie Bad Boy Bubby.

With a wealth of experience under her belt, Gina decided to return home and so she made her home at Port MacDonnell.

“My initial thoughts were to get a job at Channel 8 but that didn’t pan out,” she said. “So I set up my own business and worked freelance for a few years.”

Then came the Mount Gambier City Council years, as she took on the role of community services manager.

“Being a new role it was a blank canvas,” Gina said. “I was interested in arts and young people and I was able to develop a lot of projects around those two things.”

Her desire to still be creative gave rise to some memorable projects, including the Memories in Suitcase – the migrant focussed sculpture that sits in the courtyard between the Sir Robert Helpmann Theatre and the Mount Gambier Library, that was borne out of the stories of the wide variety of migrants in this region.

“It gave me the opportunity to work with Silvio Apponyi and that was amazing,” Gina said.

She was also a driving force behind the Limestone Sculpture Symposium, even flexing those long buried artistic muscles by participating herself.

“Then there was the film festivals and all the youth week activities and things I really loved,” she said.

During this time, though, the reality was she rarely picked up a paintbrush – until she met her husband Mick Raisin.

“He introduced me to acrylic painting and I took over the studio at our house and he’s the one who rarely got to paint,” she said.

“He loved painting, drawing and writing too and he got me started back up and I’ve left him behind.”

For Gina, art is a spin off of her long standing love affair with words.

“To be able to somehow express those words in and abstract way and hope people get it,” she said.

And her new freedom of expression was heightened by her discovery of palette knives. “I saw them in an art supplies shop and thought I’d give them a go,” Gina said.

“I literally have paint all over everything in the studio, on the walls, on the curtains, and I’ve never been happier – nothing is sacred in the space once I’m in the zone.”

Colours are also her passion and have been since she was a child.

“I was always decorating my bedroom and loved to wear colour as a teenager and I was always dying my hair,” she said.

Art is also her happy place and she is in no doubt as to where this contentment has come from.

“What’s love got to do with it – absolutely everything because without it I wouldn’t be doing this,” she said.

“It’s funny how someone can change your life.”