Current & Upcoming Exhibitions
LEILA JEFFREYS
NATURE IS NOT A PLACE TO VISIT. IT IS HOME.
27 July - 15 September 2024
Highly acclaimed Australian artist, Leila Jeffreys’ work focuses on diversity within bird species. Through her photographic process she can enlarge them, or slow them down, allowing us to inspect them in detail - getting much closer than possible in real life.
This exhibition features the photographic series Ornithurae - a selection of 15 portraits of native pigeons and doves from across Australia and New Guinea printed to human scale; and a multi-channel digital video work entitled Nature Is Not A Place To Visit. It Is Home - featuring budgerigars filmed in extreme slow motion.
​
All works were donated by the artist to the Western Plains Cultural Centre collection in 2020, through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program.
Image: Leila Jeffreys, Nature Is Not A Place To Visit. It Is Home. (still), 2019, multi-channel digital video. 8 minutes 20 seconds (loop), AP 2/2. Collection Western Plains Cultural Centre. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Leila Jeffreys, 2020.
RAUSCHENBERG AND JOHNS
SIGNIFICANT OTHERS
1 June - 15 September 2024
Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns are considered two of the most significant artists of the twentieth century. While their work is credited with changing the course of American art history, their individual artistic styles are a result of a private creative dialogue that began when they were young artists in a relationship. Deliberately moving against the grain of Abstract Expressionism, the dominant art movement of the time, became the crucible for both their lifelong practices.
​
Rauschenberg and Johns: Significant Others draws upon the National Gallery’s Kenneth Tyler Collection of prints by both Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns produced between 1968 – 1973.
Image credit: Jasper Johns, Figure 7 from Color numeral series, 1968–69, published by Gemini Graphic Editions Limited, Los Angeles, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, purchased 1973 © Jasper Johns/Copyright Agency, 2023
JODI CRAMOND
ORNIBIOGRAPHY
25 May - 15 September 2024
Ornibiography is a mixed media exhibition by Dubbo-based artist Jodi Cramond that explores her relationships with birds and the similarities she views between her struggles with mental health and how society perceives beauty. Cramond’s practice incorporates mediums such as clay, paint and carbon to transform and challenge society’s perception and definition of societal beauty standards. Ornibiography is a body of work that highlights the delicate and fragile nature of birds in relation to the human psyche, emphasising and appreciating their idiosyncrasies, as a way to transform current societal perceptions.
​
Curated by Mariam Abboud.
​
This is a HomeGround exhibition, produced by the WPCC and supported by Orana Arts. HomeGround is sponsored by Wingewarra Dental.
​
​
OFFICIAL OPENING: Saturday 25 May, 2pm
Image Credit : Jodi Cramond, Collection of Birds, 2023, BRT clay with underglaze and glaze. Image courtesy © artist
THE BEST OF THE BALD ARCHY PRIZE
20 April - 11 August 2024
The Bald Archy Prize, is a comic portrait competition established to satirise similar art competitions, such as the renowned Archibald Prize. It has grown to become one of the leading art events on the Australian Art calendar. These irreverent and provocative caricatures of news worthy Australians, are now held permanently by the Museum of the Riverina. The Best of the Bald Archy Prize is a survey exhibitions featuring past winners from the last 15 years.
Image Credit: Marty Steel, Never a Dull Moment, 2023, Acrylic on paper. Image courtesy © Museum of the Riverina
FROM THE VAULT
A WOMAN'S PLACE
10 May - 1 December 2024
This exhibition explores the stories of three local women of Dubbo, from three different time periods dating from the late 1800s through to the 1940s. The stories of these women reflect a broader discussion around women’s roles in the public sphere.
​
Mrs Blanche Soane was a prominent Suffragette, Nurse Mary Adams, the Matron of a Lying-in Hospital, and Mrs ‘Kep’ Wilkins, a prominent producer and organiser in Dubbo’s Theatrical community, how do we understand such prominent and respected local women in an era when it was a firmly held view that a ‘woman’s place’ was in the home?
From the Vault is supported by Create NSW
Curated by Simone Taylor
​Image Credit: Photographer Unknown, Group portrait of nurses including Mary McDonald, later Matron Adams, Local Studies Collection, Dubbo Regional Council, 2015_222_PHO
LIFE AT HOME IN A WORLD AT WAR
CAPTURING THE HOME FRONT
17 August - 17 November 2024
Famous American photographer Dorothea Lange established her reputation as a documentarian when she was commissioned by the government to travel the United States in the 1930s to capture and reveal the devastation wrought on Americans by The Great Depression.
​
During WWII Lange was commissioned by the US Office of War Information to photograph America’s factories, shipyards and farms as the nation went to war.
​
Her unvarnished depictions of the forced internment of Japanese Americans from coastal California to inland camps in 1942 were considered too realistic and raw for public consumption and Ansel Adams was commissioned to document the desolate camp at Manzanar in a better light.
​
In Australia photographers Sam Hood, William Cranstone, Jim Fitzpatrick and Hedley Cullen captured the WWII home front, the sad farewells, the factories, the country towns and our remote internment camps for Japanese and other enemy aliens.
Produced by the Australian National Maritime Museum.
​
An exhibition supported by the USA Bicentennial Gift Fund.
Image Credit: Smiling Soldier, Edward Cranstone (Reproduction). Collection Australian War Memorial.
WYNNE PRIZE 2024
28 September - 24 November 2024
The annual Wynne Prize was first awarded in 1897 in honour of the official opening of the Art Gallery of New South Wales at its present site.
​
Judged by the trustees of the Art Gallery, the prize is awarded to the best landscape painting of Australian scenery or for the best example of figure sculpture by an Australian artist.
​
The Wynne Prize reflects the diversity of figurative sculptural practice, while the paintings are a dynamic reflection of Australian artists’ response to the land, reflecting contemporary aesthetics, environmental and stewardship concerns, and conceptions of Country.
​
This touring exhibition is an opportunity to see the finalists in the Wynne Prize 2024.
HELEN PYNOR
93 % HUMAN
28 September - 24 November 2024
93% Human is an exhibition exploring the multispecies nature of being ‘human’ and our ‘promiscuous’ exchanges of DNA with others. Through an investigation of DNA we exhale in our breath and inhale from others, the work highlights the intimacy of our unnoticed exchanges with human and non-human others, and ‘contamination’ as a necessary condition of being.
​
A performance video depicts artist Helen Pynor and bioinformatician Jimmy Breen collecting a shared breath sample. DNA extracted from this breath was found to comprise 93% human DNA, with the remaining 7% belonging to around 6,700 microbial species. Based on a sound score by composer Amanda Cole, classically trained singers sing and whisper the Latin names of hundreds of these species, brought into the gallery as an 8-channel sound work.
Image Credit: 93% Human (video still), Helen Pynor, 2023. Single channel video projection (10.20 min), 7-channel video on screens (4.55 min), 8-channel sound (20.09 min), scientific glassware objects. Lead Collaborators: Amanda Cole, Composer; Associate Professor Jimmy Breen, Bioinformatician and Geneticist, Chief Data Scientist, Black Ochre Data Labs at Telethon Kids and The Australian National University. Image courtesy of the artist.
ANDREW ROBARDS
NOW SCREENING
30 November 2024 - 23 February 2025
Now Screening is an exhibition of digital media works by Mudgee based artist Andrew Robards that explores visual digital culture through the creation of hybridized screen languages incorporating captured imagery and animated sequences. Robards’ artistic practice utilises glitches, data-moshing techniques, kaleidoscopic and abstract patterns; spanning over numerous screens and devices to examine the relationship between audience, digital media and it’s ubiquity in contemporary society.
Now Screening is an exhibition that focuses on providing an alternative slower-paced engagement with everyday digital devices in a world saturated with screen-based communication.
​
This is a HomeGround exhibition, produced by the WPCC and supported by Orana Arts. HomeGround is sponsored by Wingewarra Dental.
​
OFFICIAL OPENING: Saturday 30 November, 2pm
Image Credit: Landscape (video stills), 2019, dual-channel video installation, duration: 6:32 (loop), dimensions variable. Image courtesy © artist
PEOPLE PLACES POSSESSIONS
DUBBO STORIES
Permanent Exhibition
The history of Dubbo told through the people who lived here. Stories of hardship, perseverance, ingenuity, tragedy and joy – Dubbo’s past is at once surprising and enlightening.
Telling the story of a place and its people is made easier by examining the myriad of ways we document, express and articulate our experiences. For a museum, the photographs, books, objects and official records help us to record history. The archives held by the WPCC allow community members to access this material for research or general interest. From diaries and ledgers to photographs that transport us back in time, the WPCC Collection provides a unique portal to our past.
Image Credit: Maker unknown, Shoe – Female – Chinese, date unknown. Red satin. Braid edging continues down to the toe. Calico sole with embroidery under the heel. Bird and flower embroidery. Orange tie embroidered in shades of blue. Designed for the custom of bound feet. Collection WPCC.
