Kinross Art Centre

Kinross House, 603 Toorak Road, Toorak, Victoria, 3142

Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday 10.00am – 3.00pm

Telephone: 9829 0340

Opening Monday 8 May until Friday 26 May Lamentations : on sorrow and solace, is an exhibition bringing together new and older works to explore and contemplate mourning, and where solace can be found.

The exhibition considers this from historical, personal and environmental perspectives. It includes work created around an early Point Nepean Road pioneer family who endured the deaths of eight of their 13 children; as well as many grandchildren. Diseases such as measles, diphtheria, scarlet fever and typhus were rampant until better hygiene and medicines became available. The effort to keep them from spreading through the new colony became clear to me during my residency at Police Point at the edge of the Quarantine Station on Point Nepean, and had particular resonance in light of the COVIC pandemic.

When ships on which there were infected passengers arrived into the bay, a yellow flag was flown as notification of disease. In my paintings, the boats are yellow. Despite the efforts to curtail the spread of diseases through quarantine, they nonetheless made their way up along Point Nepean Road with devastating effect on families.

It is hard to imagine how anyone copes, acknowledges, and absorbes this level of loss, then as now. Much of my work is just that – imagining and delving into the loss, the yearning, the anger and despair, and questioning.

Nature is explored in its fragility, and strength, and its intrinsic capacity to provide comfort. Towards the Precipice, an artist book, tells a visual story of a once thriving wetland nearly destroyed by agriculture, that has been recreated (or restored) to provide a thriving habitat. The four drawings in the Grampians series were done several years ago when I was able to regularly spend time in the home of a dear friend who had died. It was a special place for her – and me; somewhere I felt her presence and her loss deeply.

WORKSHOP and ARTIST TALK

Workshop: Creating in Solace.
Thursday May 18, 11 am – 12.30 pm
This interactive art workshop will give attendees a safe, creative space to come and sit with their experience and make art through guided exercises. This is an opportunity to explore mindfulness, connect with others and manifest your journey into material art.

The workshop is $20, with the intention that it is available to people who have limited resources and are not normally able to attend workshops and events. It free for those in financial hardship. RSVP to Kinross is required. 9829 0340

Artist’s Talk: Monday May 22, 11 am.
Artist Anne Riggs deliberates on her exhibition Lamentations. On Sorrow and Solace. “She examines the important role of art in soothing and strengthening, and how it is particularly meaningful in times of grief, loss and during life’s most profound transitions, offering pathways to hope.”
$20. RSVP requested.9829 0340

The exhibition is neither morbid nor voyeuristic. I hope viewers will see the exhibition something of what and how artists and art can provide comfort and care in times of suffering.

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