Two parts flower and White on shades of your light were selected as finalists in the Meroogal Women's Art Prize. 

This non-acquisitive art prize was established to celebrate the creativity of female artists of NSW. The Meroogal Women’s Art Prize invites female artists to respond to the house museum’s history, stories and fascinating collection and to create artworks that reflect Meroogal’s rich history of house that was handed down through four generations of women from one local family.

182 entries were received with thirty-nine works by thirty-four finalists selected for exhibition in the house, garden and grounds of Meroogal from 20 September 2014 until 25 January 2015. Check out work by the finalists here.

Photo credit: Alex Wisser

The Materiality of the Social – Craft and Contemporary Art

Local artist Karen Golland has teamed up with retro retailer The Naked Bud to create a pop up exhibition that officially opens to the public on Saturday 14 December at 11am. This collaborative venture celebrates The Naked Bud’s fourth year of business and hopes to inspire more temporary exhibition opportunities within the Bathurst community.

“We’ve had a great four years in Keppel Street and thought this milestone provided us with the perfect chance to collaborate with a local artist,” said Michael Hope from The Naked Bud. “The idea has grown from some really interesting conversations we’ve had this year about how we could increase the number of opportunities for local artists in Keppel Street. I think there’s enormous potential for collaborative partnerships to be formed between local businesses and the art community.”

The mixed media works created specifically for the site by Karen Golland look perfectly at home amongst The Naked Bud’s eccentric collection of furniture and home wares. This isn’t surprising given the artist’s own intense interest in collecting second hand materials, everyday objects and discarded craft items. For some years now her art practice has combined these items to create new associations that are both familiar and strange. This reimagining of the domestic realm explores the connection between people, objects and memory.

“My works find their beginning in the everyday experience, so it seemed natural to move these pieces from the more formal art gallery environment to a place where the broader community could catch sight of them as they go about their daily lives,” Karen Golland said. “This series of works titled Quercus exist in that imaginative space where we can shift or transform one thing into another, so there’s a nice parallel with the idea of using non-traditional art spaces like The Naked Bud for temporary exhibitions.”

The series of mixed media works titled Quercus can be viewed in the front windows of The Naked Bud, 81 Keppel Street until 14 January 2014. 

You must never lose heart in your love, my love began in the patterned pieces of linoleum left over from a series of works completed in 2011. I had thought completing these works would signify a departure from my long fascination with the domestic realm and the things we leave behind. So I never rolled up the left over linoleum. Instead these fragments remained on the studio floor. Once back underfoot they shifted and slipped with my everyday life. Patterns crawled across the floor to meet new patterns and fresh conversations were started. 

Linoleum is the perfect medium to explore current dilemmas facing humanity. When first invented it allowed for highly decorative flooring to be produced affordably, making elaborately patterned decor accessible to the everyday home. Originally composed of the perfect mix of linseed oil, cork dust, wood flour, tree resins, ground limestone and pigment, linoleum was a completely natural material. As the industry evolved this durable floor covering took on different forms and danced with more dangerous ingredients like asbestos, adding a once natural product to the long list of potentially harmful visitors we have welcomed into our workplaces and everyday lives.

In today’s world this densely patterned linoleum is outdated. On one hand it can be viewed as rubbish. On the other hand it can be a material imbued with memory, a material that allows us to re-imagine the past in the present. You must never lose heart in your love, my love is a gentle reminder that answers often grow in the places where life puts us down. This quiet approach draws its strength from the resilience and adaptability of the human race. It looks to the everyday lives of the seven billion people living on our planet to not only find the answers we need to live equitably and healthily, but to drive these changes in a way that is sustainable and accessible to all. 

BATHURST Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) is proving itself a regional hub of art, with the opening of three new exhibitions recently.

‘Two Inches off the Ground’ celebrates the talent of local artist Karen Golland; ‘Michael Esson: Mixed Metaphors’ is a survey of original drawings on loan from Manly Art Gallery and Museum; while ‘Field Work’ utilises more than 50 works from the gallery’s permanent collection in its investigation into abstract art.

In ‘Two Inches off the Ground’, Bathurst-based artist and printmaker Karen Golland inverts the commonness of everyday objects to create works of whimsy, joy and great beauty. She uses a range of household materials – including linoleum, knitting needles, bed sheets and doilies – to take you on a journey, through both the familiar and the strange.

“Everything has come from a few years of collecting things from around the home,” she said. “I’ve taken objects from the domestic sphere and transformed them into something new.”

Ms Golland has participated in a range of exhibitions, both in Sydney and the Central West, however ‘Two Inches off the Ground’ is her first solo exhibition in a regional gallery.

BRAG has also attracted a new travelling exhibition to the region.

‘Mixed Metaphors’ features 30 large-scale drawings from one of Australia’s most dedicated artists, Michael Esson.

Gallery director Richard Perram said people have been “wowed” by the drawings.

The three exhibitions will be on display at the gallery until June 19.