SEVEN local Southern Down artists have combined for the two new exhibitions starting at the Warwick Art Gallery this month.
Art Gallery director Karina Devine said the two exhibitions were rich in content and technique.
Got Mittens Too and Confluence officially open on Friday, and will be on display until late October.
“Got Mittens Too is Peter Osborn’s first solo exhibition at Warwick Art Gallery. Peter has a background in structural engineering design and has studied visual arts at the University of Southern Queensland,” Karina said.
“His works include ceramic figurative sculpture and watercolour illustration.
“The 100-year commemoration of the Anzac involvement in World War I became a personal journey when he read the diary his grandfather wrote while on service at the Western Front.”
This brief document provided many poignant images of the conflict and devastating loss of life, according to Peter.
“I became interested in my grandfather’s WWI experiences after my uncle sent me a scanned copy of his diary from that time,” Peter said.
“He arrived in France in mid 1916 as a sapper with the 13th brigade of the 4th Division AIF, and somehow survived, particularly the third battle of Ypres where his younger brother was killed.
“The title of the exhibit Go Mittens Too comes from an anecdote related by my grandfather when, after the German soldiers raised a banner proclaiming, “Gott mit uns” (God is with us), the Allies responded with a banner “Got mittens too”.”
In addition to the exhibition, Peter has designed a catalogue book featuring excerpts from the diary, text and images from the exhibitions. The book is available from the Gallery during the exhibition.
She said the second exhibition, Confluence, was a collaborative textile landscape that was conceived during a workshop at Jumpers and Jazz in July in 2015 facilitated by textile artist, Dorothy Haig.
Participating artists experimented with a variety of individual methods of printmaking based on traditional techniques, while exploring the broad concept of resilience.
“The six artists, all based on the Southern Downs except for Dorothy Haig who has recently moved to Maleny, have created beautiful printed works on fabric that together take a timely look, on many levels, at the resilience of Outback Australia,” Karina said.
Got Mittens Too and Confluence will be on display from Thursday 15 September until Sunday 28 October 2016. The artists will be at the official opening on Friday 16 September at 6.30pm.
This is a free event, and anyone is welcome but rsvp to the gallery on 07 46610434.
