2026 Exhibitions

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When Creativity Comes Into Bloom

4 - 23 January

Now in it's fourth year, the annual prize was established to promote culturally diverse artistic endeavours, showcase talent in the Mallee, Nurture young emerging artists and provide a community platform where local art can be viewed, studied, critiqued, and sold. For further information click here. 

Thank you to artist and arts educator Aaron Bailey for judging the 2026 show.

Image: Night Bloom, 2025. Tim Williams. Oil on board. 2026 Best in Show.

(Tibetan-track)

“a mark that remains after that which has made it has passed by"

Rhae Kendrigan

1 - 21 February 

In the book A Field Guide to Getting Lost, author Rebecca Solnit references a shul as ‘a mark that remains after that which has made it has passed by.’ Such as a scarred hollow in the ground where a house once stood, the channel worn through rock where a river runs or the indentation in the grass where an animal slept last night.

To me, shul describes the imprint a place has on me. 

Place encompasses the living systems that are unique to a particular environment- the intertwined ecological systems and human stories. Each work in this exhibition emerges from the uniqueness of a particular place and my relationship with it. 

My research process brings together the knowledge I gain from sensing with the body when I am in a place, and the intellectual knowledge gained through more traditional modes of research such as ecology and sociology. I am also influenced by seeing and experiencing the landscape in new ways through collaborations. I look for patterns and crossovers in these different forms of knowledge that can bring to light something to respond to.

I then create with place.

The mediums and methods chosen invite the landscape into the process, a collaboration beyond language with the non-human world. This involves using the senses in new ways- attuning to the texture, line, movement and sounds of place.  The work belongs as much to the place as it does me.

Each work in this exhibition is an exploration of how I can capture a felt embodied experience of being with a landscape.

Shul is a culmination of works created during residencies and travels across 2024/25. These residencies have supported and located my practice in ecologies as diverse as coastal geology, inland rivers, estuaries, farms and forests. I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the water, land, animals and spirit of this Country I am honoured to explore and make with.

I invite you, as you move through your places, to ask how is a place receiving me? What stories does it have to tell? 

Image: Bibbaringa (detail), 2025. Charcoal, pastel, ink and acrylic paint on paper. 

Valarie Robinson

1 - 21 March 

My work has been about Eucalyptus Camaldulensis (River Red Gum) for several years now as their individuality always provokes my interest. They present so many facets of themselves to the world with such character - some are ugly, some beautiful and everything in between. From saplings to the grand old masters whose age I can only guess at, their chosen habitat is close to water’s edge. I often ask old specimens “Did you watch Captain Charles Sturt pass this way in 1828-9?” 

I began making work for this exhibition with drawing because I was too ill to do much else, and how therapeutic it was. These works on paper became a new way to express my love of trees. The marks are found when really looking into a red gum- insects, animals, and birds, marks on the bark and in the wood, leaves and twigs. Playing with inks, photos and compositions, text was added as seemed appropriate.

Fabric has always been my first love and I have returned to it to create abstracted pieces of the forest - trees and landscape. Small wall quilts combine landscape and trees with inks and fabrics, appliqué and quilting.Red gum dye extracted from bark and eco dyeing using cotton fabric gave serendipitous marks reminiscent of those marks within the trunk, burls, and fallen logs.

Always about the landscape, trees, colours and atmosphere my work is experimental and intuitive, often letting the medium speak in its own way which I call serendipity. This exhibition continues the story and speaks of the river red gum and its relationship with the surrounding bush.

Image: Forest Dreaming 1, 2025. Ink and pen on paper, collage. 25 × 20 cm.

Allan Gowers

5 - 25 April

The Glory of Genesis captures those fleeting moments when light, sky and landscape come together in a way that feels almost like the first day of creation. The title speaks to beginnings — the sense that every sunrise, cloud formation and burst of colour across the horizon is a quiet reminder of Genesis, where light first emerged and the world revealed itself.

The photographs in this exhibition were captured using two smartphones: earlier works on a Samsung Galaxy A14 and later works on a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. While I own a Nikon digital SLR camera, I am continually amazed by the quality and immediacy that modern smartphones offer, allowing me to respond instinctively to the moment as it unfolds.

I do not use lens filters or digital manipulation such as Photoshop. Instead, I rely on careful observation and the natural conditions before me. I am always searching for extraordinary lighting situations — moments when the sky becomes luminous and transformative. Foreground elements are often included to frame the vastness above, creating balance and drawing the viewer deeper into the scene. This approach is informed by my training at the Morton Arboretum, where the relationship between landscape, light and composition was central.

The exhibition features 23 mounted photographs, alongside 22 additional prints that explore the same moments of light and atmosphere. Together they form a collection that celebrates the beauty of the sky and the ever-renewing sense of creation that unfolds above us each day.

Image: The Eye of God Easter Sunday, 2025. Archival pigment print. 

Lyn McDoanld

3 - 23 May

A deep emotional connection to a   place or a state of mind where one is truly themselves at peace. A place that   embodies memories where we want to return, a sense of nostalgia.

When I consider the short span   of my life absorbed into the eternity of all time, or the small part of space   which I can touch or see engulfed by the infinite immensity of spaces that I   know not and that know me not, I am astonished to see myself here instead of   there… now instead of then.  - Pascal

Elements of the landscapes where   I’ve lived and spent time remain with me - the colours, textures, forms, the   flora, the smells, and the emotions created by that environment.

I recreate impressions from   memory rather than a realistic portrayal of particular landscapes.  

I began this body of work by   playing with left over materials from previous works, revisiting old   techniques with fabrics and paper like eco-dyeing, rusting, felting,   stitching, and collage. I wanted to make abstract works layering fabrics and   paper transformed by different techniques such as Momigami (kneading and   crumpling paper) and painting and burning Lutrador paper.

The exhibition also includes embellishing some previous works that embody the concept of Querencia. 

Image:  Crossing, 2026. Lyn McDonald. Cotton fabric, momigami paper, stitching and collage. 42 x 52 cm.