Published on Wednesday, 6 March 2024 at 3:28:25 PM
The Shire of Mundaring has an outstanding collection of artworks that make up a comprehensive visual record of our time and unique place. Important works are acquired annually from Western Australian artists who have or have had a significant relationship to the Shire of Mundaring.
This year the Acquisition Selection Panel purchased artworks by George Haynes, Merrick Belyea, Ric Spencer and Una Bell. These artworks add to collection, stories of local geology and landscape forms entwined with wider concerns about our precious environment and the place of our planet in the vast cosmos.
The works were selected from The Shire of Mundaring Invitation Art Acquisition Exhibition entitled DRAWN, that showcases the distinct language of drawing by four eminent West Australian artists George Haynes, Merrick Belyea, Nic Compton and Ric Spencer and Tree of Life a solo exhibition by Una Bell. These exhibitions are open free to the public at the Mundaring Arts Centre from Saturday 24 February to Sunday 21 April 2024.
Also on show are four outstanding drawings from the Shire of Mundaring Art Collection, offering a rare chance to view these beautiful works by Nigel Hewit, Margaret Woodward, Robert Birch and Hans Arkeveld in a gallery setting.
The Shire of Mundaring Acquisition exhibition provides an opportunity to celebrate the continued partnership between the Mundaring Ars Centre and the Shire of Mundaring over the past 43 years. The Acquisition Exhibition promotes the abundance of artistic talent that is the legacy of the Mundaring Hills and invites the community to learn more about the selected artists.
About the Exhibitions
George Haynes
George Haynes presents us with a selection of signature drawings in charcoal alongside lithographs commissioned in 1995 for the inaugural Mark Howlett Foundation. George studied at the Chelsea School of Art in London, after which he moved for a time to Darlington, WA. Influenced by where he lives and the Western Australian light, his artworks offer us a keen observation of his life and the landscapes. Completed in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Merrick Belyea’s drawings are ruminations on the enormity of natural phenomena and the uncertainty of how to accurately depict them. For Merrick a drawing is the purest form of trying to understand exactly what is in front of us. Less imperfect than a photograph, drawings inspire him to create larger and more ambitious works. He studied fine art at Claremont School of Art and since then has been involved in many prominent West Australian collections and projects.
Nic Compton
Nic Compton, a sculptor, uses drawing to understand form, communicate ideas and explore his connection to nature. An integral part of Nic’s art practice drawing forms part of the pathway to building his sculptural works that explore the organic and vascular systems that make up our world. After his recent open-heart surgery his drawings are observations of domesticity, a form of meditation, distraction, and contemplation.
Ric Spencer
For Ric Spencer, drawing is a profoundly personal aesthetic experience, an intimate and intuitive relationship between the object of his attention, the body, the pencil and the paper. For this exhibition he focuses on rock similar to those of the Darling Scarp, to draw forth their essence in layers of pencil that accumulate to build up the structure and record the conversation he has with the rock. The soft graphite pencil recording acute sensitivity and energetic blackness.
Tree of Life - Una Bell
The art practice of local landcare advocate and Herbarium Research Associate, Una Bell has developed into pictographic language of flora and fauna that describe particular sites. In this exhibition, she draws on the ancient pictograph of the Tree of Life and the imagery in her paintings and lino prints become species lists that catalogue endemic fauna that inhabit the Jarrah and Marri trees of the darling scarp.
Please go to the Mundaring Arts Centre for more information about the public programme.
Join the artists in conversation, 1 to 2.30pm Sunday April 7 at the Mundaring Arts Centre. RSVP essential.
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