"Imagine" at the Gippsland Art Gallery

Recently I went to the Gippsland Art Gallery at Sale, to see the first exhibition in the new Gallery. The exhibition was curated by Simon Gregg, the acting Director, and is quite remarkable. It occupies the whole of the Gallery, which consists of a lofty central gallery (where one enters) surrounded on three sides by lower galleries. About half the works in the exhibition came from the Gallery's own collection.

The title "Imagine" indicates the intent of the exhibition: to show works that engage with the imagination. The works covered a wide range, but they had in common elements of the fantastic, the mysterious, the uncanny. There were bizarre and non-functional machines by Tricky Walsh and Adam Laerkesen, soft sculptures inspired by astronomical objects by Claire Pendrigh, the enigmatic figures "Hattah Man" and "Hattah Woman" in a photograph by Polixeni Papapetrou, an unnatural cloudscape by Lesley Duxbury (it was created by the cooling towers of the Loy Yang power station in the Latrobe Valley), the pulsating video "Singularity" by Solveig Settemsdal and Kathy Hinde, and much more.

Here are two photos (by me). An inexpensive catalogue, with good pictures of all the works, is available at the Gallery.

Juz Kitson, Preserved in the the ball of an eye that once could see [detail]

Daniel Agdag, The Bird House [detail]

I found the exhibition more coherent (despite its wide range) and more engaging than the National Gallery of Victoria's Triennial, which I saw recently. The Gippsland exhibition is on until 18th March.  See http://www.gippslandartgallery.com/.