Welcome to the Museum Of Art and Culture yapang Public Exhibition Opening Calendar for 2024
Join us in celebration of our exhibitions at our opening events across 2024. These events will present a first look at the new exhibitions and a chance to meet with exhibiting artists and curators.
Free entry with a paid bar is available. Become a Lake Arts Member to receive your complimentary beverage at these openings and access to VIP events
Please note: Registration for each exhibition celebration will open approximately one month prior to the event date.
Absolute Colour: Mazie Karen Turner, Daniel O’Toole and Amy Jane Scully
Museum of Art and Culture yapang main gallery
Exhibition dates 13 April – 2 June
Public Opening event Friday 12th April 2024 - 6pm
Absolute Colour brings forth three artists who work with the perception of colour in its absoluteness. Mazie Karen Turner, Daniel O’Toole and Amy Jane Scully present work which orders and composes colour in purposeful play, while exploring the dark voids that know no colour.
Mazie Karen Turner
Born in Sydney in 1954 Mazie Karen Turner was known as a highly respected artist from the Hunter region. Her practice traversed the mediums of painting, photography, cyanotype, sculpture and printmaking led by her intuition to create form. Above all however, Turner’s practice turned to working with colour as a medium of itself. Born in Sydney in 1954 Mazie Karen Turner was known as a highly respected artist from the Hunter region. Her practice traversed the mediums of painting, photography, cyanotype, sculpture and printmaking led by her intuition to create form. Above all however, Turner’s practice turned to working with colour as a medium of itself. This exhibition brings together a series of works produced while the artist lived and worked in Wangi Wangi, Lake Macquarie and works from the Estate collection with direct interventions of colour theory.
Image: Mazie Turner Cups #3. ceramic and pure pigment, dimensions variable
Daniel O’Toole: Voices from the Void
Museum of Art and Culture yapang Main Gallery
Exhibtion dates : 13 April – 2 June
A free event, including artist talk and choreographed performance by Jack Tuckerman (Catapult) will also be held 11:00am Saturday, 13th April . All welcome
MAC yapang presents Voices from the Void, an interactive sound installation by Naarm/Melbourne based artist Daniel O'Toole.
Integrating experimental electronic music/soundscapes into his exhibitions and video works, O’Toole designs environments for sensory engagement and is known for his multimedia works, including sculptural colour-field paintings, video art, and sound installations.
Voices from the Void is an installation of brass drums that sing when interacted with. The set of drums are tuned to a chord, creating an evolving soundscape that resonates in harmony.
The musical notes are layered with field recordings of the native wildlife captured on country; O’Toole creates a sonic bridge between the natural world and the architecture, activating the gallery space as a playable instrument. The installation offers us a connection to our bodies, and the landscape in an otherworldly and refreshing context.
Image: Daniel O'Toole Voices from the Void. Photo by Marcu Coblyn.
Amy Jane Scully: Colour Scores
Museum of Art and Culture yapang main gallery
Exhibition dates : 9 April – 2 June
‘Colour Scores’ are arrangements of found colour – sea-tumbled plastic, glass, beach, bush & urban debris. Fervent fields of colour of varying shades, a photographic document of what we leave behind. Recorded on same hue backdrops and titled with musical terms such as Red Riff, Arrangement in Rose and Neutral Third, ‘Colour Scores’ evoke emotional soundscapes with their intensity. Transforming discarded pieces into colour fields, a swirling spectrum of detritus.
Amy Jane Scully is a gallery educator at Art Gallery of New South Wales including teaching drawing at the Brett Whiteley Studio and Hurstville Museum and Gallery. Always exploring the transformative power of creativity across disciplines of film, theatre, yoga and Art Therapy, Amy started to explore found object sculpture during lockdown times, as she stayed closer to home and documented debris by turning the found into Foundlings – a series that exhibited as her first solo show at Scratch Gallery Marrickville, in August/September 2023. Colour Scores naturally follows on from Foundlings as each piece of detritus is honoured in its abstraction alongside others of the same hue.
Image: Amy Jane Scully, Orange off the dome. As part of her exhibition ‘Colour Scores’ 2024
Bernard Ollis – Snakes and Ladders
Museum of Art and Culture yapang Main Gallery
Exhibition dates : 8 June – 4 August
Public Opening event Friday 7th June - 6pm
An Artist talk with Bernard Ollis Saturday, 8 June 11am
This survey exhibition by Bernard Ollis OAM encompasses his entire oeuvre, with works ranging from 1973 - now. Within these works Ollis paints the imagined world that he inhabits, almost in secret. A world of fears and psychological threats, and of other spaces.
Image: Bernard Ollis, Animals with Ladders, 2002, oil on linen.
Dobell Festival: The Artist and His Dogs
Museum of Art and Culture yapang main gallery
Exhibition dates 8 June – 4 August
Public Opening event Friday 7th June - 6pm
At a young age, and while studying drawing at night, William Dobell found his first job as a ‘dog-walloper’. His duties in this job were to keep dogs from ruining shop display windows, by chasing them away.
As an artist who left school at the age of 14 to forge his own path, this interaction with man’s best friend grew as did his practice. In this intimate set of photographs loaned from the AGNSW Archive Collection, we see a snippet of Dobell in his homelife, the artist with his dogs in Lake Macquarie.
Image: Sir William Dobell with dog outside a house. Credit line: Cultural Collections, Lake Macquarie.
Young Dobell
Art In Community Gallery
Exhibition dates 11 June – 4 August
The inaugural Young Dobell’s Art Competition runs as part of the Dobell arts festival and is a celebration of young Australian talent – inviting artists between the ages of 5 and 18 to submit a portrait of ‘someone who is special to them and plays a significant role in their life’ or a landscape of a ‘special Lake Macquire location’.
Schools and individuals across the Hunter and Central Coast regions were invited to participate and finalists will be on view at MAC yapang as part of the June Dobell Arts Festival on display from 25th June 2024.
Alternating the Cube
Museum of Art and Culture yapang main gallery
Exhibiton dates 10 August – 13 October
Public Opening event Friday 9th August - 6pm
Alternating the Cube investigates how models of the Artist Run Space or ARI are a distinctive alternative to the art institution - and a necessary step for many artists to gain critique, grow and contribute to the fold.
What do ARIs say about a community, its infrastructure and willingness to support these critical spaces of exploration? How do we find a balance between culture and gentrification? The ecology of the ARI and its lifespan may be short or long and is dependant of reliability of space and stability of rent and support.
The ARI model has provided access for artists since the 1970s, challenging the traditional viewing experience to the White Cube, regional or commercial gallery space. Many ARIs provide the opportunity to exhibit and experiment and to work in attached studio spaces, with many works by artists from these spaces ending up in our National collections.
Alternating the Cube will present work from artists connected with ARIs that operate across the region and invites a contemplation of the lifecycle of an artist.
Story County: Uncle Jim Ridgeway
Museum of Art and Culture yapang main gallery
Exhibiton dates 19 October – 8 December
Public Opening Friday 18 October - 6pm
The paintings and ceramics of Uncle Jim Ridgeway echo petroglyphs and entrusted stories. These artworks trace stories of the artist’s connection to Birpui and Awabakal Country.
Respected Aboriginal Elder, the late Clifford James ‘Jim’ Ridgeway grew up on a mission with the Biripi language group. From the age of 15 he was an amateur boxer with Les McNabb’s troupe until deciding to pursue his talent as a country and western singer. He became a celebrity in country music circles, scoring an award from Nashville, USA, and being named top Aboriginal country and western male vocalist in Australia in the late 1970s.
A serious car accident in the early 1990s diverted his career from singing to art, beginning with painting then ceramics. Uncle Jim Ridgeway was a founding member of the MAC yapang Aboriginal Refence Group and collaborated on artworks that are a feature of the MAC yapang Sculpture Park.
Image: Jim Rideway's hand-coiled pottery clockwise from left - My Country 2004, Mukkun (Muk-kun) Lizard 2004, Toomulla (A Creek) 2003, Kangaroo 2002
Like New: Recent acquisitions MAC yapang
Museum of Art and Culture yapang main gallery
Exhibtion dates 19 October – 8 December
Public Opening Friday 18 October - 6pm
Like New celebrates the works of artists that have recently come into the care of the permanent collection of the Museum of Art and Culture yapang. The collection holds close to 1000 contemporary artworks onsite at Booragul, which relate by highly-regarded national, international and Hunter-based artists.
Like New brings about a reflection on the shift in the collection as it grows in size and artworks are gifted, from one collection to another, bringing a new beginning for the artwork and its journey.
Including works by Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Tim Storrier, Vipoo Srivilasa, Ken Unsworth, Wendy Sharpe and Lottie Consalvo.
Yuan Liu – in response
Art In Community Gallery
Exhibition dates 19 October – 8 December
Public Opening Friday 18 October - 6pm
Museum of Art and Culture yapang, Lake Macquarie, 1A First Street, Booragul, 2284, View in Google Maps