Northern Rivers Community Gallery (NRCG) has announced its 2025 annual exhibition program, presenting four exhibitions next month that explore our connections to, and associations with, place and memory by local and interstate artists.
Ballina Mayor Sharon Cadwallader said, ‘In 2025 the Gallery will deliver a first-class exhibition program with leading Australian artists and emerging talent, host the Byron School of Art and Southern Cross University Graduate Awards and work towards an inclusive, accessible and contemporary arts program.
‘NRCG is a vital and valuable arts organisation in the Ballina Shire and is essential to supporting the community’s vibrant arts and cultural life. I can’t wait to see this exciting program unfold in 2025.’
January shows
The Meteorologist’s Daughter – Watching the Skies: Lesley Ryan is the daughter of a meteorologist and has had a fascination with the sky since she was a child: its ever-changing moods, its ability to frighten or calm, and the impact it has on everyone.
Her paintings in this exhibition are influenced by a love of Japanese woodblocks, simple lines, and the reduction of landscape to basic forms.
Lesley Ryan creates ambiguous landscapes that invite the viewer to imagine the setting of their place and time.
Passing Place – Col Mac: This is a series of paintings and sculptures made in response to the artist’s connection to the Ballina region.
Taking its title from the point in a single-track road where travellers briefly converge before moving in the opposite direction. passing place explores the ways in which boundaries of time, place, biography and history can poetically overlap creating a brief plurality of cultural memory.
The Black Lake – Shanti Des Fours: This show presents a series of small, quiet monotypes that offer abstract glimpses, like fleeting flashes of memory, of a vast black lake near the artist’s former home.
Created long after the artist moved away, the works respond to the lingering visual and emotional resonance of both a place and a former life.
Princess of the Night– Holly Ahern & Eden Crawford-Harriman: Drawing from Australian and Sri Lankan perspectives, Princess of the Night explores existential narratives, cultural spirituality, and the ephemeral beauty of nocturnal blooms.
This installation is an immersive, technology-driven enquiry of the Epiphyllum oxypetalum.
Exceptional year ahead
Gallery Coordinator Imbi Davidson, said, ‘NRCG is excited to launch its first exhibitions of 2025 and look forward to an exceptional year of contemporary, experimental and innovative exhibitions and programs ahead.
‘This group of exhibitions explores connections to landscape and place through themes of sky, plants, memory and emotion, expressed via a variety of mediums including painting, photography, sculpture and installation.’
All exhibitions open Thursday 9 January and continue until Sunday 2 March. The official exhibition launch will be held 5.30-7.30pm, Thursday 9 January.
The Northern Rivers Community Gallery is located at 44 Cherry Street Ballina and is open Wednesday to Friday from 9am until 3pm and weekends from 9.30am until 1.00pm.
For further information contact the Gallery on 02 6681 0530 or visit the website www.nrcgballina.com.au.
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