Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre will launch its vibrant Winter program at a multi-opening event featuring four exhibitions on Friday night 9 May.
The combined celebration presents a touring exhibition by internationally renowned Colombian Australian artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso, alongside three other exhibitions by regional artists Luther Cora, Tamara Mendels, and Debbie Taylor-Worley and Sophie Taylor.
Gallery Director Ingrid Hedgcock said the opening will bring regional talent to the fore with exhibitions that explore the human connection, nature and the responsibility we share to care for the living world.
‘We’re looking forward to launching our exhibition program this winter and celebrating the achievements of all the exhibiting artists with the community,’ Ms Hedgcock said.
‘While each exhibition is unique in its own right, at the core of the artists’ themes is a notion of care – for creatures great and small, for the materials used in the process, for cultural continuance, and in caring for the earth. We hope everyone will visit these exhibitions while on display and join us at the opening.’
The national touring exhibition Maria Fernanda Cardoso: Spiders of Paradise presents Cardoso’s ongoing photographic series featuring the tiny Australian Maratus spider – measuring less than 5mm in size. It includes the artist’s acclaimed video work On the Origins of Art I-II (2016) and new works from the Spiders of Paradise photographic series. The exhibition has been developed and toured by Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.
Bundjalung and Yugambeh Nation artist, Luther Cora, presents Breast Plates, a solo exhibition that delves into the intricate layers of history, culture, and colonisation impacting Australian Aboriginal peoples. The exhibition features his photographic Breast Plates series, which serves as both a homage and a critique, exploring the weight of the past and the enduring and resilient spirit of Aboriginal people.
Northern Rivers artist, Tamara Mendels, is showcasing a collection of new work in her solo exhibition Key Rhythm.
The unique forms on display in Key Rhythm are borne from rhythmic gestures — lyrical movements with paint and resin that have been frozen mid-act and held by the resistance of their own materiality. Featuring cast resin sculptures alongside a series of acrylic paintings, the new work in Mendels’ exhibition marks a significant evolution in her practice.
Regional artists Debbie Taylor-Worley and Sophie Taylor are mother and daughter artists from strong matriarchal Gamilaraay/European heritage. Their joint exhibition Gunimaa-Source visually expresses the source of their feminine power which they explore through a cultural lens. Spanning across ceramics and paintings, their imagery draws from intuition, provocative dreams and motifs found in ancient dendroglyphs and petroglyphs used by European and Gamilaraay ancestors. Their exhibition celebrates the intrinsic connection of the feminine to Mother Nature, their strong family bond, and highlights their respect for cultural responsibilities in caring for the earth.
All four exhibitions will be officially opened to the public on Friday 9 May at 6pm. Bookings to the event are to be made via the Gallery website. Dinner reservations are to be made online via the Apex Dining website.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
