Past Events › Exhibitions

Safe Space Contemporary Sculpture brings together three-dimensional art works by twelve Australian artists that explore psychological aspects of physical space. It features a range of figurative elements and narrative themes with social, and sometimes political, resonances. Many of the works in this exhibition take as their point of departure: the human body, its dimensions, the spaces it occupies, the narratives that contain it and the theatre or spectacle that unfolds around it. Artists include: Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Alex Seton, Claire Healy…

If this exhibition has a theme, it’s the idea of falling in love again, whether this is with someone, something, an animal, your body, an activity you love doing or just your own life. The Re-Enchantment exhibition spans two floors of MRAG’s Art Factory exhibition space. Downstairs is a giant cardboard box city, which people can move around to build into the city of their dreams. Upstairs is a rather exotic reading room, complete with a painted piano, bookcase and…

The Current histories of LGBTQI people in Australia focus on Melbourne and Sydney. This project will be the first to focus on a regional LGBTQI community and how it connected with the wider Hunter Newcastle region to produce the largest percentage vote (75%) for marriage equality in the 2017 postal ballot outside the capital cities. The LGBTQI community is directly affected by shifts in thinking and the law in ways that have not yet been fully explored. Given the vulnerability…

The universe our world moves in is unfathomably vast, limitless and unknowable. But we each live in our own universe, our own small world, an intimate universe of personal experience. In this exhibition the artists will be contemplating the universe in all its interpretations, in the form of miniature art - paintings, drawings, sculpture and more - and through their artwork inviting the viewers to understand their idea of what it means to exist in an Intimate Universe.

Guns to Roses brings together artworks from the MRAG Collection, and selected works on loan, that illustrate how artists respond to the precariousness of our times; the fragility of life as impacted by war, political unrest and climate change, and the consciousness of our own mortality. Within this exhibition we find symbols of weaponry transformed into visually seductive motifs, the daily news transformed into a ten metre long scroll and the beauty of our native flora used as a disguise…

Lucas Grogan’s work spans multiple disciplines including quilts, murals and painting. As the title suggests, Grogan’s sense of humour has permeated his bold, fastidiously patterned, highly graphic, pun-filled signature blue artworks that reflect his personal experiences in a range of media. This exhibition will include painting, embroidery, quilts and a large immersive wall installation including a mural to be created by the artist during the installation of the exhibition. Other artworks in the exhibition will be borrowed from a number…

For the past 63 years the Maitland International Salon of Photography (MISoP), which operates via various Camera Clubs in the Hunter Region, has invited entries from photographers around the world. From an average of 5,000 images received from 40 countries for the annual competition, they are then judged across 6 salon categories; Colour, Monochrome and Nature prints as well as Open, Nature and Travel projected images. All the 2019 MISoP acceptances and award winners are shown at the Maitland Showground…

Maitland based artist Jaime Pritchard creates work that reflects the spirit of wabi-sabi, the view cantered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. Pritchard’s work traverses painting, drawing, multimedia installation and sculpture in response to emotion, memory and experiences. Unravelling To Recognition is an immersive installation revealing a journey of recollection, moments of deep reflection and acknowledgement leading to understanding.

The MASTERS part of the exhibition comprises 21 artworks from the Lakeview Collection of Old Masters. These are works on paper by artists Francisco Goya, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso, Rembrandt Van Rijn, Marc Chagall, Joan Miro and Destino (a collaboration by Salvador Dali and Walt and Roy Disney) and include lithographs, etchings, etchings with aquatint and serigraphs. To complement these works and to provide creative input from budding APPRENTICES, students from local primary and high schools were invited to make…

Kei Takemura‘s artworks are characterised by overlapping a layer of embroidered cloth on to a photograph, drawing or broken objects. In her Renovated series, Takemura repairs broken objects using silk thread, transforming these 'wounds' into objects of beauty. For the artist, the act of embroidery creates a state of being tentative; it transforms objects and places which no longer exist, and brings fragments of memory towards a tangible existence. Kei Takemura is represented by Dominik Mersch Gallery  BE INSPIRED…

The nature of printmaking has changed substantially over the past 30 years and we now have artists who are willing to push the parameters of what was once considered  to be a “perfect print”.  They have done this by experimenting freely with various print media, melding their practice with other fields and investing in a new materiality.  Any notion of privileging technical perfection has now given way to research, and  an investment in questioning old paradigms but not at the…

Dale Forward is a Newcastle based artist and comic creator. Predominantly working in ink, though also delving into painting and digital illustration on occasion, Forward’s work is characterised by its dark fantasy themes and explorations into interactive elements. The title Warlock is drawn from Forward’s 2018 interactive comic of the same title that readers are able to engage with through 3D glasses to find different images on the same page giving two different sides to the story.

Between the wheezing song of the carousel and the voice of the muse of epic poetry lies the land of Nicola Hensel and John Turier. For twenty six years their home and studio have produced a steady stream of sculptures, drawings, songs and offspring who make things. This show brings their practices together for the first time – and includes a drawing machine a mechanical parade, giant buttons and maps for the ever renewable heart.