MRAG

  • Visit Us
    • How to get here
    • Café
    • Shop
    • Venue hire
  • Exhibitions
    • Current & Future Exhibitions
    • Past Exhibitions
    • Touring Exhibitions
    • The Art Factory
    • Exhibition proposals
  • What’s On
    • All Events
    • For Adults
    • For Kids
    • MRAG from Home
      • See: at home
      • Make: at home
      • Do: at home
    • Past Events
  • Learn
    • Collection
    • Schools
    • Creative Learning
  • Support Us
    • Become a member
    • MRAGM committee
    • Artel magazine
    • MRAG volunteers
    • Sponsors, Patrons, Partners & Donors
  • About
    • History
    • Staff Contacts
    • Awards
    • Using this website
Loading Events

« All Events

  • This event has passed.
  • « David Capra | Teena’s Bathtime
  • Vanessa Turton | Welcome to WOOF WOOF »

Peter O'Doherty, Caringbah Red Brick (detail) acrylic on canvas, 122 x 122cm

Susan and Peter O’Doherty | Moving House

February 4, 2017 — April 1, 2017

Free

Susan O’Doherty, Blacktown laundry/toilet (detail), 2013, mixed media, 120 x 110 x 16cm

Moving House is a collaborative exhibition between artist couple Peter and Susan O’Doherty combining Susan’s mixed media constructions and Peter’s paintings. The exhibition reflects their respective childhoods living in families that were perpetually on the move. Susan’s father, an officer in the Australian Army and Peter’s, a carpenter/builder.

For decades, Susan has constructed wooden and painted assemblages encasing found objects depicting the various rooms of the house of decades past and present – kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, laundry, sewing room, study etc. and details of elements within these rooms. To convey the sense of scale through a child’s eye, Peter has painted a series of large canvases, images of suburban houses, their facades, driveways and streetscapes reflecting the distinctive suburban architecture of decades past and present.

Susan was born in Brisbane. Her father was redeployed on average, every 12 to 18 months to towns and cities around Australia and briefly to England. Due to the constant dislocation, her mother was rigorous and ruthless in discarding all extraneous family memorabilia and personal effects. She remembers her mother emptying cupboards and wardrobes, separating and sorting clothes and the children’s toys, keeping only the bare essentials to be packed into suitcases and boxes for the next move. It seemed like an eradication of personal history, a perpetual sense of rebuilding an identity.

Peter was born in Auckland, New Zealand and one of his earliest memories is of the family furniture being loaded on to a trailer, by his father, and hauled behind the Vauxhall as his parents relocated for what would be the first of many moves. His restless mother was always searching for a new situation through the opportunity of a block of land and another fresh start. A pattern of living in rented cottages and garage workshops was established while his dad built their latest weatherboard, fibro or brick house.

Due to a financial recession in NZ, his family uprooted itself to Australia when he was ten, settling in Sydney where the moving and rebuilding resumed.

Even though their work practices are very different – Peter being a figurative painter and musician and Susan a painter and assemblage maker, there is a common thread to their aesthetic in terms of feel, composition, colour and subject matter. Their exhibition is about the houses they lived in, relating to memory, identity and transience.

 4 February – 2 April 2017

+ Google Calendar+ iCal Export

Details

Start:
February 4, 2017
End:
April 2, 2017
Cost:
Free
Event Category:
Exhibitions

Venue

Maitland Regional Art Gallery
230 High Street
MAITLAND, New South Wales 2320 Australia
Phone:
02 4934 9859

Related Events

  • Artist talk with contemporary jeweller and artist Pennie Jagiello

    April 17 | 10:30 am — 11:00 am
  • Future Heirlooms: Contemporary Jewellery and Object Workshop 16 yrs +

    April 17 | 11:30 am — 3:30 pm
  • Saturday: When Commercial Artists Go Rogue, Artist Panel discussion

    April 24 | 11:00 am — 12:00 pm
  • « David Capra | Teena’s Bathtime
  • Vanessa Turton | Welcome to WOOF WOOF »
    • Join our e-lists
    • Feedback
    • Become a member
  • Gallery Details

    Art Gallery & Shop Trading Hours
    Tuesday – Sunday, 10.00am – 5.00pm

    Address 230 High Street,
    PO Box 220 Maitland NSW 2320
    Phone 02 4934 9859
    Email artgallery@nullmaitland.nsw.gov.au

    Café Seraphine
    Tuesday – Sunday, 8.00am – 3.00pm
    Phone
    02 4934 7264

    We acknowledge the Wonnarua People as the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land upon which MRAG stands.

  • Maitland City Council Maitland City Council
    Maitland Regional Art Gallery is a service of Maitland City Council and is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
  • Visit Us
    • How to get here
    • Café
    • Shop
    • Venue hire
  • Exhibitions
    • Current & Future Exhibitions
    • Touring Exhibitions
    • Past Exhibitions
    • The Art Factory
    • Exhibition proposals
  • What’s On
    • All Events
    • For Adults
    • For Kids
    • Past Events
  • MRAG from Home
    • See: at home
    • Make: at home
    • Do: at home
  • Learn
    • Creative Learning
    • Schools
    • Collection
  • Support Us
    • Become a member
    • MRAGM committee
    • Artel magazine
    • MRAG volunteers
    • Sponsors, Patrons, Partners & Donors
  • About
    • History
    • Staff Contacts
    • Awards
    • #mymaitland
    • Using this website
  • Feedback
  • Join our e-lists
  • Become a member

© Maitland Regional Art Gallery 2021