Current exhibitions

The exhibitions will be opened by the Mayor of Muswellbrook Shire, Martin Rush, at 6.00pm on Saturday 24 October with special guest Virginia Mitchell, Director, Cessnock Regional Art Gallery.

Muswellbrook Local Art Awards

School of Arts/Wollemi/The Ramp Galleries

The annual Muswellbrook Local Art Awards are a major event on the Upper Hunter’s cultural calendar and this year will be a very big year for the Awards. The exhibition of entries will for the first time occupy centre stage at the Arts Centre as the main show for October and November. In the past the Local Art Awards have had to share the limelight with the Muswellbrook Open Photographic Prize but with the increased interest in the Local Award over the past few years and the increase in prizes with the additions of the Esther Bellis Youth Prize, thanks to the Estate of Esther Bellis and Scone ADFAS Inc., and the Local Photographic Prize, thanks to BHP Billiton Mt Arthur Coal and Muswellbrook & Districts Camera Club the Muswellbrook Local Art Awards can more than hold their own as the centerpiece of the Arts Centre’s local program. The Arts Centre is very pleased to have as this years judge Virginia Mitchell, Director of the new Cessnock Regional Art Gallery. This will be an opportunity for the artists of the Upper Hunter to meet the new Director and for Virginia to experience first hand the talent of the region.

Williams River Valley Artists' Project

formed in dismay at the proposal to flood
the Williams River valley, for the construction of the Tillegra Dam.

Centre Court Gallery

The Williams River Valley Artists’ Project draws on residencies and research begun in the Williams River valley in March 2009 by artists Suzanne Bartos, Neil Berecry Brown, Ruby Davis, Bonita Ely, Noelene Lucas, Bridget Nicholson, Margaret Roberts, Toni Warburton, David Watson and the project initiator and curator, Juliet Fowler Smith.
It will be represented in this exhibition by a selection of artwork produced during this time.

Memory and Loss were the key aspects to be considered by the artists in formulating the responses to this project, incorporated in that were also the consideration of the local and worldwide implications of lost habitats and ecosystems. This project  brings  accordingly brings together a collection of works by both established and emerging contemporary artists’ responses to the theme of the proposed Tillegra Dam Project in the Williams River Valley, near Dungog. This project is embedded in the community and the landscape through approximately two years of artist research, filed trips and residencies beginning in March 2009. Artists were invited to investigate reflect on and make tangible the social cultural and environmental implications of damming rivers. In this case the artists were to consider the Williams River and its community in particular. Media employed by artists in this exhibition include video projection, photography, object and sound installation, not to mention ceramics and of course painting.

Suzanna Bartos Riverbeds

Steel – selected works from the Max Watters Collection

Max Watters Gallery

An exhibition of selected works from the Max Watters Collection which looks at the ways in which steel has been used as a medium by contemporary Australian sculptors. Featuring works by Tony Coleing, Aleksander Danko, John E. Hughes, Noel Hutchinson, Robert Parr, Oliffe Richmond, Richard Stankiewicz and Muswellbrook’s own David Teer.