Suzanne Archer: The Mermaid’s Tail

29 April – 25 June 2023

With over 35 years spent working in the bush, Archer’s life and work is inextricably linked with the landscape. The Mermaid’s Tail presents recent large-scale paintings and works on paper from 2019 – 2023. In this short expanse of time Archer responds to COVID lockdown and after, in particular her explorations along the South Coast of NSW. From her studio in Wedderburn to the South Coast, Archer’s work is inherently personal, creating art that entwines her life and the objects she collects.

Image: Suzanne Archer, The Mermaid’s Tail, 2023, oil on canvas.

Cicada Press: Twenty Years

13 May – 9 July 2023

This exhibition features a selection of fine art prints created at Cicada Press over twenty years.

Cicada Press began with experimental projects at Meadowbank TAFE in 2001, established its reputation at UNSW between 2004-2021 and is now operating independently in the studio of its director Michael Kempson. It was created to facilitate student engagement in fine art printmaking production with over 240 internationally respected artists invited to explore the dynamic practice of a custom-printing studio. Using informal processes and open dialogue this collaborative working relationship reinforces mutual respect in the act of making through the lived experience of learning, with outcomes exhibited worldwide.

Image: Martha McDonald Napaltjarri, Untitled 2009 aquatint

Collection Highlights and Recent Acquisitions

3 December 2022 – 2 July 2023

The Orange Regional Gallery Collection has expanded rapidly over the last five years thanks to the extraordinary generosity of artists and collectors.

This exhibition includes recent acquisitions by John Olsen OAM, Elisabeth Cummings, Peter Boggs, Kevin Connor, Rachel Ellis, Hendrik Kolenberg, Margaret Loy Pula, Mandy Martin, Arthur McIntyre, Mavis Ngallametta, Tom Polo, David Serisier, Tim Storrier, Aida Tomescu and John R Walker. These are shown alongside collection highlights.

The Gallery is also delighted to present a recent gift by Rosslyn Sweetapple of intimate paintings and watercolours by Roland Wakelin, Grace Cossington Smith, Enid Cambridge, Judith Pascoe and Justin O’Brien and others.

The Gallery acknowledges the ongoing support of Friends of Orange Regional Gallery for purchases and fundraising.

An Orange Regional Gallery Collection Exhibition. 

John Olsen, Flight to Merinderoo (Minderoo), Pilbara’, 2019, acrylic on linen, Orange Regional Gallery Collection. Donated by the artist 2020 © John Olsen

Still Life

This selection of works from Orange Regional Gallery’s Collection presents various approaches to the still life genre. Ranging from works on paper, painting, photography and ceramics, each is an invitation to imagine the daily life and narratives of the objects, artists, and times from which they were made.

An Orange Regional Gallery Collection exhibition.

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott Still life with bowl, 1994, Ceramic
Orange Regional Gallery Collection © The Family of Gwyn Hanssen Pigott

I Am Me: SPARKE Schools Project

17 June – 13 August 2023

Abstract: Works from the Permanent Collection

8 July – 2 September 2023

Ingrid Morley

15 July – 10 September 2023

HERE/NOW

4 August – 8 October 2023

Barney Ellaga

16 September – 12 November

David Serisier

16 September – 12 November 2023

John R Walker

25 November  – 21 January 2024

WBYK

18 November  – 21 January 2024

Sophie Lampert: Anon.

25 March – 7 May 2023

Sophie Lampert presents large-scale soft sculptures that celebrate the lives and atypical vocations of brilliant women throughout history. Using delicate beading, sequins and velvet she reimagines these unusual stories into otherworldly sculptures—representing past lives to be revisited and admired.

The Seed is a partnership between Orange Regional Gallery and the National Art School (NAS) which offers recent NAS graduates a unique opportunity to present their first solo exhibition in a public institution. Held annually at Orange Regional Gallery, the program provides exhibition space, curatorial support and publicity for an emerging artist. Sophie Lampert graduated with a Master of Fine Art from NAS in 2020 and has been selected as the second artist of The Seed.

Sandon Gibbs-O’Neill: Burruguu

25 March – 7 May 2023

Nhunggabarra artist Sandon Gibbs-O’Neill presents a series of new paintings developed in dialogue with the traditional stories and paintings of his grandfather Tex Skuthorpe, a significant Nhunggaburra artist from Nhunggal country in north western NSW. The title ‘Burruguu’ means time of creation in Nhunggal language.

Laurence Edwards: A Gathering of Uncertainties

4 February – 16 April 2023

Developed in partnership with Messums Wiltshire, A Gathering of Uncertainties presents the culmination of 10 years of work by British sculptor Laurence Edwards. This is the first comprehensive survey of Edwards’ work to be shown in Australia, offering a rare encounter with one of the UK’s leading figurative artists.

One of the few sculptors who casts his own work, Laurence Edwards is fascinated by human anatomy and the metamorphosis of form and matter that governs the lost-wax process. His sculptures express the raw liquid power of bronze, its versatility, mass and evolution, and the variety of process marks he retains tell the story of how and why each work came to be.

A touring exhibition from Messums Wiltshire.

Laurence Edwards, Walking men, 2018-2022, bronze. Installed at Orange Regional Gallery as part of Laurence Edwards: A Gathering of Uncertainties.

Iku: Invisible Connection

3 February – 19 March 2023

We are more closely connected to the invisible than to the visible ~ Novalis

Orange-based artist, Iku embraces the shadows. Working with the traditional medium of Sumi ink – made from compressed soot – Iku creates abstract ink paintings that are full of expression. Iku was first introduced to traditional Japanese calligraphy at four years of age, with an ink brush she learnt how to form Chinese characters, the foundation of Japanese calligraphy. A turning point in her practice was studying under Japanese Master Calligrapher, Bakuzan Sakaki, who encouraged her to use calligraphy as a design element to express her own ideas.

For Invisible Connection Iku articulates the hidden and unseen experiences that link us. From observing shadows or interpreting the world around her, scenes from her daily life are evocatively reimagined. In this flux between the real and the invisible she creates work full of chance and play.

An Orange Regional Gallery exhibition.

Martin Coyte: Before you know

3 December 2022 – 29 January 2023

Across watercolour and sculpture artist Martin Coyte creates abstract works at a point of transformation – teetering on the edge between control and chaos. Full of emotion, expression and at points stillness, Before you know invites you to be immersed in intense and intimate compositions that connect to everyday life.

An Orange Regional Gallery exhibition.

Idris Murphy: Backblocks

19 November – 22 January 2023

This survey catches a great Australian painter at the height of his powers. Born in 1949, Idris Murphy developed deep roots in the history of painting as well as a profound feeling for the natural environment. Murphy’s idiom transcends “either/or”—it is indistinguishably landscape painting and painterly abstraction all at once. Arising from a sort of improvisatory incantation, the most vivid metaphors of land, space, light, mood and feeling seem to coalesce spontaneously and unbidden.

A Drill Hall Gallery touring exhibition.

Jenni Kemarre Martiniello: Confluence

1 October –  27 November 2022

Jenni Kemarre Martiniello presents glass vessels that reimagine the weave, colours and intricate designs of Aboriginal fish traps, eel traps, dilly bags, tungas and bicornuals. Working in response to weaving and her experience of place, her work is a confluence—a merging of practices, processes and experiences—one that celebrates weaving culture and expands upon its tradition.

An Orange Regional Gallery exhibition.

Ana Pollak: Headlines

8 October –  13 November 2022

Ana Pollak Headlines brings together five recent painted portraits and two animated films by Ana Pollak who lives and works on Dangar Island on the Hawkesbury River.

The exhibition features the NSW premier screening of “r”—an abstracted hand drawn portrait film of a friend which explores feelings of world weariness.

An Orange Regional Gallery exhibition.

Richard Morecroft: Therefore

3 September – 27 November 2022

Therefore explores human interaction with the environment and the way understanding and then utilising space are inextricably intertwined. With mixed media from gravel to glue and bitumen to rust, these symbolic abstractions reflect on history, memory and the colonization of landscapes.

An Orange Regional Gallery exhibition.

HERE/NOW Community Exhibition

22 October –  13 November 2022

HERE/NOW is Orange Regional Gallery’s annual community exhibition that presents the work of artists from the Central West of New South Wales.

Ranging in medium, scale and subject, the works celebrate the breadth, diversity and creative spirit of artists in our region.

An Orange Regional Gallery exhibition.

Material Measure

The changing environment of the Central West

30 July – 9 October 2022

Artists Matt O’Brien, Stephan van der Merwe, Steven Cavanagh, Thomas Thorby-Lister and Heather Vallance present site-specific work created during the 2020/2021 CORRIDOR AIR + PD-LAB at the CORRIDOR project.

Across painting, drawing, installation, performance and video work, the artists examine how art can connect to a place in concept, materiality and aesthetic. And how it can enable us to reimagine and understand the natural environment in the Central West of New South Wales.

A partnership exhibition between Orange Regional Gallery and the CORRIDOR project.

Catherine O’Donnell: Beyond the Shadow

9 July – 2 October 2022

Beyond the Shadow is a survey exhibition of Catherine O’Donnell’s practice over the last decade. Through drawing, sculpture and installation Catherine pays attention to the geometric detail and abstract forms of mid-century architecture, inviting the viewer to find the aesthetic poetry embedded within ordinary buildings. In Beyond the Shadow Catherine will create her first major installation, a 75% scale replica of a fibro house, expanding upon her ongoing elevation of everyday Australian architecture and social history.

A partnership exhibition between Orange Regional Gallery and Grafton Regional Gallery. Publication Sponsor: Gordon Darling Foundation.

Hendrik Kolenberg Urban / Industrial

30 July – 25 September 2022

Since he was an art student in the 1960s, Hendrik Kolenberg has been a wayfarer of the back streets, construction sites and working harbours of Sydney, and other cities including Rotterdam—the Dutch city of his birth. His paintings don’t depict sentimental or pretty subjects, rather they convey his fascination with the overlooked, discarded or functional aspects of the city. Bringing together paintings, drawings and graphics from the last twenty two years, Urban/Industrial opens up an intriguing space between real-world observations and minimal compositions.

An Orange Regional Gallery exhibition.

Winhanganha Mayiny

4 December 2021 – 28 August 2022

Over 2020 and 2021 renowned Australian portrait photographer Gary Grealy worked with Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council and Orange Regional Gallery to create a series of portraits of members of the Orange Aboriginal community. Named Winhanganha (to think, know, remember) Mayiny (people), the project celebrates the importance of shared knowledge and leadership in community.

Winhanganha Mayiny highlights the diversity of skill and knowledge represented in the area across art, archaeology, language, sport and community work. Grealy met and worked with each sitter to create a portrait that acknowledges their identity and role. During each session the sitter discussed their work and the role it plays in building a strong community for future generations. Across all the portraits each person is united by their work for community and a shared belief in the Wiradjuri philosophy of Winhanganha.

An Orange Regional Gallery and Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council partnership exhibition made possible with generous support from Anna and Simon Ainsworth.

An Orange Regional Gallery and Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council partnership exhibition made possible with generous support from Anna and Simon Ainsworth.

A City for Kids, SPARKE Project

25 June – 14 August 2022

A City for Kids is a collaborative art-making and environmental education program developed by Orange Regional Gallery, Orange Regional Museum and the SPARKE network of local public primary schools.

In its third year, this annual program invites local primary school students to participate in the cultural life of their city though the creation of a large-scale art installation and associated learning programs.

The 2022 SPARKE project theme, A City for Kids, asked children to think about what a city for kids would be like, and then to make it using a range of recycled materials and their wildest imaginations.

An Orange Regional Gallery and Orange Regional Museum Partnership Exhibition.

Steve Lopes: Encountered

21 May – 17 July 2022

Steve Lopes Encountered is a survey exhibition of works from 1997 to 2021, including rarely seen drawings, prints and collages, together with the artist’s diaries and drawing books.

Lopes is a Sydney-based painter with a studio in Millthorpe. He is known for his figurative landscapes and often works en plein air, painting vignettes of places that are then used as references for large-scale studio works.

Curated by Kon Gouriotis, the exhibition considers how the artist reflects on our age of complexity, volatility and crisis through thematic narratives of migration and place, the body on the land and the land without the body. Voids, barriers and passages that appear and reappear play an important role in Lopes’ work and provide insights into his philosophy.

An Orange Regional Gallery and S.H. Ervin Gallery partnership exhibition.

Liam Benson: hello, good to meet you

14 May – 24 July 2022

Liam Benson is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice incorporates performance, photography, video and textiles. His work is informed by working collaboratively with diverse communities through an ongoing conversation about how culture, sub-culture and identity interrelate and evolve.

Hello, good to meet you is an interactive installation commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) for the Jackson Bella Room – a dedicated space within the MCA where diverse audiences can engage with contemporary art through sensory experience.

Informed by the complex and multisensorial ways that horses interact, feel and connect, Benson’s installation offers a space where audiences can experiment together with non-verbal communication, dance and sensorial play.

The presentation of Hello, Good to meet you at Orange Regional Gallery extends on Benson’s initial collaboration with Riding for the Disabled Association NSW’s Tall Timbers centre in the development of the work through a new collaboration with the Orange branch of the Association for its first regional showing.

William Kentridge: I Am Not Me, the Horse Is Not Mine

26 March – 26 June 2022

One of the most powerful voices in art today, William Kentridge emerged as an artist during the apartheid regime in South Africa. Grounded in the violent absurdity of that period in his country’s history, his artworks draw connections between art, ideology, history and memory. They reveal the ways in which ideas and images echo across time and between different cultures.

Kentridge’s eight-channel video work I am not me, the horse is not mine is among the artist’s most ambitious moving image works and arguably the most significant work by the artist in an Australian museum collection. It premiered at the Biennale of Sydney in 2008 and was gifted to the Art Gallery of New South Wales by Anita and Luca Belgiorno-Nettis in 2017.

An Art Gallery of New South Wales touring exhibition.

Derek Whitehead: Figuring the Human

30 April – 12 June 2022

This selection of works from over twenty-five years of creative practice is a series of meditations on the human form, drawn from observation and imagination.

Derek Whitehead’s work moves between the representational and the abstract and is governed by personal feeling or inclination. He tends to work spontaneously, striving to reach a stage where knowledge and artistic training leave off, making way for deeper processes to come through. In this sense his works are intuitive visualizations.

Whitehead’s desire is to evoke some of the more mysterious qualities of the human being for a viewer’s reflective sensory experience.

An Orange Regional Gallery exhibition.

Salvatore Zofrea: The Drawn Line

26 February – 8 May 2022

Salvatore Zofrea: The Drawn Line the first survey of the artist’s drawings to be held in Australia.

The exhibition presents a relatively unknown aspect of this celebrated artist’s practice. While highly regarded as a painter and printmaker, we see throughout Zofrea’s career his love and appreciation for drawing as a means of visual thinking and personal expression. Drawing forms the basis and flows through all of his work. Ranging from tender early studies of his mother’s hands, to preparatory sketches for his allegorical Psalms series of paintings and the Appassionata woodcuts, The Drawn Line also includes more recent renderings of the Australian bush.

A Manly Art Gallery & Museum and Orange Regional Gallery partnership exhibition.

Aimee Gardyne: Terran Muddle

12 March – 8 May 2022

Aimee Gardyne: Terran Muddle presents a collection of ‘soft drawings’ that respond to the coastal underwater environment surrounding the artist’s home in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. Suspended throughout the space, Gardyne’s drawings recall the ways in which the coastline and sea interact and overlap.

The Seed is a partnership between Orange Regional Gallery and the National Art School (NAS) which offers recent NAS graduates a unique opportunity to present their first solo exhibition in a public institution. Held annually at Orange Regional Gallery, the program provides exhibition space, curatorial support and publicity for an emerging artist. Aimee Gardyne graduated with a Master of Fine Art from NAS in 2020 and has been selected as the inaugural artist of The Seed.

Rhonda Campbell: Layered Landscapes

12 March – 24 April 2022

Orange-based artist Rhonda Campbell presents a series of works on paper in response to time spent working and travelling throughout outback Australia. Working en plein air and then returning to the studio, her work is an interpretation of her studies, responding to her sensorial memories of the desert landscape. In both printmaking and painting Rhonda pushes the potential of depicting landscape by embedding traces of the land into her artworks such as natural pigments and paper made with native grasses.

An Orange Regional Gallery exhibition.

The Arena

29 January – 13 March 2022

The Arena is a group exhibition that platforms sport as a performance, with the roles of players and the crowd as actors in collective mythmaking and fanfare. Exhibiting a range of video work, painting, photography and sculpture by Tracey Moffatt, Khaled Sabsabi, Marikit Santiago, WBYK, Zoe Croggon, Richard Lewer and Tully Moore, the exhibition examines sport as a medium to explore the limits of human emotion such as passion, mania and fanaticism in competition.

An Orange Regional Gallery exhibition.

Jaq Davies: Marks in time

29 January – 6 March 2022

Jaq Davies work is inherently autobiographical. Working with line – created with the mediums of hair, charcoal, paint or string – she pushes the boundaries of the picture plane, playing with scale and marking time. Working with found objects and mark making, Davies will create a large-scale wall installation, and a series of expansive drawings and sculpture that celebrate the poetry of her everyday.

An Orange Regional Gallery exhibition.

Ada Clark: Hope, Colour, Vitality

5 February – Sunday 6 March 2022

Ada Clark’s vibrant gouache and oil paintings are emotional interpretations of the landscape through which she aims to offer hope, colour and vitality as antidotes to ‘darkness and depression.’

Since arriving in the nearby village of Millthorpe in 1994, Ada Clark has been working en plein air around the Central West, responding directly to shifts in light and season. Clark’s approach favours the distinctive Fauvist qualities of using bright emotive colours, simple shapes and painterly mark-making, inviting us to experience the landscapes of the region in a fresh and vital way.

Now in her 90s, Ada Clark has been working as an artist for nearly 60 years, and the Gallery is delighted to acknowledge her extraordinary contribution to the artistic life of the Central West.

An Orange Regional Gallery exhibition.

Karla Dickens: A Dickensian Sideshow

4 December 2021 – 13 February 2022

Working in her trademark method of collecting found objects, Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens has created a memorial for bygone rodeo, sideshow, circus, and boxing-tent performers of Indigenous descent. Revisiting the history of the travelling circuses and boxing tents that travelled around regional areas in Australia, Dickens has amassed what she classifies as “the memories, whispers and materials” from which these works have been constructed.

A Dickensian Sideshow is the culmination of Dicken’s three-part project across 2020–2022; shown at the 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, and A Dickensian Sideshow in Lismore and Orange. Through the different iterations of the project Dickens reminds us that the arena in which these individuals ‘performed’ was a complex and multi-faceted crucible, in which entertainers were both celebrated and exploited.

An Orange Regional Gallery and Lismore Regional Gallery partnership exhibition. Proudly supported by Integral Scaffolding, Orange.

Aida Tomescu: Unfolding Presence

4 December 2021 – 23 January 2022

This survey presents Aida Tomescu’s recent large-scale paintings alongside selected key works from the last 25 years. While some are impressive in their scale and potency, others offer quieter counterpoints yet with comparable presence.

Working closely with Tomescu, the selection is intended as a non-linear gathering of works with an emphasis on the internal conversations within each piece, while making apparent the relationships between paintings from different time periods. This arrangement more closely reflects Tomescu’s concern for the inner life and identity of each painting rather than a chronological sequence of works.

Born in Bucharest in 1955, Aida Tomescu grew up in the Socialist Republic of Romania where she lived until the age of 23 years.

Since arriving in Sydney in 1980, Tomescu has established a compelling and undeniable presence in Australian art, with work held in state galleries, the National Gallery of Australia and a host of regional and international collections, including the British Museum, London.

She has presented 40 solo exhibitions and won the Sulman Prize in 1996, the Wynne Prize in 2001 and the Dobell Prize for Drawing in 2003 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She is also the winner of the inaugural LFSA Arts 21 Fellowship in 1996 at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne.

For Tomescu, painting is a form of thinking- the studio being a place for reflection and for concentrating on the development of new painting vocabulary. It is where she is able to fully attend to the actions and considerations she makes—layering and excavating until the painting reaches a state of resolution in which all the elements in the work cohere into a unified presence with structure at its essence.

An Orange Regional Gallery exhibition.

Antariksa:  Co-Prosperity #5

4 December 2021 – 16 January 2022

This exhibition presents the fifth iteration of artist and historian Antariksa’s installation Co-Prosperity, an ongoing project that examines the Japanese occupation of Asia from 1931 to 1945. Varying in medium and subject according to place, earlier iterations have been shown at Le Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (2017), the Jakarta Art Council (2018), the Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2019), and the Asian Art Biennial, Taiwan (2019).

Co-Prosperity #5 looks at the connection between Australia, Indonesia and Japan in this period through the lens of Indonesian, Japanese and Australian artists and activists. The title Co-Prosperity draws from the term ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ (GEACPS), an imperialist concept coined by Japan as an ideological tool to promote economic and cultural unity in Asia during the Second World War.

With his process informed by his work as an historian, Antariksa examines hard evidence and brings to light parts of history that have been overlooked by using soft evidence forms of video and installation. By examining parts of history through the biographies of activists, artists and intellectuals Co-Prosperity intervenes in the dominant historical narratives from the time that predominantly focused on military exploits and government statistics. Through bringing to light lesser known histories Antariksa encourages audiences to consider the voices and powers that dictate cultural memory.

An Orange Regional Gallery exhibition.

A ground-breaking partnership between Orange Health Service and Orange City Council provides an extensive range of original artworks available within a health setting. Launched in 2011 Orange Regional Gallery exhibits works from its permanent Collection throughout the Orange Health Service. Recently the Orange Regional Museum has joined the partnership, which will now bring an extensive range of original artworks and historical items to over 200,000 people per year. Exploring the collection provides a change in focus for visitors and staff.

Artists from across the Central West are invited to submit artwork for Orange Regional Gallery’s annual community exhibition HERE/NOW.

The 2023 submission process is online. Follow this link and fill out the form to apply.

For full submission guidelines please download the pdf:

Here Now Submission Guidelines.

Key dates:

Submission dates: Friday 26 May – Sunday 9 July 2023
Selected artwork delivery: Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 July 2023
Exhibition dates: Saturday 5 August – Sunday 8 October 2023
Opening celebration: Friday 4 August 2023

If you would like to make a non-digital submission, please call Claire Buchanan at the Gallery on 6393 8136.

Orange Regional Gallery is currently accepting applications for the 2024 – 2026 exhibition program. Emerging, mid-career and established artists and curators from Australia are encouraged to apply. This is an open call out for exhibitions, there is no closing date. Applications are reviewed quarterly until the exhibition program is filled. To apply download the Exhibition Submission Guidelines and Exhibition Submission Form below. Please contact the Gallery if you have any questions, we are happy to support any applicants with the submission process.

Exhibition Submission Guidelines

Exhibition Submission Form

Gallery Floorplans