Week 10/2025: An arty week

Posted On 16 March 2025

Week of 3 March 2025

This week was an arty week! I visited some art exhibitions I’d been meaning to see for a while. I found some unexpected works too.

An arty week

Alex Wanders: gleanings

This is the second of Alex’s exhibitions I’ve seen at Handmark Gallery. It had some amazing images showing landmarks I know well in a completely different light.

Alex says,

“Each scene is a suggestion that what is in front of our eyes may not always be quite as straightforward as we first think. Through a variety of pictorial devices, these paintings nudge us away from the familiar towards the unfamiliar and enigmatic.”

Alex also spoke about including flowers in the mix, which he was inspired to paint after having major surgery. He notes that flowers are beautiful and ephemeral, and that there is an art tradition where some of the flowers are shown as dead or decaying, which reminds people of their mortality—a theme that resonated with him after his surgery.

177 Nations of Tasmania

This is an exhibition by Andrew Wilson in partnership with Mark Thompson, who presents the 177 Nations of Tasmania podcast:

There are 177 different nationalities represented in Tasmania’s population and in this podcast we try to talk with one person from each one, and find out about why they came to Tasmania, what they brought with them (experiences, culture, traditions, skills, ideas etc), and their experiences of settling on a small and fairly isolated island state not known for being very multicultural. These are authentic stories from people from all corners of the globe who have made Tasmania their home and cover the full gamut of the migrant experience.

The photographs in the exhibition are of participants from the podcast, accompanied by a brief summary of their story.

Anna Berger: Melaleuca

Wild Island Tasmania is hosting Anna’s exhibiton of semi-abstract and landscape works.

Anna says the exhibition is inspired by a trip she took with her sister to the remote settlement of Melaleuca in Tasmania’s Southwest National Park.

We flew to Melaleuca and explored Bathurst Harbour two months after our father, an avid bushwalker, passed away in 2020. I took his place on the flight and the experience was memorable and emotional as my father had hiked in this region throughout his life.

I loved the semi-abstract images of the coastlines.

Anna says

The body of artwork blends semi-abstract aerial views and landscape with more realistic depictions of land, water and sky, creating both layered and segmented compositions. These artworks aim to evoke the spirit of this remarkable place, as well as the profound impact that day had on me personally.

Peter Maarseveen: Eagle Tarn

I met Pete at the Inside Out / Instantly Obscured exhibition in January, where he made my portrait in the giant walk-in camera. (You can see that in my week 2 post – after me dealing with my sadness about Kramstable leaving. It’s at the end of the post.)

This exhibition, at the Moonah Arts Centre, came from Pete’s residency Eagle Tarn at Mount Field. Pete’s grandfather and his friends built the ski hut in 1946 and it was here Pete spent a week exploring methods of making chemicals from native plants to develop his photographs.

Pete says he

set up a makeshift darkroom in the hut at nighttime to develop the paper negatives he had taken that day. Using a head torch and the light of the fire he made the chemicals for developing the images from the plants in the photographs he had taken. Boiling the native plants in a pot on the wood fire before adding other household ingredients he created low-toxic photographic chemistry.

Through this he was able to let nature take some control in how the images would turn out. The different plants he used changed the way the negatives developed, Staining some a different colour, or not developing parts of the images properly, to leaving chemical marks. Rather than ruining the photographs this gives the final images a more complex story to be read into.

I mean, how amazingly cool is that!

This one, ‘Pandani’, was my favourite, and I also loved the wall of little negatives.

Caroline Amos and Luisa Romeo: The Spaces In Between: A Journey Through Landscape

While I was at Moonah Arts Centre I also called in to this exhibition which I’ll call a bonus adventure, because I didn’t know it was on.

Caroline Amos and Luisa Romeo are artistic colleagues with very different artistic styles, and here they came together on the theme of their relationship with landscape that ‘transcends the superficial’.

Caroline combines different elements to create her artworks, including charcoal drawing, painting, rubbings from the sites she visits, and her own photographs. She also uses photographs of archival texts to bring out the historical storyline of the work.

There was a whole wall devoted to Willow Court, with works

inspired by the tales inherent in the textures of the walls and buildings that make up The Barracks . . . and its surrounds. Layers of paint and occupation conceal and yet reveal many narratives, silent yet visible witness to the nearly two-hundred-year cycle of habitation, abandonment and now, revival of this significant site.

The voices of people who inhabited these spaces somehow always seem to come through, as present absence holds well in historic sites.

Luisa contributed several paintings with themes of injustice and the noise of the world we inhabit, and the loss of places and spaces for financial gain.

Scratch the surface, there we all bleed

As the world is in turmoil, dictators rule, war is at the doorsteps of many, floods wipe out entire towns and homelessness is rife. The land is plundered for its finite resources all the while sea levels rise displacing many. Wealth is being hoarded by the 1% and millions of humans go hungry. Injustice.

In another of her works, Luisa asks,

Are these painted images destined to become amongst the last depictions of these spaces when it all is disconnected and bare? A wasteland of memories? Will these stereoscopes of the future be the only way of comprehending these views that will no longer exist in 10, 20 or 30 years? What are we all collectively losing from this practice of narrow focus financial gain?

What do you think?

Making my own art

To make it more of an arty week, I had a wonderful time on the beach making my own photos and playing around with the light and with long exposures.

So much joy!

Summary of the week

Habit tracker

• Go outside & exercise first thing (7 days): 7/7
• 15 minutes morning exercise sequence (7 days): 7/7
• Hip exercises (5 days): 6/5
• 2 walks or bike rides or a combination (6 days): 6/6
• Long walk (1 day): 0/1
• Walk 8,000 steps (7 days): 7/7
• 9.00 shutdown & dim lights (6 days): 3/6
• Evening routine (7 days): 6/7

What did I learn this week?

Fermat’s principle of least time states that light from a point source takes the path to a destination which takes the least total time. This may not be the shortest path, depending on what the light is travelling through.

What did I notice this week?

The number plates of the cars in the ad for the building going up on Montpelier Retreat (assuming it actually gets built given that the developer reportedly went into voluntary administration in December) have the same licence plate.

What was the best thing this week?

Getting excited about photography again.

What am I reading this week?

• ‘Story of Your Life’ by Ted Chiang
• I’ll Keep Her Safe by Jen Morris

What am I watching this week?

• Survivor
• Alan Carr: Changing Ends
• Cat Rambo: Writing Flash Fiction
• Stranger Sings! The Parody Musical (Hobart College)
• Doctor Who ‘Warriors’ Gate’

What am I listening to this week?

• Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen: Dead Men Tell No Tales
• ‘Speel of Reason’ by Mark Springer + Neil Tennant + Sacconi Quartet