Four exhibitions celebrating culture and community will bring visual art, performance, sound, film and more to Perc Tucker Regional Gallery when they launch this Friday.
The exhibitions include:
- In the Heart of the North (Part 1), a rolling showcase of newly commissioned works and pieces from the City of Townsville Art Collection, featuring Deeper Than Dancing (2024), commissioned by Dancenorth Australia
- Ricky Emmerton: Mintjapuni, exploring Kalkatungu spiritual aesthetics through the lens of Indigenous art
- Young Indigenous Printmakers, a collaborative outreach project between Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts and Townsville City Galleries
- Yuriyal Bridgeman: yubilong(mi)bilongyu, exploring the traditional cultural practices of Papua New Guinea alongside contemporary art.
The massive launch will include speeches from exhibiting artists and organisers Yuriyal Bridgeman, Ricky Emmerton, Erin Ricardo and Alice Lee Holland, giving a first look into this cohesive and vibrant reflection of North Queensland's cultural landscape.
Councillor Ann-Maree Greaney said the launch event would be a celebration of some of Queensland's most remarkable artists.
"Townsville is home to such a wide variety of remarkable artists, and there's no better place to display their creativity and cultural insights than at North Queensland's preeminent art gallery," Cr Greaney said.
"Perc Tucker Regional Gallery will welcome many of these exhibitions' contributors at Friday's event, as well as South-East Queensland-based artist Yuriyal Bridgeman.
"This event will be a fantastic chance to meet the artists and explore the background of each of these four incredible exhibitions."
Artists Ricky Emmerton and Yuriyal Bridgeman will both hold free floor talks on Saturday in the gallery.
Mr Emmerton said he was studying at James Cook University and Mintjapuni was his PhD exhibition.
"My research is centred around aesthetics in Indigenous art and how it relates to spirituality. Mintja means "to shine" and puni means "to make", so it translates to "make it flash". I was taught to paint by starting with a dark background to represent the potentiality of the Dreaming before creation then by a building up of contrasting colours, symbols, lines, dots and patterns it makes the painting "flash" and full of spiritual energy," he said.
"In the Dreamtime the Rainbow Serpent shed its skin creating all the colours of the rainbow. There were also dingoes traveling with the Rainbow Serpent and the white dingo created white ochre in Waanyi Country and the red dingo created red ochre in Kalkatungu Country. These ochres are sought after and traded in preference to local sources because of the residual spiritual power imbued by the dingoes.
"I am very excited and humbled to have my graduating exhibition at Perc Tucker Regional Gallery as they have supported me over the years and continue to support the arts in our region. The arts are valuable because they can offer a different form of communication and promote culture and identity."
The launch will begin at 6pm at Perc Tucker Regional Gallery this Friday. Entry is free and no bookings are required.
