Penrith Regional Gallery

Tomorrow 1 December, sound artist Gail Priest will perform two audio-visual sets within the exhibition Parlour Parlëur, as part of Simmer: New Movements in Music and Art.

Join us from 6pm for food and drinks from @cafeatlewers followed by the performance at 7pm.

Tickets available on the door and via our website: www.penrithregionalgallery.com.au/events/simmer/

This initiative is proudly supported by the NSW Government through the Culture Up Late Western Sydney program.

Image 1, 3 & 4: @maja_baska_photography
Image 2: Gail Priest, Photo: Samuel James

Be immersed in music and art on the evening of Friday, 1 December with a performance by sound artist Gail Priest, within the exhibition Parlour Parlëur.

Gail will present two audio-visual sets. In Watch Me Type, Gail channels the inner monologue that occurs as she makes music. Spoken by her AI doppelganger and cut and mixed live, the result is a polyphonic chorus that explores relation of text and music creation. In her second set, Micro/Macro, Gail explores the idea of scale, both sonically and visually, creating mesmerising worlds of colour and texture.

Doors open at 6pm with food and drink from Cafe at Lewers before the performance begins at 7pm.

Tickets and the full Simmer program: https://www.penrithregionalgallery.com.au/events/simmer/

This initiative is proudly supported by the NSW Government through the Culture Up Late Western Sydney program.

Image 1: Gail Priest, Photo: Samuel James
Image 2: Gail Priest, Sound Mirror Photo: Courtesy the Artist @gailpriestess

Celebrate the talent of artists with disability through free activities, talks and performances on No Boundaries Open Day, Sunday 3 December 10am - 3pm.

The day will include a pop-up exhibition with artworks from No Boundaries and All In art groups, accessible drop in workshops, drama games with the Joan Access Ensemble, and a live performance from Jerrah Patston.

Read the full program and RSVP here: https://www.penrithregionalgallery.com.au/events/no-boundaries-open-day/

No Boundaries Art Group are a group of diversely abled artists in residence in the Gallery’s Sonia Farley Studio, where they meet weekly to continue their decade-long vision to inspire people who live with disability to experience the power of creativity.

Image 1: Chris Whiticker with his artwork from the exhibition, New Digs I No Boundaries, 2022, Penrith Regional Gallery. Photo by Maja Baska
Image 2: Summer 2023 Open Day at Penrith Regional Gallery. Photo by Maja Baska

Highlights from last Friday featuring James Heighway and Jon Flood performing as part of Simmer: New Movements in Music and Art. Artist Clare Delaney also facilitated a Drawing with Nature workshop in the Garden at sunset.

Join us again on Friday, December 1 for two audio-visual sets from sound artist Gail Priest.

View the full Simmer program of music and sound art curated by acclaimed Blue Mountains composer Monica Brooks, and a series of workshops facilitated by guest artists:
https://www.penrithregionalgallery.com.au/events/simmer/

This initiative is proudly supported by the NSW Government through the Culture Up Late Western Sydney program.

Images: Maja Baska Photography

We were privileged to host two National Gallery of Australia Art Cases this past month and are thrilled with the response from our communities. Over 300 people including families, adults, preschools, primary and secondary schools were given the opportunity to handle artworks and objects from the National Collection, facilitated by our dedicated learning team.

The Art Cases program includes five, themed art-filled cases which travel to community centres, schools, libraries, art centres, galleries and aged care homes. With themes including ‘Bodies’, ‘Country’, ‘Earth’, ‘Past, Present and Future’ and ‘Form and Function’, works are examined and handled by people of all ages for a hands-on experience of learning, artmaking and storytelling.

The Art Cases are generously supported by the Neilson Foundation with grateful acknowledgement of founding patrons Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn.

With only two weeks left of Spring we invite you to explore our garden, currently abundant with blooms and birdlife.

The garden played a pivotal role in the creative and artistic life of Margo and Gerald Lewers, in family life, and in entertaining family and friends. Many recall how Margo would collect items from the garden to adorn her food platters, an extension of her commitment to the Modernist philosophy of integrating art into everyday life, blurring the distinctions between interior and exterior spaces.

Gerald was a keen bird watcher and several of his sculptures were inspired by birds, so make sure to follow the rocky paths to discover his Pelican Bird Bath visited daily by our friendly magpies.

Today the garden is maintained by Heritage Gardener, Shayne Roberts in keeping with Margo’s original intent that it be a living work of art.

In 2013, we invited bird watcher and photographer Warren Chad to document the extraordinary bird life in our garden. In just a couple of days he identified almost 35 different species! Today we share a couple of the photographs from his visit, taken in the Lewers House courtyard and from the Ancher House veranda.

Tell us, how many birds can you spot? Eastern spinebill? Blue fairy wrens? Kookaburra? Any more?

Our second evening of Simmer: New Movements in Music and Art is coming up on Friday 17 November featuring two Blue Mountains musicians with experimental approaches to guitar.

James Heighway is known for his beautiful and harsh approaches to electric guitars and handmade synthesizers. Also performing is folk artist Jon Flood who composes soft, nylon string guitar songs, drawing influence from American primitive, experimental, lo-fi and other forms of music and art.

@cafeatlewers will be open from 6pm with food and drinks before the performances begin at 7pm.

Book your ticket and view the full Simmer program of music and sound art curated by acclaimed Blue Mountains composer Monica Brooks, and a series of workshops facilitated by guest artists:
https://www.penrithregionalgallery.com.au/events/simmer/

This initiative is proudly supported by the NSW Government through the Culture Up Late Western Sydney program.

Images: 1. Maja Baska Photography 2. Jon Flood Photo by Doran Brewer 3. James Heighway

Have you stepped through The Gate at Penrith Regional Gallery?

Jana Hawkins-Andersen and Paris Taia have transformed our Ancher House Gallery with an installation of ceramics and plants, alongside a selection of some of the oldest artworks in our collection by Adolph Gustave Plate.

Adolph Gustave Plate was born at the turn of the 19th Century and apprenticed as a midshipman in the German Merchant Navy, at only thirteen. That was the beginning of his nomadic life as a seaman and artist voyaging in the Pacific between the archipelagos of Tonga, Fiji, and Samoa, all the while, sketching, painting, and taking photos. He later settled in Australia becoming a travel writer and publisher continuing to traverse the Pacific.

Margo Lewers (nee Plate) his middle child would adopt a similar spirit of creativity and adventure. Travelling in the 1930s with her new husband Gerald by passenger ship to London and Germany, Margo experienced the Bauhaus philosophy of design before bringing that vision to Sydney and settling on the fringes of western Sydney at Emu Plains in the early 1950s.

She would forge a life as an artist, creating her own utopia with a beautiful garden filled with sculptures and a place for like-minded contemporaries. Seeing the potential of every surface as an artwork Margo painted doors and textiles, hand cut tiles for mosaic floors, and collaborated with the modernist architect Sydney Ancher on the design of the Gallery housing this exhibition.

Drop by the gallery to experience the installation and consider how the artists have explored the distinction between interior and exterior, the living and the dormant, the ornate and the functional, the beginning and the endpoint of given histories.

How have things changed since the turn of the Century, and what might remain the same at the turn of the next Century?

From the Collection: Jana Hawkins-Andersen and Paris Taia is open every day in Ancher House until Dec 23.

Jana Hawkins Andersen and Paris Taia, The Gate, 2023, installation view, 2023. Courtesy the artists.
Photo: Silversalt Photography