Northern Rivers Community Gallery (NRCG) launches its 2024 annual exhibition program, presenting four exhibitions this January that look at two artists’ joyful representations of their resilience and recovery post 2022 floods; a collaboration between two Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists working with the natural environment; an exhibition of drawings looking at the cycles of life and a front-line emergency nurse’s creative response to recent shortcomings in the health system.
Gallery Coordinator, Imbi Davidson, said: “2024 promises to be an exciting and creatively inspiring year ahead for the Northern Rivers Community Gallery and Ignite Studios, with a dynamic exhibition program featuring a high calibre of professional and emerging artists.”
She’s a Hardcore Rainbow | Claudie Frock & Leona DeBolt
She’s a Hardcore Rainbow explores the artists’ determination and dedication to their art practices after the 2022 Lismore flood destroyed or damaged works from their last exhibition together. She’s a Hardcore Rainbow is an investigation into the role that colour and art has played in both artists’ recovery and their coming to terms with loss.
Flora Insularis | David Fell & Kay Lee Williams
Through the lens of an indigenous artist (Williams) and a field ecologist (Fell), this work offers a window into material plant use, plant identification, and the burgeoning impact of the anthropocene on our fragile and sensitive ecosystems. Each artist utilises and interprets plant materials by drawing on their own experiences that traverse art and science, culture, and ecology.
this place… this time… | Carolyn Delzoppo
this time… this place is an exhibition of small pencil and mixed media drawings celebrating the beauty and wonder of the natural environment. Carolyn uses drawing as a means to observe, explore and understand the world around her while striving to convey a sense of wonder at the complexity and mystery of the relationships between everything out there including the unceasing cycles of promise, decay, and regeneration.
First Aid | Jenny Gill Schirmer
Jenny Gill Schirmer uses the process of making, and the discovery of the relationships between found objects, to reconcile and resolve her life experiences. First Aid is a reflection on her work as a front-line emergency nurse in Northern NSW where the challenges of caring for the vulnerable during a pandemic and floods fell to the community as the structures that usually protect us failed.
All exhibitions open Wednesday 10 January and continue until Sunday 3 March. The official exhibition launch will be held 5.30 – 7.30pm, Thursday 18 January.
The Northern Rivers Community Gallery is located at 44 Cherry Street Ballina and is open Wednesday to Friday from 9am until 3pm and weekends from 9.30am until 1pm. For further information contact the Gallery on 02 6681 0530 or visit the website
