Current show
ORIGIN
by Rosie Carrick Clark
We are excited to announce our first show for 2024.
These iconographic images represent unique stories of conception and gestation from a mother’s point of view..
Opening event: Saturday 13th April
12 midday - Refreshments served
Meet the artist!
Exhibition opens 29th March.
Open Fri, Sat- Sun 10am – 3pm until Sunday 28th April
Previous shows
Taralga – Autumn to Winter
Works on paper by Katrina Greenwood
OSG is excited to present the works of Sydney based artist Katrina Greenwood, who spent time in Taralga during the cooler months documenting the delicate transient play of light we experience at these higher altitudes. This show will be of HUGE interest to locals, who will discover familiar scenes replayed back to them through the eyes of the artist.
Katrina uses her own pigments, purpose-blended as she lays down the images. This makes for a fresh luminous quality to the landscapes, trees and buildings portrayed in the work.
Opening event: Sunday 3rd December 12 midday ALL WELCOME!
Exhibition continues until Sunday 24th December Fri- Sat- Sun 10am – 3pm
For One Week Only
Taralga Public School Art Showcase, in support of public education.
Orchard Street Gallery owner Jo Morris has a background in teaching art and creativity to primary age children.
Throughout 2023 she has run 3 separate workshops with the kids at Taralga Public School. This exhibition features the best of the resulting artworks.
On Wednesday 22nd November at 6pm the local community is invited to share the kid’s excitement at an opening event where they will see their beautiful pieces framed and on the walls of the gallery.
ALL WELCOME
100% of proceeds of all sales on the night will go back to the school.
Exhibition runs until Sunday 26th November Fri- Sat- Sun 10am
Komorebi - Pamela Drewitt Smith 6th - 29th October
Sydney artist Pamela Drewitt Smith presents her luminous treescapes on canvas for the first time at Orchard Street Gallery.
It is a primal human response to relish the afternoon sunlight through trees, and Pamela has found her inspiration in the Japanese concept of ‘Komorebi’. This translates as "the scattered light that filters through when sunlight shines through trees". A poetic word which is often used in Haiku, and an experience to which we can all relate.
Official opening Saturday 14th October
Finding Home - Bob Withers and Jo Morris
22nd August – 1st October 2023
In 2020 we drove to the Southern Tablelands for the first time. It was winter, but the yellow wattles were out, blazing against the colours of the grasslands, eucalypt scrub and blackened silhouettes of leafless trees. The rolling hills stretched away to big blue horizons. That sharp cold light was a refreshing antidote to the humid city air.
Three years have passed, and we now call Taralga home.
The landscapes are still inspiring us, and every day our roots grow deeper into the landscape and our community.
Bob Withers: Paintings and sculptures have always been expressions of the things which have caught his restless gaze. The city has been his home, so urban scenes and industrial buildings have been common motifs. Now, following in the footsteps of previous generations of his family, he has found inspiration in the landscape. His new home asks for a new style, so these paintings represent a fresh start in more ways than one.
Jo Morris: Wire relief sculptures and monoprint/etchings tell the story of everyday vignettes in the Southern Tablelands. In winter the landscapes of Gundungurra country offer constant encouragement, with the black silhouettes of leafless trees - especially in the early morning and early evening - calling constantly for recognition.
Wumbarrung, or yellow tailed black cockatoos, call out for people and country, as an important emblem of the Gundungurra mob. By representing this bird she offers her recognition and respect to the First Nations People of her home.
CHROMA
Caitlin Withers and Thomas Jackson, bring their colour saturated images to brighten the Southern Tablelands over Winter.
Caitlin Withers:
Chromascape - Greece
This series reflects her artistic ethos of immersing herself in new environments to craft her visual narratives. This solitary exploration of Greece’s winding urban terrain departs from conventional portrayals of Greek culture and lifestyle. Dreamlike and evocative, the images blur the boundaries between reality and reverie, inviting viewers to traverse the thresholds of perception and embark on their own personal odyssey.
Thomas Jackson:
Highlighted Surroundings
Thomas’ art practice over many years has consistently focused on raising conservation awareness in communities throughout Australia. Well known for his large-scale public artworks and smaller scale illustrative works, each image being a unique representation of native flora and fauna.
Brock Sykes - Hills and Monoliths
With the successful June run of the Open Bite Printmaker’s show behind us, we’re preparing the wall surfaces in the gallery for the next exhibition.
Southern Highlands artist Brock Sykes is bringing his strong vision of the landscape to Orchard Street Gallery.
Brock uses a very effective chromatic layering technique to create his sensuous and surprising representations of country in large-format oil paintings.
Open Bite Printmakers
Orchard Street Gallery is proud to present a group show by Sydney-based artists Open Bite Printmakers Inc.
The group have been exhibiting on a regular basis over a period of 32 years. They have had shows all over Australia as well as internationally, including France and Spain.
This collection of small affordable works in a wide variety of printmaking media will have something for everyone.
This show will run concurrently with the independent community-based Taralga Art Show which is held annually on the June long weekend.
To support the exhibition, we’ll also be running a printmaking workshop on Sunday 11th June. You can learn to create your own original prints using a technique called Monotype or Monoprinting. This is a way of making art that can easily be done at home without too much equipment or fuss.
Jodie Monday - Threadlines
Local Wiradjuri woman Jodie Munday presents her beautiful woven pieces, inspired by the plants and animals of this country. Using mostly natural fibres and dyes, each piece tells a different story of the land, or a facet of culture in the 21st century as she sees it.
Jodie tells us of the importance she places on people (usually women) coming together to sit and share stories while creating handmade objects, as art or as craft, and (most importantly) making connections with each other across time, ethnicity and place.
Bob Withers - Frustrated Architect
If you peer through the tiny windows of these buildings, you might catch a glimpse of a little boy, running from room to room searching for his architecture degree …
Bob Withers is the grown-man version of that little boy.
Over thousands of hours, he has built industrial imaginings from cardboard and found objects. They represent his fascination for the mysterious quiet, private moments of others, going on behind the walls and windows of buildings in the city every moment of every day.
Tony Ameneiro - Landscape with Rock
We acknowledge the traditional owners of the country depicted here, the Gundungurra people. We pay our respects to Elders past, present, and emerging.
‘Landscape with Rock’ brings together prints, drawings, and ceramics by Tony Ameneiro in a new exhibition inspired by the Australian landscape painter Fred Williams' visit to the Nattai River near Mittagong in 1957.
Drawing on the title from one of Williams’ own paintings, from that seminal visit, Ameneiro responds to the same environs working both en Plein air, and in his studio.
Within this exhibition: Ameneiro raises questions regarding contemporary views of land ownership, and environmental responsibility by revisiting, viewing, drawing, and making prints of the same Nattai River landscape Williams encountered in the late 1950s. Ameneiro is mindful of seeing, and drawing from a totally different period, and perspective; one vastly different to that of the earlier artist.
Fred Williams worked as a painter, and printmaker, freely and comfortably moving from one medium to the other. Similarly, Ameneiro’s printmaking, and drawing practice are free from artificial boundaries.
‘Landscape with Rock’ is Tony Ameneiro’s first solo exhibition at Orchard Street Gallery.
Fred Williams is regarded as one of Australia’s most important landscape painters of the twentieth century and equally recognised for his printmaking.
“ … (Fred Williams) friend, painter John Brack arranged for him to take a break staying with some mutual friends, John and Joan Stephens, on their property west of Mittagong in the Nattai River Valley (Stockyard Creek) The four-week spell proved to be career changing.
He produced #twenty to thirty gouaches ... to be transformed later into oil paintings ... and etching plates for printing*
August 1957
*John Stephens, Fred Williams A Memoir at Mittagong, unpublished manuscript
Works on paper by Jo Morris
These drawings express Jo’s interest in mark-making as a visual record of our human connection to the rhythms and patterns inherent in natural forms.
As a Post Grad’ student at Sydney College of the Arts, her dissertation and exhibition entitled ‘Sembyo, The Way of the Line’ earned her a Master of Visual Arts degree, with her works at that time exploring new technologies available to artists in the area of 3D printing.
The artworks on show this month are monochromatic ‘diaries’ of her connection to the Royal National Park coastline on Dharawal country, where she lived for 3 years prior to the pandemic. Using a combination of oil sticks, conté chalk pastels, lithography pencil and Japanese ink, these gestural images remain close to her heart and are a very personal expression of her connection to the natural world.
Anthea da Silva
When artist Anthea da Silva moved to Goulburn on 2021, it was the forests of eucalypts, deep gorges and waterfalls that breathed a deep welcome. The region's maximum-security prison and big merino were outdone by vibrant woodlands and wetlands, trails of phosphenes, light and shade and da Silva was inspired to revisit landscape painting. Da Silva also paints portraits, and was awarded the inaugural Darling Portrait Prize at Canberra’s National Portrait Gallery in 2020 with her portrait of Dr Elizabeth Cameron-Dalman OAM. In 2020 and again in 2022, she’s a finalist in the Portia Geach Award, at Sydney’s S. H. Ervin Gallery. Anthea has blended careers in Arts Education, Occupational Therapy & Gallery curation in WA, Victoria & NSW.‘For the love of Snow Gums and Scribblys’ is da Silva’s homage to the environment she imagines the Njunawal and Gundungurra people have celebrated here for eons.
About us.
Husband and wife team Jo Morris and Bob Withers have been waiting a lifetime to land this.
After meeting at design school in Wellington New Zealand, they have produced art and design for many clients and the odd exhibition over the years.
They recently made a tree change to the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, and are ready to open their new gallery in a small town called Taralga.
Jo Morris.
Living on Gundungurra country is dangerous.
Especially around an hour before sunset, the country is so stunningly beautiful it makes for a distraction, and driving becomes a hazardous pastime. These wide open grassy rolling hills with wattle and eucalypt scrub, and small flocks of yellow tailed black cockatoos sailing overhead have inspired a fresh take on the need to create a line.
Bob Withers.
After living in the Inner West of Sydney where everything is straight lines and light industrial architecture, the change of environment to trees, animals and mist is a shock to the system. It may take some time to adjust to so a mix of both environments will be the order of the day … at least for the short-term.
