Big summer art shows are no longer confined to big cities. A slew of recent gallery openings, touring exhibitions and bold post-Covid commissions means that, over the next few months, some of the most exciting visual arts in Australia can be found in regional areas. Stop off on a road trip, or plan a weekend away that mixes culture and nature.
New South Wales
Monet hits the hay in Tweed Valley
On the bank of the Tweed River, just south of Murwillumbah, Claude Monet’s masterpiece Meules, milieu du jour (Haystacks, midday) is hanging in a bucolic setting very different from the one it depicts (mountainous backdrop aside). The work is on display at the Tweed Regional Gallery and Margaret Olley Art Centre, the first loan in a new initiative that sends masterworks from the National Gallery of Australia’s collection on the road to smaller galleries.
Come for the Monet, but stay for a collection of still life paintings by Margaret Olley, alongside three new commissions from contemporary Australian artists, painted in response to objects from Olley’s home studio.
While you’re in the area
Take a stroll through Murwillumbah, which has the hippy vibes the region is best known for, without the Byron crowds. If you’re staying overnight, reserve a table at wine bar Bistro Livi for an upmarket dinner starring produce from the region.
Drive 20 minutes west, then take a short walk through one of the most biodiverse rainforests in the country on the Lyrebird Track in Wollumbin national park, an area that is highly sacred for Traditional Custodians, particularly the Bundjalung nation.
Claude Monet’s Meules will be on display at Tweed Regional Gallery through to October 2025; Light and Life: Margaret Olley, Laura Jones, India Mark and Mirra Whale closes 28 April 2024.
A blockbuster and a dog muster south of Sydney
Stretching across two hillocks, with views out across the Shoalhaven River, The Bridge and museum at Bundanon are works of art in their own right. The building has picked up multiple architecture prizes since it opened in 2022.
This summer, Bundanon has assembled a blockbuster showcase of works from the Yirrkala community in East Arnhem Land. Miwatj Yolŋu – Sunrise People features established and emerging Yolŋu artists. A series of extraordinary, large-scale dance boards painted by Ms N Marawili is a highlight. Many of the artists on show work with found materials – using angle grinders to creating intricate carvings on old road signs, for instance – and visitors can get a glimpse at the artists’ methods through a series of videos accompanying the show.
An hour and a half’s drive north, through the Kangaroo Valley, is another relatively recent edition to Australia’s gallery scene. Ngununggula regional gallery in Bowral opened in 2021, and is the first of its kind in the Southern Highlands. Its playful summer show features 10 newly commissioned works by Australian artists, including this year’s Archibald winner, Julia Gutman, painter Jason Phu and sculptor Billy Bain, exploring the relationship between humans and dogs. These new works are displayed alongside very good dog art from the likes of Jeff Koons, Del Kathryn Barton and Adam Cullen.
While you’re in the area
Bundanon is located on a 1,000-hectare (2,470-acre) wildlife sanctuary, and there are guided and self-guided walks around the property. The museum cafe makes fun, reasonably priced lunches too.
If you’re driving between Ngununggula and Bundanon on a hot day, take a 20-minute detour to Nellies Glen, a pretty freshwater swimming spot on the upper Kangaroo River.
Miwatj Yolŋu – Sunrise People at Bundanon closes 11 February 2024. Old Dog New Tricks at Ngununggula closes 4 February 2024.
The Archies at Bega’s brand-new art hub
Secca (the South East Centre for Contemporary Art) only just opened, doubling the size of the previous Bega Valley Regional Gallery. The first show is a crowd-pleaser: this year’s Archibald prize. Crowds are to be expected. Over 2,000 people visited in the first two weeks of opening, and the exhibition is timed and ticketed, and priced at $20 for adults.
While you’re in the area
The surfy twin-towns of Merimbula and Pambula are around half an hour’s drive from Secca. Farther south, the red rock, white sand and deep blue seas of Beowa national park are a sight to behold. Home to the multiday Light to Light walk, less-ambitious hikers can drive in for a highlight stop at Bittangabee Bay.
The Archibald prize exhibition is showing at Secca until 7 January 2024.
Queensland
Hundreds of kicks on the Gold Coast
Hota (Home of the Arts) on the Gold Coast is hosting the London Design Museum’s touring exhibition Sneakers Unboxed this summer. The show lives up to its name, displaying more than 400 pairs of sneakers – including a few pairs owned or designed by celebrities. A potentially vacuous premise for a blockbuster fashion show is given intellectual heft by its curators, who have turned a critical eye to sports shoes’ street-to-boardroom-to-street marketing cycles, and the sustainability of the rapidly growing industry.
While you’re in the area
If all that bling starts to feel a little dizzying, head for the hills. Specifically the rainforests and waterfalls of Springbrook national park in the Gold Coast hinterland.
Sneakers Unboxed at Hota closes on 24 January 2024.
South Australia
Wine as design in Mount Gambier
In a region that’s fast becoming known for its cool-climate wines, usually it’s what is inside the bottle that counts. But in its first time touring outside Adelaide, Message on a Bottle at the Riddoch cultural centre puts wine labels in focus.
The show features 70 labels spanning 70 years of design history, and explores how South Australian wine design went from aping the formality of old world producers, to creating playful, convention-defying labels that wouldn’t look out of place on a record sleeve or poster.
While you’re in the area
After all that time spent looking at wine, it would be strange to leave town without buying a bottle. If the words “wild ferment” and “minimal intervention” fill your glass, stop in at the eccentric but accurately named Good Wine Bar Shop, a cellar door from Good Intentions Wine Co, that sells bottles from their vineyard and beyond, and turns into a bar at night. If you’re stopping off on the drive between Adelaide and Melbourne and therefore can’t imbibe, the shop sits between Badenoch’s ice-creamery and Scroll Queen bakery, so you can still get a treat.
For those who like their wines (and their wineries) a little more conventional, Hollick Estates, 40 minutes north in Coonawarra, does the full cellar-door experience, complete with an on-site restaurant.
Message on a Bottle at the Riddoch closes 28 January 2024.
Victoria
Names to know (and one you do) on the Mornington Peninsula
The National Gallery of Australia’s largest-ever exhibition of female artists, Know My Name is now on the road, showing at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery (MPRG). Visitors can expect works from 20th-century Australian greats such as Margaret Preston and Grace Cossington Smith, alongside contemporary artists like Brenda L Croft. In keeping with the gender-parity theme, MPRG is also showing The Interior, a large installation by Natalya Hughes, that situates viewers inside a hand-painted living space where they can contemplate structural gender imbalances while lounging on soft furnishings.
A short drive away on the southern side of the peninsula, winery and sculpture park Pt Leo Estate has just unveiled a coup: the country’s first large-scale Yayoi Kusama pumpkin. The black and red-dotted bronze is located within what was already Australia’s largest private sculpture garden, that includes works by Jaume Plensa, KAWS, Inge King and Reko Rennie.
Know My Name at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery closes on 18 February 2024; The Interior closes on 18 February 2024.
While you’re in the area
The Mornington Peninsula has more than its fair share of destination winery dining, including Laura at Pt Leo Estate, Paringa Estate, and Rare Hare at Jackalope. There’s also destination bathing at Peninsula Hot Springs, which wins spa of the year awards so frequently it really deserves its own category. But if your budget doesn’t stretch to destination-anything, there are fun, free times to be had at Diamond Bay, and its surrounding clifftop walks.
Know My Name and the Interior at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery close 18 February. Yayoi Kusama’s Princess of the Polka Dot is on permanent display at Pt Leo Estate.
Contemporary surrealism in the Yarra Valley
Frequent gallery goers have more than likely encountered the uncanny, cartoonish world of Brent Harris in the permanent collections of Australia’s large cultural institutions. Now TarraWarra Museum of Art is staging a broad survey of the artist’s career to date, Surrender Catch. Drawn from public and private collections, the show stretches back to 1987, when Harris was a young painter reckoning with the Aids crisis. For all the complex psychological themes around death, sex and familial longing, most of the show is surprisingly kid-friendly.
While you’re in the area
High summer might be a little hot for hiking, or the much-loved Yarra Valley trail; but it’s just right for a snack and gin and tonic flight at Four Pillars distillery and for picking up a punnet (or picking your own) at one of the area’s many cherry orchards. Or double down on art with a visit to Hubert Estate, where the private gallery houses an impressive collection of Indigenous paintings and sculpture.
Brent Harris: Surrender and Catch at TarraWarra Museum of Art closes 11 March 2024.
Colour and cloth in Warrnambool
Lisa Gorman and Mirka Mora are respectively titans of fashion and art; but neither have could succeeded at one without the other. Mora, who died in 2018, worked as a dressmaker in the early stages of her career; while Gorman’s print collaborations with artists, including Mora, helped drive an almost cultish fandom among her customers.
No longer working for the brand that bears her name, Gorman has turned her attention to sculpture, creating a large installation piece for her home town gallery The Wag (Warrnambool Art Gallery) as part of Lisa Gorman + Mirka Mora: to breathe with the rhythm of the heart. Embroidery, soft sculptures and never-before-shown paintings by Mora are displayed alongside garments by Gorman, and showcasethe pair’s mutual fondness for luminous colour.
While you’re in the area
Middle Island, just off the coast of Warrnambool, is experimenting with a world-first conservation project. The island’s population of little penguins – which precipitously declined in the mid-2000s – are being kept safe from foxes by a team of Maremma dogs. While you can’t visit the penguins (they’re still endangered), you can meet one of the dogs that guard them, during council run penguin protector sessions. Or, for an island you can visit, drive 20 minutes west from Warrnambool to Port Fairy, and take a wander around Griffiths Island which is home to a sizeable population of shearwaters.
Lisa Gorman + Mirka Mora: To breathe with the rhythm of the heart at Warrnambool Art Gallery closes on 17 March 2024.
Western Australia
Gentle giants to stay in Mandurah
When the Danish artist Thomas Dambo assembled six mythic trolls out of scrap wood and hid them around the Peel region’s countryside last November, the visitors from the fairy realm were supposed to stay for one year. But his creations have proved so popular, their stay has been extended by three years. Visitors can find the giants of Mandurah through a self-guided troll hunt through the Peel-Harvey estuary, visiting beaches and forests along the way. Some are easily accessible by car, while others require longer walks on foot.
While you’re in the area
Mandurah and the Peel inlet is home to a large population of bottle nosed dolphins. While it’s not uncommon to see them from shore as you go about your business around town, you can get up closer by hiring a kayak and paddling the area’s dolphin trail.
Guardian Australia travelled to Bundanon as a guest of the gallery.
