J W Twycross
Two children and a boat, Mornington 1922
digital image from original glass plate negative
Twycross Collection
Reproduced with permission from
The Twycross Estate

29 February – 9 April 2012
At first sight: Peninsula and bay photographs by J W Twycross 1918 – 1925
An exclusive Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

At first sight showcases the pictorialist photography of John William Twycross and his intimate and insightful tale of life in Melbourne and Port Phillip Bay following World War One. Twycross (1871–1939) was an accomplished artist who passionately believed in the aesthetic as well as the documentary potential of photography.

He was a frequent visitor to his mother’s family farm at McCrae on Port Phillip Bay, capturing in his work the ambience of the local creeks, wetlands and vistas and photographing his family at work and play. Using the artist’s original prints and large scale images specially printed from carefully preserved glass plates, this exhibition pays tribute to a man whose early experimentation and ingenuity left an inspired legacy for years to come.

29 February – 9 April 2012
Dorothy Braund: Variations on a theme
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

This exhibition showcases the accomplished work of Dorothy Braund, a Mornington Peninsula artist, and her life-long ambition to ‘attain the ultimate in simplicity’. Born in Melbourne in 1926, Braund was a notable practitioner of early modernism in Australia and a student of George Bell. Her work was represented in the landmark exhibition Classical Modernism: The George Bell Circle, National Gallery of Victoria, held in 1992. The MPRG is pleased to present a selection of gouaches and drawings recently donated to the Gallery by the artist.

7 December 2011 – 19 February 2012
Sea of dreams: The lure of Port Phillip Bay 1830-1914
An exclusive Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

Shattered dreams, fresh beginnings, an expansive economy, rising fears and the emergence of a middle class are detailed in this exhibition that traces the journeys of so many who were lured by the dream of a better life.

Sea of dreams: The lure of Port Phillip Bay 1830–1914 tells the intriguing story of Port Phillip Bay and the integral part it played in 19th and early 20th century survival, settlement, trade and commerce, defence and leisure.

With more than 100 works displayed, many of Australia’s best known and loved artists are represented. There are paintings by Charles Conder, Fred McCubbin, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Louis Buvelot, along with rare drawings and prints by Emma Minnie Boyd, S. T. Gill, Georgiana McCrae, John Mather and Eugene von Guérard.

Want to know more? The exhibition catalogue is richly illustrated with several essays by well known historians.

17 August – 2 October 2011     
Robin Boyd on the Mornington Peninsula
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

Coinciding with the fortieth anniversary of his death in 1971, this specially developed exhibition pays homage to Robin Boyd and his award-winning houses and apartments designed and built at Frankston and on the Mornington Peninsula.

Robin Boyd (1919-1971) was one of Australia’s most highly regarded architects, writers and critics. In his influential post-war architectural projects, public talks and writing on architecture such as Australia’s Home, Living in Australia and The Australian Ugliness, Boyd consistently advocated good design as a parallel to our modern way of life. His architecture and innovative ideas continue to both excite and inspire in the contemporary Australian architectural landscape.

Featured houses in the exhibition include: The Marriott House, Flinders 1954, The Myer House, Mt Eliza 1956 and the McClune House, Frankston 1959.

Robin Boyd on the Mornington Peninsula has been developed in partnership with The Robin Boyd Foundation. MPRG gratefully acknowledge research assistance from the Mornington Peninsula Branch, National Trust of Australia (Vic).

30 June – 7 August 2011
WD Knox: Nocturnes and harmonies
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

A member of one of Victoria’s best-known and most creative families, WD Knox belonged to a generation of Australian landscape painters who quietly honed their craft between the first and second world wars. Taught by Bernard Hall at the National Gallery School and a contemporary of WB McInnes, Knox was an avid en plein air painter who roamed Melbourne and the Victorian countryside during the 1920s and 30s, producing a body of memorable images which captured the light, colour and atmosphere of his chosen subjects.

WD Knox: Nocturnes and harmonies include a representative selection of Knox’s work sourced from early in his career until his death in 1945. It is the first survey of Knox’s oeuvre since a retrospective showing of his work held in 1983 and focuses specifically on nocturnal scenes and poetics of a fading light. Also featured are a series of paintings that explore specific colour harmonies and formal arrangements in the artist’s depictions of Melbourne’s beaches, its docks and the suburbs and landscape around Eltham and Warrandyte, close to where he lived.

16 February - 26 April 2011
Desire and identity: The architecture of Chancellor and Patrick
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

The Melbourne architectural firm Chancellor and Patrick emerged in the 1950s to become one of Victoria’s most successful and innovative practices. Desire and identity: The architecture of Chancellor and Patrick is the first exhibition to consider the collaborative working practice underpinning the two architects’ approach, enabling a comprehensive examination of their ideas, desires and creative focus.

Including over 100 rarely seen archival photographs, original drawings from the architects’ own collection and artefacts from the period such as textiles, furniture and pottery, this important, retrospective exhibition has been curated by Dr Winsome Callister and developed in association with the Faculty of Art and Design, Monash University.

Ivan Durrant: Landscapes and horses reassembles the artist’s celebrated Flinders series of paintings, many of which are being seen for the first time since their exhibition in Melbourne in 1972. These beguilingly, simple pictures of the animals and countryside Durrant enjoyed, reveal a little-known side of this renowned Australian artist and lead into the celebrated racetrack, jockey and movie star series of the mid-1970s.

12 November 2010 - 6 February 2011
Jenny Phillips: The hidden meaning of plants
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

Jenny Phillips, deservedly, has an international reputation as an important botanical artist.  As founder, director and teacher at The Botanical Art School in Melbourne she has also been largely responsible for the contemporary renaissance of botanical art, both here and abroad.

The life of Jenny Phillips has been consumed by a passion for hunting down and painting plants and flowers.  This exhibition, the first major retrospective of her work, examines the way in which Jenny Phillips' botanical art goes beyond scientific observation, where plants are used as a motif to demonstrate artistic skills and scientific knowledge, to one where plants are invested with symbolic meaning to express the artist’s emotional states and relationships with family and friends.

Featuring rarely seen watercolours and drawings sourced from private collections throughout Australia, the exhibition includes works from her well-known Magnolia, Strelitzia and Waterlily series along with examples of Australian natives, exotics and fruit and vegetable studies.

Order the room brochure now!

8 September – 31 October 2010
2010 Beleura National Works on Paper
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

The 2010 Beleura National Works on Paper is an acquisitive exhibition that brings together contemporary works on paper from across the nation.

The curatorial theme for this year’s exhibition is ‘Contemporary Portraiture’. The exhibition will showcase the way artists are using the nature of paper – its materiality – to examine themes of personal, community, national and trans-national identity in a time when the borders between public and private, fictitious and real are continually being challenged and redefined. Traditional approaches to both portraiture and working with paper will be explored in the exhibition along with works that use new technological mediums – displaying the ways in which these mediums are prompting new explorations of portraiture and working with paper.

Judges for the 2010 Beleura National Works on Paper comprise: Jane Alexander, Director, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery; Alisa Bunbury, Curator, Prints & Drawings, National Gallery of Victoria and Jon Cattapan, artist.

Download the 2010 Beleura National Works on Paper accompanying essay by Vivien Gaston here.

7 July - 29 August 2010
Stephen Eastaugh: An unstill life
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

Stephen Eastaugh is a visual artist with severe wanderlust as over the past twenty-five years he has travelled to over eighty countries scattered across all continents. Movement and change is fundamental to his life and work and the production of art; the manifestation of experience into object becomes a marker, locating his life and experiences in time and space.

Stephen Eastaugh: An unstill life focuses on the artist’s journeys from 2004–08. The resulting works, comprising painted textiles, will be joined together visually and conceptually to map the relationship between Eastaugh’s art and his nomadic lifestyle.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australian Antarctic Division's Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship.

Louis Buvelot
Bush track, Dromana 1875
oil on canvas
The Joseph Brown Collection.
Presented through the NGV Foundation by Dr Joseph Brown AO OBE, Honorary Life Benefactor, 2004

12 May– 27 June 2010
Look at me: Schools Photography Portraiture Exhibition
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

In this exhibition, Mornington Peninsula students used digital cameras to explore ‘digital identity’ through images of themselves, investigating their relationship with their personal community, virtual and transcultural communities. The images produced by the students move beyond the conventions of self-portraiture to explore the way that new technologies and electronic networking can offer fresh possibilities to fashion and represent identity.

Ambrose Patterson
Bathing boxes, Mornington c.1913
oil on canvas
Private Collection, United Kingdom

9 December 2009 – 8 March 2010
Master landscapes of the Mornington Peninsula: 1800 to the present
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

For over 200 years, the Mornington Peninsula has attracted a roll-call of Australia’s finest landscape artists.  This unique concentration of artists to a single region has created a rare opportunity to survey some of the finest landscape works produced in the last two centuries, and in many respects, to trace the development of landscape painting in Australia. Bringing together fifty exemplary paintings, watercolours and drawings by twenty-eight artists, from Australian and international collections and includes masterpieces such as Eugene von Guerard’s Castle Rock, Cape Schanck 1875. this landmark exhibition is the culmination of ten years of research by the MPRG into the region.

Artists profiled in the exhibition include: Louis August de Sainson, Georgiana McCrae, Eugene von Guérard, Nicholas Chevalier, Louis Buvelot, H. J. Johnstone, Girolamo Nerli, Ambrose Patterson, Arthur Streeton, Penleigh Boyd, Bernard Hall, Emma Minnie Boyd, Violet Teague, Eric Thake, Clarice Beckett, Arthur Boyd, Albert Tucker, John Perceval, Charles Blackman, Fred Williams, William Delafield Cook, Stewart MacFarlane, Lynne Boyd, Ken Smith and Rick Amor.

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Artist Ken Smith at Devilbend Reserve as a participant
in A changing land: Devilbend 2009
Photo: Daryl Gordon

2 September – 11 October 2009
A changing land: Devilbend 2009
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

In A changing land: Devilbend 2009 thirteen artists from varied backgrounds will consider such issues as sustainability, climate change, protection of species, land ownership and responsibility in relation to the Devilbend Reserve. Until recently the Reserve was one of the main water catchment areas for the Mornington Peninsula and long before that an important meeting place for the Bunurong people. At present, with strong community involvement, debate continues about its potential for the future.

The diverse backgrounds and experiences of the artists involved present an especially exciting opportunity to explore a range of connections and relationships with the land. A changing land: Devilbend 2009 will allow for intimate and personal responses to the environment, through to addressing more global issues. The exhibition will result in new work by both established and emerging artists in a variety of mediums and approaches. Participating artists are: Marie-Louise Anderson, Bob Austin, Vito Bila, Bea Edwards, Marian Hosking, Bob Kelly, Adam Magennis, Roger Saddington, Ken Smith, Patsy Smith, Claudia Terstappen, Trinh Vu and Greg Wallis.

James Smeaton
Epoch 1 2009
synthetic polymer paint on linen
Private collection
Reproduced courtesy of James Smeaton and
Scott Livesay Galleries

2 September – 11 October 2009
James Smeaton: Work from the studio 1993–2009
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

James Smeaton is a Melbourne-based artist whose work fuses a strong personal connection with the sea, an abiding interest in maritime themes and motifs, and an ongoing dialogue with the practices and processes of 20th century art. As Smeaton has explained elsewhere, his oeuvre is composed of ‘realist paintings of abstract things’.

The studio environment is an important part of Smeaton’s artistic practice. It is both a sanctuary and a laboratory: light, airy, and painted white. The surfaces of the paintings and drawings he produces there are built up over time, stripped back and then rebuilt. The exhibition surveys Smeaton’s studio practice over the past fifteen years, beginning with the ‘Constellation’ paintings from his 1993 ‘Paris’ series, the ‘Sound in Fog’ and ‘Semaphore’ paintings of 1995–97, his paintings of shipping lights and navigational charts from 2000–03, and large sea and pier paintings from 1995, through to ‘the red sea’ series of 2008–09.

Jeffrey Smart
Self-portrait 1993
oil on canvas
The University of Queensland
Purchased, 2003
© Jeffrey Smart

4 March – 13 April 2009
Jeffrey Smart : The question of portraiture
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

This is the first exhibition dedicated to the portraiture of renowned expatriate Australian artist Jeffrey Smart. The exhibition will include early portraits done when he was making his way as an artist in Adelaide and a range of portraits of artists, writers and close friends such as painter Margaret Olley and companion Ermes de Zan. Celebrity figures including Germaine Greer, David Malouf and Clive James are represented in major works, along with the representative oil studies and working drawings Smart produced as preparatory investigations of ‘the sitter’ and their context.

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13 November – 22 February 2009
Out of the square: Beach architecture on the Mornington Peninsula
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

Three of the last four prestigious RAIA ‘Robin Boyd awards for residential architecture’ have been presented to homes on the Mornington Peninsula and McBride Charles Ryan have recently been awarded the State’s highest honor: the Harold Desbrowe-Annear Award for their radical Klein bottle house in Rye. While there may be something in the air, the Peninsula has long been considered a fertile breeding ground for innovative architecture in Australia. From the 1920s, modern movements in architecture have been played out on the shores and hinterland of the Mornington Peninsula by the likes of Walter Burley Griffin, Roy Grounds, Robin Boyd and McGlashan Everist and numerous younger architects around the millennium including Sean Godsell, Jackson Clements Burrows, Kerstin Thompson and John Wardle.

Out of the square: Beach architecture on the Mornington Peninsula is the first exhibition to survey the rich traditions of coastal architecture on the Peninsula. Arranged geographically so that modern and contemporary projects rub shoulders, the exhibition considers the way in which architecture has developed under the rubric of form, patronage and place.

As part of the Platforms for living component of the exhibition, five Melbourne-based architectural practices – Paul Morgan Architects, McBride Charles Ryan, WSH, Baracco Wright and Little Wonder – have also produced specially commissioned designs for speculative coastal houses of the future. Their designs, which are based on particular sites on the Mornington Peninsula, will showcase new ways of living using principles of sustainability, innovation and best practice building and design.

Anne O'Connor
Nasturtimius 1997
watercolour
Private collection
© Anne O'Connor

10 September – 2 November 2008
Drawn from Life
The enchanted eye: The botanical art of Anne O'Connor
AA Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

The enchanted eye highlights the skill and imagination of one of Australia’s most talented botanical artists, Anne O’Connor. Best known for her Vireya Rhododendron paintings, O’Connor has been painting for over fifteen years and in 2000 was awarded a coveted Royal Horticultural Medal in London. Her work combines an eye for detail and a keen sense of experimentation within her chosen watercolour medium. This is first solo public gallery exhibition to be held by this Mornington Peninsula-based artist.

Revealing the body: 20th century drawings from the MPRG collection
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

Drawing on the Gallery’s extensive works on paper collection, this exhibition explores approaches to drawing from the human figure and studio models and the ideas and theories on which that drawing is based. Featured artists include Rick Amor, John Brack, Russell Drysdale, Noel Counihan, Godfrey Miller, John Perceval, Constance Stokes and Brett Whiteley. A recently acquired suite of rare life drawings produced by George Bell during the 1930s and 40s will also be on display for the first time.

Danie Mellor
An unsettled vision (the predicament) 2007–08
pastel, pencil, watercolour and glitter pen on paper with Swarovski crystal
Courtesy of the artist
Winner $15,000 John Tallis Acquisitive Award

28 May – 6 July 2008
The Tallis Foundation 2008 National Works on Paper
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

The MPRG has specialised in collecting Australian works on paper for over three decades through initiatives such as the biennial National Works on Paper exhibition.

NWOP is one of the most prestigious prize exhibitions of its type in Australia. It showcases recent works by innovative artists working in the field of drawing, printmaking, digital prints and paper sculpture. This diverse and exciting exhibition provides a survey of what’s happening in contemporary art across Australia, today.

NWOP 2008 features the largest award for works on paper in Australia – The John Tallis $15,000 Acquisitive Award.

Visit http://mprg.mornpen.vic.gov.au/nwop

Albert Tucker
Mirka Mora showing off her frilly knickers, Georges Mora, Lucy Beck, Sunday Reed at Aspendale 1961
type C photograph
Heide Museum of Modern Art
Gift of Barbara Tucker, 2001
Reproduced with permission from Barbara Tucker

12 December 2007 – 10 March 2008

Aspendale Beach: An artists’ haven

A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition, curated by Rodney James

Depicted in picture postcards as an idyllic destination, Aspendale Beach on Port Phillip Bay emerged in the 1960s as a haven for two of Melbourne's best known artistic families – the Reeds and the Moras.

Closely associated with the nurturing of progressive art and culture in Melbourne during the 1940s and 1950s, John and Sunday Reed and Georges and Mirka Mora also developed a friendship that extended to and blossomed at Aspendale. Whether as a summer playground or winter retreat, Aspendale was a place of good fun, high adventure and lively experimentation and where, even today, many of Australia's art community gather to share food, wine and company in startling surroundings.

These innovative beach houses built on adjacent blocks on the shore of Port Phillip Bay set the scene for what was to follow. The McGlashan Everist beach pavilion designed for the Reeds and, by comparison, Peter Burns's modest shelter for the Moras, embraced innovative ideas and a vivid sense of communality. Over the years the many visitors to Aspendale – artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers and actors – added their own contributions to these impressive beginnings. The houses became the setting for impromptu parties, never-ending games of chess and countless artworks; including extensive wall and ceiling murals.

The first exhibition to focus on Aspendale Beach as an artists' retreat recreates the unique feel of Aspendale during the 1960s to the 1980s through the display of photographs, paintings, drawings, writing, sculpture and film. The exhibition considers the architectural development and legacy of Aspendale. It incorporates rare photographs by Albert Tucker, Bob Whitaker and Mary Nolan, early films produced by Philippe Mora and features both favourite and other little known works by a diverse range of artists including Charles Blackman, Ivan Durrant, Mirka Mora, John Perceval, Sweeney Reed and Caroline Williams.

Exhibition supported by Friends of Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery

James Smeaton, G. W. Bot (kneeling), Stephen Gascoyne and Rosie Weiss
Devilbend Reserve, June 2006
Photographer: Daryl Gordon

30 October – 2 December 2007
Devilbend 2007
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

To acknowledge and celebrate the unique qualities of the newly-created Devilbend Reserve, Moorooduc, seven artists present new works based on their interaction and interpretation of the site.

The participating artists – G.W. Bot, Stephen Gascoyne, Chaco Kato, Suzanne Kepert, James Smeaton, Birra-li Ward and Rosie Weiss – include a mixture of established and emerging artists working with a variety of mediums and approaches. The majority either lives on the Peninsula or has links with it. Importantly, each artist chosen has a strong environmental conscience. Their works explore different ways of responding to the environment: ‘they look to the ground’ rather than seek to capture the grand vista or the conventionally beautiful aspect of nature.

John Blogg
Spider with gum leaves 1923
Private collection

29 August – 21 October 2007
Drawing with chisels: The wood carvings of John K. Blogg (1851–1936)
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

For the first time, this exhibition brings together over thirty works by John Kendrick Blogg. Drawing with chisels showcases Blogg’s skill with a chisel, innate understanding of good design and his sensitivity to unique Australian flora. Blogg’s furniture and carvings will be contextualised by relevant examples from other artists influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement in Australia, the fervour of Federation and the impact of The Great War. 

The exhibition will also look at the life of an energetic man with many interests. An industrial chemist by trade, and emigrating from Canada in 1877, Blogg embraced life in Australia. During the late 1800s his pharmaceutical business expanded and he settled into community life in Surrey Hills, Melbourne. Blogg combined business acumen and the technicalities of chemistry, developing unique Australian perfumes and cosmetics and he expressed himself artistically by writing poetry and composing hymns as well as creating remarkable high-relief wood carvings.

4 July - 19 August 2007
Rosebud: Matthew Sleeth
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

Matthew Sleeth spent his summers at the same caravan site, with the same neighbours, in the seaside town of Rosebud every year until he was about thirteen. He recently returned to Rosebud and found, 'Teenagers were still having awkward first kisses, families were returning year after year, recreating their suburban comforts on a miniature scale, albeit with a modern twist - transistor radios had given way to DVD players, station wagons to four-wheel drives. A sense of community and continuity remained and I remembered these with great affection, but the underlying currents of boredom and slight menace were also familiar.'  

Fifteen large-format photographic images of Rosebud are featured in this exhibition by Melbourne artist Matthew Sleeth as he explores the underbelly of a place we only thought we knew .

20 April - 24 June 2007
Masters of emotion: Exploring the emotions from the old masters to the present
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition, curated by Irena Zdanowicz 

The portrayal of the emotions has motivated artists since classical antiquity. This ambitious exhibition explores some of the ways in which Western artists have represented human emotions and draws extensively upon the internationally recognised collections of Australia's premier state and national galleries. Masters of emotion uncovers how certain attitudes and traditions of representation have persisted while others have undergone radical change. The exhibition ranges widely and encompasses European, Australian and American art from the Renaissance to the present and includes major paintings, sculpture, rare drawings, prints, photographs, and artist books. 

Over 100 works of art have been specially selected for the exhibition ranging from the old masters, such as Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya, Blake and Munch, through to works of art from contemporary artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Tracey Moffatt, Jenny Holzer and Bill Henson.

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29 November 2006 - 25 February 2007
Sidney Nolan: Antarctic Journey
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition, curated by Rodney James

This major summer exhibition reunites Sir Sidney Nolan's Antarctica series of paintings and drawings. Nolan and writer Alan Moorehead visited Antarctica for two weeks in January 1964 as guests of the United States Navy. The artist recorded his impressions from the air and on the ground with watercolor sketches and photographs. Once returned to England, Nolan produced a major body of work from his experiences and impressions.

Nolan's artistic journey and inspired works captured the imagination of the public and international media when the works were exhibited in London, New York and Australia in 1965. The works reveal the mood of the experience and the awe and wonder the artist felt when faced with this remote landscape. 

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Gerald McCraith
McCraith House 1958
35mm slide
Courtesy of the McCraith family

25 July - 24 September 2006
From Tuesday to Tuesday:
Barbara Brash, Nancy Clifton, Mary Macqueen, Lesbia Thorpe
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

From Tuesday to Tuesday considers the personal and professional relationships which developed between these four artists, the resurgence of interest in printmaking in the 1950s and 60s in Melbourne, the role of Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT) in the development of their work and their individual contribution to printmaking in Australia.

25 July - 24 September 2006
Rosie Weiss: Pulse
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition 

Pulse is an exhibition of exciting new works by Mornington Peninsula-based artist Rosie Weiss comprising detailed drawings of plants floating over liquid landscapes of ink. Weiss concentrates on found or discarded plant specimens and their connection to the environment and psychological states.

Gareth Sansom
Life after Bacon 2006
watercolour, pencil, synthetic polymer paint, ink, biro, enamel, gouache and collage on paper, 12 sheets
133.0 x 125.0 cm
Courtesy of John Buckley Fine Art, Melbourne

6 June - 16 July 2006
The Tallis Foundation 2006 National Works on Paper
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

National Works on Paper is one of the longest running and most prestigious prize exhibitions of its type in Australia. NWOP brings together the finest collection of contemporary works on paper by artists across the country, from rising stars to the most established artists. Showcasing the work of 46 artists, this year's exhibition reveals the exciting and often surprising ways in which artists are engaging with paper, using traditional methods to the latest computer imaging technologies.

4 April - 28 May 2006
Warning: Smoking has been linked to some of the most powerful images in the twentieth century
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

This exhibition explores the role of Australian and international artists in the formation and critique of a visual culture of smoking.

Transformed into a global obsession since the Europeans first imported tobacco from the New World more than 500 years ago, smoking has been a major source of investigation and inspiration for artists, writers and filmmakers. Drawing on major public and private collections throughout Australia, this is the first large-scale exhibition to examine the relationship between artists, smoking and modern life and will include paintings, prints and drawings, photographs, video, installations and sculptures.

Click here for more information...

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9 November 2005 - 12 February 2006
Michael Leunig: Personal and Peculiar
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

One of Australia's foremost cartoonists and social commentators, Michael Leunig is also an accomplished painter, printmaker and illustrator. This exhibition highlights some of the many connections which exist between Leunig's art, life and aesthetic interests. Favourite objects, works of art and new writings will combine to produce an effect likened to that of the Wunderkammer: a curiosity cabinet full of wonder and intrigue, in which subtle dialogues are created and fresh resonances emerge.

6 September - 30 October 2005 
After Van Gogh: Australian artists in homage to Vincent
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

The exhibition after Van Gogh: Australian artists in homage to Vincent reveals the profound influence this infamous Dutch master has had on Australian art. Showcasing over 66 works by 25 Australian artists, after Van Gogh includes major works by Brett Whiteley, John Perceval, Grace Cossington Smith, Yosl Bergner, Arthur Boyd, Albert Tucker, Martin Sharp, Asher Bilu, Peter Callas and Gordon Bennett.

The exhibition features the National Gallery of Victoria's much-loved portrait by Van Gogh Head of a man 1886.  This painting was the first by Van Gogh to enter a public collection in Australia. Included in the controversial 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art - dubbed as degenerates and perverts by the then director of the National Gallery - it is one of his many paintings that have inspired generations of artists and gallery visitors.

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Clarice Beckett
Winter   c. 1926
oil on board
285 x 385cm
Collection: Ruth Prowse
 

12 July - 28 August 2005
Clarice Beckett: A collector's passion The Ruth Prowse collection
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

This exhibition showcases the work of a major Australian artist, a passionate Australian collector and the relationship between the two.

Comprising close to forty paintings, the exhibition includes many well known works by Clarice Beckett including pictures of Beaumaris, Ricketts Point and Port Phillip Bay. The Prowse collection is dominated by works by Clarice Beckett - some eighty works by the artist at one stage - and Ruth's favourite painting remains Wet night, St Kilda Road, a work which provides a special focus for the exhibition.

17 May - 3 July 2005
Albert Tucker: Blairgowrie
Works from the MPRG Collection

In 1980, Albert Tucker and his wife Barbara purchased a holiday home at Blairgowrie on the Mornington Peninsula. Over the next decade, Tucker sketched and painted there over the holiday periods, often returning to favourite spots and landmarks adjacent to the local ocean beach.  

Now part of the MPRG permanent collection, this is the first time Tucker's Blairgowrie pictures have been on display at the Gallery. The collection of seven paintings were specially selected from the artist's estate and gifted to the Gallery through the generosity of Barbara Tucker. They are marked by the variety of media employed by the artist (including watercolour, gouache, pencil, pastel and even poly-filler) and the interesting tools and techniques used such as brush, spatula, fingers and combs.

The exhibition includes close to 70 paintings from public, corporate and private collections throughout Australia. These include coastal views of Sydney, as well as paintings of the Victorian, New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmanian coasts. Many of these works remain in private collections and a highlight of the exhibition will be reassembling the individual series of paintings of Portsea, Sorrento, Lorne, Palm Beach, and Port Campbell, which have not been seen together since their initial various exhibitions approximately seventy years ago. The exhibition explores Arthur Streeton's interest in poetry and literature and the physical and psychological properties of the ocean which remained a constant source of inspiration and became the subject of many of his most revered images. 

Guest-curators for Arthur Streeton and the Australian Coast are Geoffrey Smith, Curator of Australian Art at the National Gallery of Victoria and the artist's grandson, Oliver Streeton.

26 October - 5 December 2004
Emma Minnie Boyd: 1858 - 1936
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

Best known for her exquisite, delicate watercolours, this exhibition provides the first major survey of Emma Minnie Boyd's career, with over 90 works from private and public collections, many of which have rarely been publicly displayed. 

Emma Minnie Boyd 1858 - 1936 is curated by Jane Alexander and continues the MPRG'S innovative Boyds on the Mornington Peninsula series of exhibitions, highlighting the Boyd family's longstanding association with the region.

7 September - 17 October 2004
2004 National Works on Paper
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

Initiated in 1973, the gallery's prestigious annual works on paper award offers artists and the public one of the major exhibition showcases in Australia for contemporary prints and drawings. Each year works from this prestigious exhibition are purchased for the MPRG's specialist collection of works on paper, regarded as one of the foremost collections in the country.

John Perceval painting at Fisherman's Inlet, Tooradin 1967
Courtesy of Gould Galleries, Melbourne and Sydney

7 September - 17 October  2004
John Perceval: Painting Down the Bay
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition
 

John Perceval: Painting down the Bay highlights the painterly achievements of one of Australia's most celebrated and significant twentieth century artists. Perceval's Williamstown and Port Melbourne series of paintings are universally known and much enjoyed; this exhibition, in contrast, explores his links with an equally impressive body of work drawn from areas situated further on down the Bay - from the distinctive bluffs of Beaumaris, creeks at Mordialloc, sweeping beaches of Rye and Sorrento, rugged back beaches near the Heads, hinterland of Tyabb and Merricks, through to the distinctive tidal creeks and inlets of Tooradin at the far reaches of  the adjacent Western Port Bay.

Close to twenty major paintings from a range of early, mid and late series or bodies of work undertaken by Perceval are included in the exhibition, celebrating John Perceval's achievements as an artist in some of his most productive periods and explores his specific association with the Mornington Peninsula through his links with particular places and with well-known Melbourne artists, families and patrons.

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Rick Amor
Self-portrait in winter 2002
oil on canvas
Private Collection, Courtesy of Niagara Galleries, Melbourne.

13 July - 29 August 2004
The Painted Self: Rick Amor, Peter Churcher, Kevin Lincoln, Stewart MacFarlane and Lewis Miller
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

Self-portraits are not simply transcriptions of what the artist sees in the mirror; they are self dramatisations through which the artist can tell stories about him or herself on both a personal and professional level.

This compelling exhibition will focus on the work of five contemporary artists who have consistently painted self-images throughout their career. The group of selected works by each painted will highlight the importance of self-portraiture within their practice and represent the continuing evolution of their work and ideas from early in their career to the present.

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eX de Medici
Dagger for Ted (drawing for tattoo) 1997,
coloured pencil and fibre-tipped pen on paper
Private collection, Melbourne
Photograph courtesy of the artist

10 April - 23 May 2004
eX de Medici @ MPRG
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

A background in experimental installation, performance, drawing and tattooing have influenced the work of Canberra-based artist, eX de Medici. Drawing on three decades of the artist's work, this exhibition includes works related to Medici's tattooing practice; oversize digital images of Canberra's deserted highways; exquisitely detailed watercolour drawings of microlepidoptera (tiny moths) undertaken during a residency with the Australian National Insect Collection; monumental inks and watercolours depicting weaponry, household debris and cloud formations; large, intricately worked drawings in pencil or biro; and sumptuous oil paintings inspired by Mathias Grünewald's famous 16^th century altarpiece.

Emanuel Phillips Fox
Bathing hour c.1909
oil on canvas
Collection: Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum

14 December 2003 - 22 February 2004
The artists' journey Discovering the Victorian Coastline 1840 - 1910
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition
Tracing 70 years of Victoria's coastal history, The Artists' Journey provides a rare opportunity to take part in an artistic voyage around Victoria's magnificent coastline between 1840-1910. Ranging from images of the ragged and the remote to seaside holidays, this exhibition promises to spark the memories of old, reminding us of how vastly the Victorian coastline has changed over the last century.

The exhibition will be comprehensive and wide-ranging in its scope, comprising over 60 works including many of the now familiar and much-loved paintings by artists such as Eugene von Guérard, S T Gill, Tom Roberts and Walter Withers as well as supporting engravings, drawings and photographs. Significantly, it will be the first occasion on which many of these iconic works will have been exhibited together, and provides viewers with a unique opportunity to see their favourite parts of the Victorian coast as seen through the eyes of this highly respected artists.

22 July – 24 August 2003
2003 National Works on Paper
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

National Works on Paper (NWOP) is one of Australia’s most prestigious award and acquisitive exhibitions. Its role is to support and promote contemporary Australian artists working on or with paper. Acquisitions from NWOP enter the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery’s (MPRG) nationally renowned collection of works on paper. Works are selected for exhibition from both open entry artists and invited artists.

Short listed artists include: Greg ADES Benjamin ARMSTRONG Raymond ARNOLD Yvonne BOAG Gavin BROWN Stephen BUSH Daniel BUTTERWORTH Laila Marie COSTA Jon CAMPBELL Jazmina CININAS Marieke DENCH Tommaso DURANTE Caroline DURRÉ Stephen EASTAUGH Franz EHMANN Philip FAULKS Graham FRANSELLA Elizabeth GOWER Rona GREEN Mandy GUNN David HARLEY Gail HASTINGS Katherine HATTAM Kristin HEADLAM Christopher HODGES Anna HOYLE Troy INNOCENT Megan KEATING Anita KOCSIS Nick MANGAN Jennifer MILLS Daniel MOYNIHAN David PALLISER Stieg PERSSON Elizabeth POZEGA John PRATT Louise RIPPERT Andrea ROBINSON Lisa ROET Jacqueline ROSE John RYRIE Elissa SADGROVE Sangeeta SANDRASEGAR Heather SHIMMEN Julia SILVESTER Stephen SPURRIER Guy STUART Ben TAYLOR Kathy TEMIN David Hugh THOMAS David WADELTON Peter WALSH Rosie WEISS Stephen WICKHAM Deborah WILLIAMS Gary WILSON

27 May - 13 July 2003
Janet Cumbrae Stewart The Perfect Touch
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

Janet Cumbrae Stewart was regarded as one of the finest pastellists of her generation; however, this is the first exhibition to consider the achievements of this important Australian artist from a contemporary perspective. The exhibition will include up to fifty drawings from major state and private collections throughout Australia including the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Gallery of Australia.

This significant exhibition will feature a number of rarely seen works, including a recent donation to the Gallery of early 20th century pastel drawings through the Mary Quinlan Gift. The Mary Quinlan Gift comprises a collection of thirteen works including pastels by Janet Cumbrae Stewart and Dora Wilson and watercolours by Norah Gurdon and Duddie Gregory.

This exhibition focused on the significance of the sea in Rick Amor's art, with particular reference to works drawn between 1991 - 2001. The sea has been a central preoccupation for Rick Amor from his earliest beginnings as an artist. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the artist refocused his attention on boyhood memories, related to the period spent growing up in the Melbourne bay-side suburb of Frankston. The many resultant drawings, etchings and paintings fused biographical elements, including real observations and incidents, with Amor's development of a mature style of painting versed in the romantic and the metaphysical.

Nick Cave was a central figure in the Melbourne punk scene of the 1970s, a milieu that included artists, writers, photographers, filmmakers and fashion designers. Nick Cave: The Good Son used as its starting point the MPRG's own portraits of Cave's first band, The Boys Next Door, by Jenny Watson, to examine and place Nick Cave within a broader Melbourne arts context from the 1970s to the present day. Artists’ work included in the exhibition were by Nick Cave, Jenny Watson, Tony Clark, Howard Arkley, Jenny Bannister, Polly Borland, Bill Henson, Ross Waterman and Peter Milne.

June - July 2002
2002 National Works on Paper
A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition

The National Works on Paper (NWOP) is one of Australia’s most prestigious award and acquisitive exhibitions. Its role is to support and promote contemporary Australian artists working on or with paper. Acquisitions from the NWOP enter the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery’s (MPRG) nationally renowned collection of works on paper. Works are selected for exhibition from both open entry artists and invited artists.

Acquisitions made by the MPRG in 2002 were by: Ex de medici, Andrew Browne, Gareth Sansom, Kate Cotching, Fiona McMonagle and Sharon Goodwin.

Nocturne, the MPRG's premier exhibition for 2002, featured paintings, photographs and works on paper produced by artists who have taken the idea of night imagery as a subject for their work from the early 1800s to the present. The exhibition drew upon two main themes - firstly, the ways in which artists have incorporated natural and artificial light within their work and secondly, how the transition from light to dark sets the scene for different individual and social responses to the night.
Artists represented include Joseph Lycett, David Davies, Jane R. Price, JJ Hilder, Charles Blackman, Herbert Badham, Fred Williams, Peter Booth, Gareth Sansom, Louise Hearman, Bill Henson, Andrew Browne, and Domenico de Clario. This exhibition was curated by John Buckley.

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Arthur Streeton remains one of Australia's most celebrated artists and this outstanding exhibition brought together approximately forty major paintings examining for the first time the remarkable still life and garden paintings produced by Streeton during his career.
From the 1920s, Streeton divided his time between his properties in Toorak and Olinda, where he lovingly nurtured and tendered his expanding gardens. His obsession with gardening led him to comment that he was often too busy planting bulbs to take up his brush to paint. Streeton was an authority on roses and a keen conservationist. The passionate gardener acknowledged and reinstated the significance of still life and garden subjects in terms of Streeton's intimate knowledge of the natural world, as well as celebrating his technical virtuosity as a painter.

This exhibition was curated by Geoffrey Smith, Curator, Australian Art, National Gallery of Victoria, and Oliver Streeton.

Arthur Boyd
Artist and wife near Arthurs Seat, 1969
oil on canvas
Private Collection Courtesy of Gould Galleries Melbourne and Sydney. Arthur Boyd's work reproduced with the permission of the Bundanon Trust

Arthur Boyd: The emerging artist focused on Arthur Boyd’s formative experiences and provided the first comprehensive documentation of Boyd’s residences on the Peninsula, his associations and friendships, and the motifs, observations and experiences which were to become important points of reference throughout his long and distinguished career.

Centred around several distinct themes, the exhibition covered the idyllic time spent by the young artist at his grandfather’s Rosebud cottage and the weekends spent at the makeshift artists’ camp at Gunnamatta prior to the war. Other themes looked at the dramatic forms he adopted in response to the Second World War, the collaborations and friendships he maintained on the Mornington Peninsula and the artist’s nostalgic visions of the region in his later years.

Fred Williams
Lightning Storm, Waratah Bay 1971
oil on canvas
Fred Williams Estate reproduced with copyright permission. Photograph by John Brash

The Australian coastline was the site of many of Williams’ major innovations as an artist. Fred Williams: Coastal strip focused on some of the most intriguing of these innovations – including the development of a strip format for his work and the incorporation of multiple viewpoints within the one picture. Developed throughout the 1960s and 1970s, this strip style provided a unique and enduring perspective on the Australian landscape.

Fred Williams: Coastal strip included thirty-six paintings – the earliest 1959 and latest 1979 – demonstrating Williams’ development as an artist over a twenty-year period. The exhibition traced his movements around the Victorian coastline reaching from Lorne on the West Coast, to the Mornington Peninsula and beyond to Wilsons Promontory and Bass Strait.

Penleigh Boyd was renowned for his lyrical and poetic interpretations of the Australian landscape. The son of Arthur Merric and Emma Minnie Boyd, Penleigh’s considerable artistic achievements during his short life forged his reputation as successor to the Australian landscape painters of the 1880s and 1890s. His wattles, gum trees, panoramic landscapes and seascapes display his fascination with light and colour and can be linked to famous sites on the Mornington Peninsula where he lived and holidayed with his family as a child. This exhibition comprised paintings, watercolours and drawings from major public and private collections throughout Australia.

This was the first major survey exhibition of art to be mounted in relation to the cultural and artistic history of the Mornington Peninsula. Many of Australia's leading artists have either visited or lived on the Mornington Peninsula, producing memorable works of the scenery, the people and the way of life that is characteristic of the area.

The exhibition covered the period from early European settlement in the 1850s through to the development of the Mornington Peninsula as a popular tourist destination in the mid to late 20th century. Salon paintings of Eugène von Guérard, Nicholas Chevalier and Louis Buvelot, and en plein air paintings of the 1890s formed a major part of the exhibition. Arthur Boyd, Arthur Streeton, Rupert Bunny, Georgiana McCrae, Fred Williams and Albert Tucker through to contemporary artists, Rick Amor and Kim Westcott were represented.

Beach culture and historical and geographical features were explored through the themes of the exhibition: Around the Bays, Communities and Sojourns, Artists' Camps and The Popular Image.