The Green Ray
Published on 15 February 2023
Goulburn Regional Art Gallery opened its newest exhibitions across three of its spaces at 6pm Friday, 3 February.
Opened in the main exhibition space and running until 18 March 2023, is a solo exhibition by Sydney-based artist Julian Meagher titled The Green Ray. The exhibition The Green Ray is a return to Julian Meagher's earliest subject matter of land and sky. Meagher’s exhibition features a new body of work including large scale paintings and a light installation which creates an immersive and changing viewing experience. Continuing his fascination with atmospheric optical phenomena, the exhibition references a light effect sometimes visible on an unobstructed distant horizon at sunset and sunrise, the 'green ray’. This occurrence is fleeting and so uncommon that it retains a mythic status.
In this new body of work, Meagher draws on memories of treasured family holidays in Crookwell, NSW, the site of the artist’s formative connection to the environment. The depictions of the natural world are laden with personal histories and nostalgia. Meagher explores the unrelenting and cyclical passage of time, shown in the changing quality of light throughout the day or capturing a precious passing moment of a child sleeping. The Green Ray plays with hyper-romantic links between nature and feeling, real and unreal. What seems ephemeral can instead be something enduring, revealed to us in glimpses.
As part of the Gallery’s mission to bring art of the highest quality to the region, The Green Ray presents Julian Meagher’s newest works, which speak to his ability as one of Australia’s foremost contemporary painters. The exhibition signifies a development in Meagher’s practice in bringing together an evolving light installation component in conversation with large scale immersive paintings. The exhibition shows the Gallery’s expertise and commitment to working with contemporary artists to develop new and innovative art experiences for the region.
Meagher is a prolific and widely celebrated artist who has exhibited extensively across Australia, Asia and America; including Art Basel Hong Kong 2019, Melbourne International Art Fair 2010, 2012 and 2014, Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair 2010, Scope Miami 2011, 2012 and Sydney Contemporary Art Fair 2013, 2015 and 2017. He is represented by Yavuz Gallery - Sydney and Singapore; Edwina Corlette Gallery - Brisbane. He was a co-director of Chalk Horse Gallery from 2009-2016. Meagher has been a finalist in the Archibald Portrait Prize 2014, 2015 and 2018, the Wynne Prize 2015 and the Gold Award at Rockhampton Regional Gallery 2016. Meagher has also been a finalist multiple times in the Doug Moran Portrait prize, Salon Des Refuses, Metro Art prize, Blake Prize for Religious Art and the RBS Emerging Artist Prize. In 2009 and 2012 Meagher was a recipient of the New Work Grant from the Australia Council of the Arts.Meagher’s work is included in numerous public collections including The Australian War Memorial, Canberra; Bega Valley Regional Gallery; Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery; Saint Paul’s College, Sydney University; Saint John’s College, Sydney University; The Australian Catholic University and Artbank Australia.
The exhibition was opened by celebrated curator, Sebastian Goldspink. Goldspink is a Sydney-based independent curator. In 2011, Goldspink created the artist run space, ALASKA projects as a platform for exhibiting contemporary art in unused or disused spaces. Since its inception, ALASKA has showcased over 500 artists across 150 exhibitions. A proud descendant of the Burramattagal people of Western Sydney, Goldspink has curated exhibitions nationally throughout Australia and internationally in London, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Christchurch.
Goldspink has held professional appointments at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Month Sydney, National Art School and Dlux Media Arts. A former Lecturer at the University of New South Wales (CoFA), Goldspink is currently engaged as Director of the Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf. He was recently appointed as the curator of the much-lauded 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Exhibiting new work in Gallery 2 is Canberra-based artist Jacqueline Bradley. Bradley works across sculpture, photography, installation and performance, with a particular interest in the concept of human interaction with the natural world and outdoor environments. Presenting an exhibition in Gallery 2 titled all of a sudden, Bradley presents a series of works exploring the life cycle of a peach tree. This contemplative installation presents an assemblage of disparate objects that are inextricably linked to materials, forms, colours and associations experienced in the growth and decay of the fruit.
As part of the Gallery’s commitment to supporting and developing new and local practices of artists living and working in an 120km radius of Goulburn, Bradley’s work is a poetic and meaningful statement on our human desires and needs, and encourages deep consideration of our relationship to the material world around us. The exhibition all of a sudden opened on Friday 3 February and draws to a close on Saturday 18 March 2023.
The third exhibition space to open on 3 February is The Window – a space entirely dedicated to showcasing work from the Gallery’s permanent collection. Having been curated previously by local artists, visiting arts professionals, Gallery staff and members of Goulburn’s community, this iteration has been curated by Southern-Highlands based painter Clara Adolphs whose work is concerned with concepts ranging from memory, nostalgia and time. Adolphs’ selection was unveiled to the public from the opening event at 6pm Friday, 3 February, and the exhibition will remain open until Saturday 18 March.
Image credit: Installation view Julian Meagher The Green Ray featuring Julian Meagher, The Green Ray – 8, 9, 10 (triptych), 2022. Photograph: Silversalt Photography. Courtesy the artist and Yavuz Gallery.
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Goulburn Regional Art Gallery
Goulburn Regional Art Gallery is located an easy two-hour drive from Sydney, and an hour from Canberra, open six days a week, Mon-Fri 9am – 5pm, Sat 12pm – 4pm. Established in 1982, as a cultural facility of the Goulburn Mulwaree Council, the Gallery presents a rolling program of exhibitions showcasing contemporary art from living Australian and international artists, across three exhibition spaces; alongside special events, and a year-round education and outreach program focused on the local community. In November 2020, the Gallery’s Permanent Collection was deemed of National Significance. The collection comprises 488 contemporary artworks, including pieces by Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello, Ben Quilty, Jasper Knight and Del Kathryn Barton. Goulburn Regional Art Gallery also commissions new works for the city’s public art program, comprising 38 sculptures and installations that can be experienced via a curated Public Art walk. Admission to the Gallery and all exhibitions is free.