Carolyn Killen has brought a collection from some of Australia’s best regional artists to Cootamundra with the exhibition Ivy Hill Gallery Goes West. Photo: Jan Pittard.
The Ivy Hill Gallery was once a popular destination on the Far South Coast of NSW and now, its former proprietor Carolyn Killen has brought a collection from some of Australia’s best regional artists to Cootamundra.
While the gallery closed in 2020, its legacy lives on through this wonderfully exuberant and diverse exhibition: ‘Ivy Hill Gallery Goes West’ at The Arts Centre Cootamundra (TACC).
In a magnificent feat of packing, 80-year old Carolyn has transported a collection of 18 works, both 3D and on canvas, by South Coast artists to the Riverina.
She and TACC’s former chair, Simon Bragg, saw the Cootamundra facility as a perfect setting for this cross-regional enterprise.
A reclaimed industrial building whose refurbishment has been achieved over a period of 20 years by the efforts of local arts practitioners and patrons and with the aid of state and council grants, TACC is an enviable community arts facility.
It comprises studio and meeting spaces and the Tin Shed Theatre which seats 122 and hosts both live performance and cinema screenings.
Ivy Hill Gallery Goes West features Anneke Paijmans’ delicate porcelain cows. Photo: Jan Pittard.
The Ivy Hill works are displayed in a large central open space just behind the lobby/reception area. It is roomy and well-lit and shows off the works to great effect.
The exhibition poster showcases one of Karen Sedaitis’s joyful acrylic floral paintings. There are four in the show and they are among the standout works.
Botanic motifs also feature in the paintings of Tanja Reese and Veronica O’Leary. Reise’s watercolours impart an ethereal, sometimes apocalyptic mood to plant forms, rainforests and waterways.
O’Leary’s bold acrylic still lifes evoke a comfortable bourgeois existence with nods to cubism and Margaret Preston.
Karen Sedaitis’s acrylic floral painting is featured on the sign outside The Arts Centre Cootamundra (TACC). Photo: Jan Pittard.
Kerry McInnis and Philip Cox have both contributed bold landscapes – it was unsurprising given her palette to learn that some of McInnis’s watercolours share their locations with those depicted in Fred Williams’ work.
More abstract in style are the oils and acrylics of Helen Gauchat and the ink drawings of Ivana Gattegno. Gauchat displays a spareness and luminescence that is reminiscent of the Heidelberg painters while Gattegno brings an expressionistic writhing quality to her depiction of intertidal land and tree forms.
Several figurative and landscape works by Penny Lovelock are included; the former have a whimsical, illustrative quality and include beautifully rendered rural animals, both domestic and native.
Livestock are celebrated in the cattle portraiture of Megan Crane and the delicate porcelain figurines of Anneke Paijmans. The other sculptors and ceramicists included in the exhibition have a diverse range of styles from Jen Mallinson’s sleek stainless steel forms to the fusion of industrial and organic motifs in Mike MacGregor’s pieces to the naive chunkiness of Jackie Lallemand’s charming dog and chook sculptures.
Carolyn Killen and Simon Bragg are to be congratulated on this beautifully presented and impressive exhibition.
Regional communities and creatives benefit greatly from such cross-fertilisation. Plaudits to TACC too, whose volunteers and staff have created a thriving centre of practice and a truly welcoming environment.
The exhibition is rewarding in its own right as is acquaintance with this remarkable Cootamundra venue.
It is certainly worth a day trip from the surrounding districts. ‘Ivy Hill Gallery Goes West’ is open from 10:30 am to 5:30 pm every day.
It closes 7 October. All works are for sale.
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