OPENING NIGHT: DANCER | Some Like it Hot

Join us for the OPENING NIGHT of DANCER | Some Like it Hot

OPENING NIGHT: 6pm- 8pm, 23 February 2024

VENUE: Geraldton Regional Art Gallery

Beau Dean Riley Smith, Wiradjuri and Gamilaraay nations, Bennelong, 2017 from the series 'Space in between', Jacob Nash, Day River, inket print on paper © Jacob Nash

A National Portrait Gallery touring exhibition.

ABOUT

From letting loose in the loungeroom to enthralling audiences on stage, this National Portrait Gallery exhibition celebrates dance and dancers. Capturing the beauty of movement, self-expression and connection, the works on display in DANCER were collaboratively curated and choreographed by the National Portrait Gallery together with a group of local dancers. DANCER comprises 50 exhibition prints and two audiovisual works. Some of the themes addressed in the exhibition include the accessibility of dance to all, the authentic joy to be experienced through dance, and how art, life, body, and nature all connect in dance. The images on display also show dance connecting humanity across time through cultural knowledge, teaching and legacies.

The exhibition offers space for imagination, empathy, and curiosity about different ways of understanding the world and the confidence and wellbeing that flows from this. Portraits from the Gallery’s collection include dance legends Gideon Obarzanek, Kristian Fredrikson, Irina Baronova, Graeme Murphy, Janet Vernon, Robert Helpmann, Marilyn Rowe, Hélène Kirsova, Anna Pavlova, and Kenneth Rowell. These are interpreted and contextualised through stunning, relatable images of people dancing by some of Australia’s leading photographers. In the text accompanying the works, dancers from all over Australia share their personal experiences, giving an insider perspective on lives lived through dance.

An Artback NT touring exhibition

ABOUT

𝗦𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗟𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗛𝗼𝘁, is an exhibition that intersects sweat, sex, desire and discord in Darwin, Australia’s hottest and most remote capital city.

The exhibition showcases works by much lauded Territory based artists Therese Ritchie and Franck Gohier, well known for their satirical work that combines wit and humour with astute social observation. Here curator Wendy Garden reflects on their practice through the lens of gender representation in the context of settler imaginings of the tropics.

Both Gohier and Ritchie have spent much of their impressive careers in Darwin, putting human behaviour under a philosophical microscope. Ritchie brings her background in journalism, her political awareness and her sharp eye for design to her insightful take on the world we live in. Gohier born in France arrived in Australia as a child and moved to Darwin with his family in the aftermath of Cyclone Tracy. Sifting through the domestic debris of that devastation began a fascination with collage and the expressive possibility of utilising seemingly random combinations to highlight an inherent absurdity. Both artists unsettle us and encourage us to engage more critically with perceptions of the everyday.

Reflecting its Top End genesis, this exhibition about heat, place and gendered behaviour is challenging, amusing, irreverent and impressive. but most of all, Some Like it Hot is very cool.