OPENING // Wonderful Wonderful: Scenes from the Collection

Join BRAG for the Opening Night of new exhibitions: Wonderful Wonderful: Scenes from the Collection + Foyer Exhibition Artefact of the Anthropocene, by Shani Nottingham.

Friday 20 September, 6-8pm

FREE, all welcome, RSVP Essential

Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) dives deep into the permanent collection to present new exhibition, Wonderful Wonderful: Scenes from the Collection.

Exuberant, humorous, and deadly serious, the exhibition moves across time, place, histories and artistic genre to offer fresh ways of experiencing an extravaganza of artistic riches – the BRAG Collection.

Roaming cultural, social and political history, the exhibition comprises a suite of monumental ‘collage’ scenes, where disparate artworks are juxtaposed to form conversational tableaux. What might seem random and unrelated, becomes coherent, incisive and intriguing. Variously, each scene offers whispers to your thoughts, a laugh in your belly, and the occasional slap in the face.

Presenting nearly 200 artworks collected over the last seventy years, Wonderful Wonderful: Scenes from the Collection features a rollcall of celebrated Australian artists, including Harold Cazneaux, John Coburn, Peter Cooley, Grace Cossington Smith, Reg Campbell, Karla Dickens, Leonard French, Marea Gazzard, Frank Hinder, Margel Hinder, Locust Jones, Graham Lupp, Francis Lymburner, Roy de Maistre, Mandy Martin, Lloyd Rees, Joan Ross, Eugenie Solonov and Roland Wakelin.

Presenting nearly 200 artworks collected over the last seventy years, Wonderful Wonderful: Scenes from the Collection features a rollcall of celebrated Australian artists, including Harold Cazneaux, John Coburn, Peter Cooley, Grace Cossington Smith, Reg Campbell, Karla Dickens, Honor Freeman, Leonard French, Marea Gazzard, Frank Hinder, Margel Hinder, Locust Jones, Graham Lupp, Francis Lymburner, Roy de Maistre, Mandy Martin, Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Lloyd Rees, Joan Ross, Eugenie Solonov, Roland Wakelin, and Judy Watson.

Opinionated, iconoclastic, sometimes slightly bonkers, the exhibition works the Collection in magical ways to illuminate the past, to assess the present, and to get ready for what the future might well bring. A multisensory experience, the exhibition is animated with music and a series of public programs, talks, and workshops.

Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) presents Foyer Exhibition Artefact of the Anthropocene by Shani Nottingham.

The bread tag, a common and mundane object (small, easily identifiable and observed) can present us with many insights and commentary on modern life - convenient, inexpensive, and routinely discarded. Yet their very existence neatly captures the narrative of single use disposable plastic which has shifted from being a wonder material created from post-petroleum waste products to something omnipresent, hyper abundant and deeply problematic.

Archaeology (defined simply as the study of human behaviours through the material culture humans create, use and discard) and specifically plastic archaeology, is assured as a field of study, because no society has ever discarded so much waste at such a rate and volume. Accordingly, the archaeology of plastic is also many things simultaneously - investigating an environmental crisis, development of material culture and the beginning of future archaeological deposits.

Artefact of the Anthropocene plays with the idea that one day disposable plastic bread tags would become “extinct’ as more sustainable solutions are found to replace them. This idea that they would become relics, artefacts and collectables sparked my interest to collect them and compile records about them. Their invasive nature, where they are found globally, their different shapes, attributes and characteristics.

This collection represents bread tags from a period of around 8 years, saved and sent to me by people from across the globe. There are specimens from 21 countries of varying ages and histories, dating back to the 1970’s through to recent cardboard specimens displayed as Wunderkammers or cabinets of curiosities. As an inherent bowerbird, I connected to this Sixteenth Century trend of gathering new, absurd and interesting objects and presenting them for personal pleasure but also for others to admire, telling stories about the world and its history. There is a satisfaction that comes with compiling a collection and organising it, with individual pieces becoming part of a larger collective that then forms a new narrative and context in a personal and historical sphere.

Artefact of the Anthropocene explores the intersection between modern archaeology, activism, environmental awareness, culture, art and creation in one thematic collection of the humble bread tag. Aiming to connect with audiences through nostalgia whilst highlighting the absurdity of designing demand for and then manufacturing single use items that last forever.