Noosa Regional Gallery: Where Curiosity Reigns
Noosa Regional Gallery Director Michael Brennan invites you into a world of works that delight and excite the senses and stimulate the curious mind.
I’m always kind of surprised when people tell me they don’t like art or don’t get it – or even, on occasion, question its value (and I’m not talking monetary value here). But then I remind myself that, like all of us, I live in a bubble.
I don’t think people choose to not like — or not understand — art. Instead, a big part of it is because we’re so quickly told at school that art is a luxury or an add-on, getting pushed aside to make room for ‘proper’ subjects. The other thing is, most children possess an innate curiosity.
New and different things bring about excitement and wonder rather than frustration or confusion (and, fair enough – if you always find art frustrating and confusing, you’re not going to like it, are you?).
But sometimes you’ve just got to let yourself be inquisitive or even playful. Put practicalities aside for a short while and let your senses, rather than reason, take the lead. You can do this any time you enter an art gallery – in fact, it’s encouraged – but every so often an exhibition is presented where you have no choice, and the experience of kids is put before that of gallery-going adults.
Imaginate, is a sensory wonderland of colour, texture and form, with opportunities to make as well as see.
Pip and Pop have installed their immersive and colour-saturated installations in some of the world’s most exciting art galleries, and for three weeks this winter (just in time for school holidays) their fantastical work is coming to Noosa Regional Gallery.
Their psychedelic dreamscapes create fictional spaces where imaginations can run wild. And while not all of their work invites tinkering, there are specific zones where visitors are encouraged to make and display their own Pip and Pop-inspired offbeat objects.
This celebration of curiosity extends into the subsequent exhibition at Noosa Regional Gallery – even if in a little more restrained way. Curious Novice is all about clay – arguably one of the most tactile and malleable mediums of art.
This exhibition assembles a selection of Sunshine Coast potters, together with a couple from further afield, to look at what they spend their time making through a lens of infinite possibility as opposed to simply functional form.
Material transformation and the excitement of the reveal and the unknown is what is highlighted in this show, and much like Pip and Pop’s immersive installation, visitors are asked to shake free the shackles of purpose and indulge curiosity as an end to its own.
Imaginate
15 June to 7 July
Pip and Pop (aka Tanya Schultz) Curated by Brooke Bowtell
Curious Novice
13 July to 8 September
Laura Cope, Angus McDiarmid, Dennis Foreshaw, Claudi de Salvo, Pimparat Tantisukarom and Anwen Thomas. Curated by Nicole Maggs
