THIS March, Gippsland Art Gallery is presenting Sunlight & Shadow to honour that most poetic of seasons, autumn.
Sunlight & Shadow is a panoramic exhibition of almost 60 works, presented in two parts, that is unashamedly sentimental in tone. Individual works delve deep into the inherent beauty and melancholia of autumn, through the work of artists active from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Taking its name from an exhibition curated by the late Warwick Reeder in 2006 on the work of Pictorialist photographer John Bertram Eaton (1881–1966), part one of Sunlight & Shadow features thirty original works by Eaton (twenty-eight on loan from the National Gallery of Victoria) to pay tribute to the important work that Warwick undertook to keep Eaton’s legacy alive, and to bring Eaton’s work to the attention of a new generation of art lovers.
Eaton’s photographs are seen alongside a sprawling selection of works, both national and international, from the private collection of John Wilkinson. The prints and paintings that comprise part two of Sunlight & Shadow are united by their mutual harmonious depiction of nature as a source of beauty and spiritual nourishment. Many of the artists featured – such as William Blamire Young, Thomas Balfour Garrett and John Hall Thorpe – were at the forefront of artistic practice in their lifetimes, but in the intervening century have become less well-known.
Sunlight & Shadow also represents a fascinating tour through a pantheon of artists today largely overlooked or largely unknown in Australia. The exhibition knows no geographic borders and makes no distinctions based on style, but seeks instead to encourage conversations between artworks and art viewers that draw out common themes, be they in mood, temperament, subject or spirit.
As part of this exhibition, the Gallery will host a talk by art collector John Wilkinson, on Saturday, April 1 at 10.30am. Wilkinson’s collection of artworks spans over a century of artmaking and features works by artists working predominantly in Australia and Europe, with a focus on painting and printmaking.
Meticulously catalogued and maintained, key works from his collection have featured in public gallery exhibitions in Victoria and interstate, and now come to Gippsland Art Gallery as part of Sunlight & Shadow.
In this talk, we will hear from Wilkinson about the exhibited works from his collection, as well as what compels him to collect art, what he looks for in an artwork, and how he manages his collection.
Gippsland Art Gallery is located at the Port of Sale, and is open weekdays from 9am to 5.30pm, and weekends and public holidays from 10am to 4pm.
For more information on the Gallery and its current exhibitions, visit www.gippslandartgallery.com
John Bertram Eaton – ‘Sombre Hills’,
c.1938
