HARBINGERS Care or Catastrophe FINAL 27 01 2022

HARBINGERS:
care or catastrophe
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HARBINGERS:
care or catastrophe
Chris De Rosa (Port Elliot)
Lara Tilbrook (Kangaroo Island)
Ellen Trevorrow (Meningie/Coorong)
Clancy Warner (Sellicks Beach)
Laura Wills (Adelaide)
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HARBINGERS:
Acknowledgement of Country
care or catastrophe
We recognise and respect that we live and create on Aboriginal lands
and pay our respects to Elders past and present. We embrace the
principles of ‘First Nations First’ and recognise that sovereignty was
never ceded. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.
We acknowledge that the artworks were created on both Kaurna and
Ngarrindjeri lands, and first presented on Ngarrindjeri Ruwe.
is the outcome of the inaugural SPUR: Regional Curatorial Mentorship —
both initiatives have been developed by Country Arts SA in collaboration
with Murray Bridge Regional Gallery.
CURATORS + PROJECT MENTORS
Lauren Mustillo, Visual Arts Manager, Country Arts SA
Fulvia Mantelli, Director, Murray Bridge Regional Gallery, SA
CURATORIAL MENTEE
Wes Maselli, artist, emerging curator and writer, based in Hayborough, SA
PROJECT MANAGEMENT MENTEE
Michelle Dohnt, Arts Officer, Murray Bridge Regional Gallery, based in Murray Bridge, SA
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HARBINGERS: Care or Catastrophe is the inaugural exhibition
outcome of the Country Arts SA SPUR: Regional Curatorial
Mentorship initiative. The exhibition brings together five diverse
contemporary artists with strong connections to regional
South Australia, whose practices draw attention to our inherent
interconnectedness with the natural world and the complexities of
humankind’s influences on our environments.
SPUR grew from a vision that local people should be at the heart of
their communities creating dynamic arts outcomes in regional South
Australia. Building skills locally across a range of creative sector roles
empowers individuals to realise their artistic visions, and significantly
contributes to our regional centres being exciting and thriving places
to live and visit.
The inaugural SPUR has provided two regional practitioners with
an opportunity to grow their curatorial and project management
skills, while working towards an ambitious exhibition at one of our
State’s premier regional art galleries. Recent years have seen a rise
in curatorial mentorship programs, which has contributed greatly to
the ecology of the sector. The Country Arts SA SPUR initiative raises
the bar further by commissioning all new works by five artists, while
supporting two mentees to participate in the development of an
exhibition through the process of direct curatorial engagement. Being
privy to this creative process is a unique and exciting prospect for
any arts professional, and especially rare for those in the emerging
and early stages of their careers.
The SPUR program also fosters strong relationships between artists,
forging a network that reaches further than Adelaide and beyond
any one region. We hosted two artist lunches, one at Murray Bridge
Regional Gallery, the other on the foreshore at Port Elliot near artist
Chris De Rosa’s studio. These opportunities for communal sharing
throughout the creative development have highlighted synergies
between practices that resonate beyond this exhibition.
Our heartfelt thanks go to the artists for welcoming us into their
homes and studios, and generously sharing their stories and
insights with us. Thank you for the new works that you created
for HARBINGERS. They demonstrate steadfast grit, passion and
conviction in highlighting the beauty and intelligence of our natural
world, and actively advocate that we thrust environmental urgency to
the forefront of our consciousness.
It has been a true pleasure to work with our mentees Wes and
Michelle. Genuine learning is always a two-way street and we thank
them for their great contributions and commitment to the project and
for enriching our own practices.
As arts organisations we are ideally situated to prompt and support a
transformation in how the arts are engaged with in the regions. SPUR
is designed to inspire a different way of making and collaborating into
the future.
We acknowledge the strong and rich relationship between our
two organisations. At its core this great partnership has a shared
vision to promote and nurture regional South Australian visual art
practices, as well as bring nationally recognised, conceptually and
culturally diverse arts experiences to regional communities. As arts
organisations we are well placed to transform the way the arts are
engaged with in regional South Australia. SPUR is one such model
that is designed to inspire a different way of making and collaborating
into the future.
Lauren Mustillo, Visual Arts Manager, Country Arts SA
Fulvia Mantelli, Director, Murray Bridge Regional Gallery +
Team Leader Arts Development, Rural City of Murray Bridge
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Right: Ellen Trevorrow, Interconnected Stories (detail), 2021
Overleaf: Laura Wills, A flower’s dream in a bed of flowers (detail), 2021
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Heed the harbingers
A harbinger is something that foreshadows a future event or gives a
sign of what is to come; or a person that initiates change. While climate
change is telling us loud and clear that our anthropocentric behaviour
is causing global disaster, the natural world is giving us ample clues
for how to avert complete catastrophe.
HARBINGERS: Care or Catastrophe asks us what could our future
look like if we ‘hasten slowly’ and prioritise the environment, cultural
practices and social wellbeing over profit; and what does it look like
if we don’t? The exhibition title presents an ultimatum: care for our
planet or face environmental collapse. This proposition, drawn from
the artists’ practices and their new works, presents both a sense of
urgency and the potential of hope.
Driven by resilience, integrity, community-led action and confidence
that it’s not too late, these artists are passionate advocates for change.
They call for a collective movement grounded in deep listening and
care, to counteract the chaos of disconnection and move toward
generating a sustainable future for us all.
These newly commissioned works address issues about systematic
(mis)management of natural resources, endemic loss of biodiversity,
rising sea levels, migration policies, catastrophic fire events and
ongoing colonialism. They also signal hope in the possibilities of more
viable and balanced ways of being and belonging.
Exploring a range of social and cultural concerns around the human
disruption of natural ecosystems, the exhibition comments on the
vulnerability of both Nature and human civilisation, in the face of
prevailing ideological and political trends that steer us further away
from a sustainable future.
Respected Ngarrindjeri Elder, Aunty Ellen Trevorrow, is renowned for
her leadership in keeping alive the practice of Ngarrindjeri weaving, a
tradition centred around cultural knowledge sharing and storytelling.
Living on Country, she has for many years drawn attention to the
plight of our natural waterways, as she witnesses the depletion of
the very rushes around her beloved Coorong that had sustained this
vital cultural practice for centuries. Trevorrow’s work, Interconnected
stories is an assemblage of weavings made by children who attended
workshops at Camp Coorong: the woven outline of her own hands
gesture her bringing them together. Trevorrow’s practice is one of
generosity, care and hope. Her well-known mantra, “Stitch by stitch,
circle by circle, everything is connected”, reminds us that our every
action – or inaction – has a fundamental resonance beyond our own
backyard: and that to care for Country (and therefore each other), we
must necessarily pay attention to its songs and its cries.
Laura Wills’ practice, across public art, studio work and community
projects, interprets scientific research to highlight the sentient nature
of plant and animal life. Her findings include trees communicating
underground via the ‘wood wide web’, a complex network of fungi that
supports plants to share and distribute resources with each other; and
mycelium’s remarkable ability to rehabilitate damaged environments.
Wills proposes that if we take the time to better understand the
natural world — and realise that we are an integral part of it — we will
find the necessary empathy to adequately care for it and, in turn, our
own future. The colours that saturate her work in A flower’s dream in
a bed of flowers reference plant auras to represent their individual
personalities and intercommunication. The work’s playful title and
whimsical approach invites us to engage in an imaginative way by
asking an unanswerable question: do flowers dream? If they do, what
do they dream about? Wills translates evidence-based knowledge to
show us how miraculous and magical plants are, while also filling the
spaces of unknown with possibility, to create connection and empathy.
Chris De Rosa’s work Under here my dreams are made of
water places us in a scene from a dystopian future. Her floor-toceiling
installation is an arrangement of large papier-mâché forms
backgrounded by body-sized giclee print collaged etchings, all of
which reference real sea life: giant barrel sponge, sea tulip, Neptune’s
pearls. These imagined mega-fauna and flora with their vivid colours,
are impressive and alluring, yet unsettling. The underwater sublime:
beauty and terror. De Rosa calls this duality ‘turbulent nature’ — a
phrase she coined inspired by the unpredictably of the ocean’s edge
— a perpetual liminal zone. This uneasy feeling is influenced too by
early science fiction writing, in particular J. G. Ballard’s 1962 novel
The Drowned World. Set in a post-apocalyptic future where increasing
atmospheric temperatures have caused sea levels to rise, Earth is
flooded and the majority of the planet uninhabitable for land-dwelling
creatures (humans included). For readers in the 1960s this drowned
world, set in 2145, could have comfortably felt safe in the realm of
fiction. Today the prospect is a very real threat.
Clancy Warner’s new work The Drifters addresses problematic
migration policies and climate change denial. It implores us to listen
to the planet and, in particular, the vulnerable communities most
directly affected by perilously rising temperatures. The work is also
informed by Warner’s background in Polynesian tattooing, a craft for
which she was granted permission by islander people who today are
facing an immediate threat to their livelihoods due to rapidly rising
sea levels. The bow and stern gesture to the spiritual significance
of birds as the connection between land and sea, while the life-size
figures stand like totems, strong and resilient, proud of culture, yet
shin-deep in a sinking canoe. The work’s gravitas is heightened by its
command of this intimate gallery space that it solely occupies. Here
we are pulled in close to feel more deeply an affinity with humanity
and be implicated in this ethical dilemma. The issue is no longer
conveniently at arm’s-length, ‘out of sight out of mind’. As their lands
are drowning, the figures search in hope for refuge and a new home.
This is a work about both displacement and survival.
Lara Tilbrook’s practice is fundamentally grounded in
environmentalism, with deep listening, truth telling and changemaking
at its core, based on her personal experiences of over a decade
of conservation work. Tilbrook lives on Karta/Kangaroo Island, her
home is a large parcel of heritage-listed bushland that was decimated
by an ill-informed hazard fuel reduction burn, at the beginning of the
catastrophic 2019/2020 bushfires. A sign is a work with formidable
presence that responds directly to environmental mismanagement,
while raising awareness and providing a call to action. Xanthorrhoea
seed pods collected from Kangaroo Island are meticulously and
laboriously sewn onto an Onkaparinga woollen mill blanket, spelling
the words that are emblazoned on many regional road signs, yet
so often overlooked: ‘slow down’. The blanket is fashioned into a
giant road sign mounted on posts made from plantation timber;
these constructed forests suck groundwater away from other native
vegetation, making Country more volatile. Positioned in front is
Mother and child, a pair of stools with cushions made from echidna
pelts: roadkill found by Tilbrook and her daughter, their spiky spines
tell us that it’s uncomfortable to sit down on them and with them. Both
these works highlight bureaucratic hypocrisy that causes collateral
damage that is equally destructive as wildfire. Tourism strategies that
commodify the environment often mismanage the flocks of visitors
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to the island, who seek serenity and immersion in breathtaking
natural beauty. Ironically, often there is a lack of connection and
care for their host environment, which comes at a cost: excessive
roadkill, disturbed habitats, vegetation clearing and intrusive property
development. A sign and Mother and child implore us to consider
how we tread upon the land and ask ourselves: how are we complicit
and do we take time to consider our own impact? What could be
gained if we went more slowly?
It is not surprising that artists living in or meaningfully engaged with
the regions, demonstrate a particularly strong, innate preoccupation
with ideas of connection to the environment: issues about
sustainability and our relationship to our natural landscapes and
waterways. When First Nations peoples tell us that “Country speaks”,
they mean it literally. It was no coincidence that the environment’s
atmosphere breathed a deep, palpable sigh of relief, when the skies
cleared in the wake of global pandemic lockdowns.
HARBINGERS: Care or Catastrophe highlights a fundamental truth
that in order for us to effectively care for each other and the planet we
inhabit, there is an urgent need to listen deeply to the clear warnings
that the natural world is amplifying. It implores us that now, more than
ever, it is time to heed the harbingers.
These artists are change-makers, whose practices are underpinned
by activism and advocacy that calls for a radical shift in dominant
ideologies. They show us how we can feel about and respond to
scientific research, including the science of traditional knowledge.
They speak of truth in storytelling and finding hope in our ability to
choose to care and act – for the sake of future generations and more
immediately our own lifetime.
Curators, HARBINGERS: Care or Catastrophe
Fulvia Mantelli, Director, Murray Bridge Regional Gallery
Lauren Mustillo, Visual Arts Manager, Country Arts SA
Overleaf: Lara Tilbrook, A sign (in progress, detail), 2021

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Feeling the ‘and’
Can we start here and play it by ear? That is, if we want to talk about
connectedness. Better than light, sound can travel through the earth,
through water and through the air. It can also travel in the body of a
human, who themselves can travel and tell a story somewhere else.
The concept of deep listening in the context of this visual art exhibition
is relevant, because rather than simply presenting facts and objects,
the artists are telling stories.
Harbingers, or heralds, at once bring a message and instantiate
the idea of connectedness itself. Connectedness is betweenness,
betweenness is context, and the original context here is the natural
environment. The riddle of a tree falling in the woods with no one to
hear it, comes to question existence itself if there is no connection
between a source and a receiver. So connectedness is an essential
characteristic of being. Our relationship to the environment, to climate
and Country, is what concerns this exhibition.
Today’s world is a conundrum of connectivity and dislocation. Ways
of connecting are constantly being updated. Sound bytes – removed
from context – pass for news and information; newness passes for
connectedness and meaning. Not new, Country is taken for granted.
Typically our weekends are our ‘time off’, when we reconnect with the
environment and with community. Yet ironically, the newness needed
to sustain any connection to Country at all, the renewable technologies
that rethink source as resource, have been seen by those at the top to
pose a threat to this lifestyle. The good news from the Prime Minister –
who after much prevarication is now prepared to entertain the notion of
renewable energies – is that we can have our weekend back.
Chris De Rosa got her weekend back twenty years ago when she
moved to the south coast. Perhaps the ocean is to land like the
weekend is to the week. Chris gets in the ocean just about every day.
Newness and mystery are appropriate adjectives for both the ocean
and outer space as humans experience them. However, Chris calls
out the new phenomenon of ‘billionaire-penis-space-rocketry’ (to
paraphrase the artist) as a type of literal alienation. The artist’s own
adventures are instead about connection, centrifugal journeys into the
centre of things. Chris’ Under here my dreams are made of water, an
installation of pop-coloured papier-mâché sculptures is exotic, playful
and interestingly redolent of cell biology. Reflecting on her long-time
underwater muse, her prints are based on the sea sponges she saw at
the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Naples on a past visit with and
to her family.
Clancy Warner’s work The Drifters is the sound of one hand clapping,
or an ocean lapping, and outlines the idea of complicity within
connectivity. The Polynesians must think their voices aren’t being
heard by us in the West, whose consumptive habits are complicit in
the loss of their habitats. Clancy’s figures are made from reclaimed
Oregon beams, old growth timber sent from just about the exact
opposite side of the world to build houses here. It’s an ironic but
fair (post-complicit) use of the material, which brings to light the
inadequacies in the concept of a ‘carbon footprint’ that doesn’t take
into account immeasurables such as activism, or ‘talking about
climate change’. There is another tension in the artwork’s materiality,
of wood being pulled underwater. This resistance reads as hope in the
figures, or rather (and moreover), as a mirror to our own unreasonable
stubbornness. The birds that adorn the boat are ‘Iwa’, frigate birds
whose uncommon sighting close to land foretell of stormy seas. These
traditionally auspicious elements in Polynesian argonautics remind us
that survival has always hinged on respecting the foremarks of change.
Laura Wills’ A flower’s dream in a bed of flowers insists against the
potential inevitability of such climatic nightmares, instead offering hope
via beauty and imagination. Her consistently harmonious swathes
and stitches of colour suggest a synaesthetic-like expression of the
interactivity and connectivity of the senses. Which is true, our senses
do inform each other. A prenatal ultrasound is an example of this,
where sound waves interacting with a child developing in utero are
rendered as an image. Laura’s drawings into her twin sons’ early
wet-on-wet school drawings are reminiscent of the womb, a place of
mystery, potential and connectedness. Asking whether flowers dream
is a riddle that can only be answered metaphorically, and leans into
the idea of the ‘collective unconscious’ – ‘or super conscious’ – a
soul we all share, through which we can empathise with all things.
Empathy, patience, nurture, instinct and collaboration are important
skills for a parent; to be aware of how an individual’s actions impacts
on another or the whole. The role of caregiver has historically been
assumed by or given to mothers/women. It is the prevailing tenet of
eco-feminism that the role of caregiver in society is undervalued and
co-causal to the exploitation of women and the natural environment. It
is well documented that women and children are more likely to suffer
from the effects of climate change.
Aunty Ellen Trevorrow’s work is evocative: in the way that a cupped
hand over the ear evokes the sound of the ocean; or how a wind
passing through rushes, if not quite mistaken for the sound of
people talking, nevertheless passes for company. Yarning is one
of those words empowered by First Nations vernacular, which the
English language would now like to take back. Yarning is sewing,
talking, stitching, connecting. Yarning is sharing knowledge, gossip
and the grapevine. Aunty Ellen’s work is a collaboration, a montage
of unfinished woven basket bases previously made by children in
community workshops at Camp Coorong. Aunty Ellen’s hands at
the bottom — with internal steel form shaped by her son — connect
everyone. The Ngarrindjeri have of course been acutely aware of our
changing environment. The river has changed, it is sick. Reeds don’t
grow where they used to. Adelaide’s Museum of Economic Botany
tells the story of humankind’s coevolution with flora. ‘Economics’ isn’t
about money, it is about how we use resources; economic botany
illustrates the expression of (material) culture through the use of
plants. Nature sustains culture, yet it is two-way, culture must sustain
nature. Threatened nature threatens culture at its grass roots.
Using Yacca or Grass Tree (Xanthorrhoea semiplana) seed pods,
Lara Tilbrook has made a message. For an eye test, it is an easy
read. Though there is an irony in Lara’s blanket. Post-colonial
materials have the potential to be political, depending on your
ideology. Settlers not only took land to raise sheep for the wool
needed for the fabrication of the Onkaparinga woollen blankets,
they took the name too (from the Kaurna: Ngangkiparinga, meaning
‘women’s river’). In contrast to this however, is the sense of a
blanket’s security. In the wake of her devastation, making the artwork
was a source of comfort for the artist. But behind the artwork, is the
sound of an inferno: a raging and flaming catastrophe that left a trail
of dead and left the artist asking why. The echidnas, they died before:
road-killed on Karta/Kangaroo Island in the school holidays, one
family kills another. Why? It sounds like war. Artists as activists? Yes.
Yet activists too, need to slow down. Slow down or burn out.
And listen. Because we can’t bear to look, because our eyes are
full of smoke, because our eyes are full of tears. When the smoke
clears, we see that things have changed. If the mind has an eye, then
perhaps the heart has an ear, an antennae for empathy. Art can and
does change the world. Change is the only constant. HARBINGERS:
Care or Catastrophe proposes that we can affect change and we can
be the change. Not the ‘small change’ left when all the big money is
spent. Rather, it’s time to put the environment and people over profit.
It’s time to binge on hard truths, hear the harbingers and choose the
change.
Wes Maselli, Curatorial Mentee
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Overleaf: Clancy Warner, The Drifters (detail), 2021

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CHRIS DE ROSA
The privilege of diving almost daily into the ocean has invested me with a heightened
sense of the wonder of the undersea. Worryingly, it also makes me hyper-aware of
humankind’s disregard for the ocean environment: an arena we know frighteningly little
about. This work’s beginnings are in the complexity and wonder of ocean organisms
that I investigate and collect from along the shoreline. In a way, I am amplifying the ‘rich
and strange’ -ness of these organisms to bring them and their existential plight into
focus, while at the same time imagining the changes that may affect them due to climate
change. The making process is largely intuitive: one part growing from another, in a way
mimicking the accretions of an undersea organism. I am interested in the idea of the
results of environmental catastrophe leading to ‘turbulent nature’, where we allow our
emotions to overwhelm our rationality as we experience the wonder and terror of nature.
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Chris De Rosa, Under here my dreams are made of water, 2021, papier-mâché, etching, giclee
print, collage, wire, glass beads, sand, studio floor debris, pigment, polymer paint, wire, tape
pu foam, spray paint, silk cord, rope, dimensions variable, approx. 300 x 300 x 300 cm.
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LARA TILBROOK
Xanthorrhoea flowered prolifically after the fires. Flourishing inflorescences spikes
became beacons, nourishing a diversity of life with their sweet nectar. Pods formed to
encase thousands of seeds, dispersed for regeneration. Leafy skirts pleated tightly to
shield heat from blackened trunks, held by strength of long-lived growth buried deep
underground. A testament of resilience adapted for fire, a tool of survival.
Monotonously securing Yacca pods through sewing, created space to honour, observe,
connect. Fresh air away from the thick heavy smoke. Time to Slow Down, repair the
trauma by planting life force into a cleared landscape. A sign, a way to campaign, instill
hope and generate a voice.
Slow Down the wildfires and hazard reduction burning. Violent western interventions
decimating critical habitat, murdering wildlife and driving species to mass extinction.
Slow Down our government’s neglectfully derelict handling of healthy ecosystems. Cut
all the bureaucratic bullshit, inadequate legislation, corrupt policies and red tape. Quit
the green-wash and band-aid conservation.
Slow Down to appreciate, unite respect and hear the truth. Listen to ancient knowledge.
Journey slowly forward with genuine love and sustainable care.
Last November our family hosted Victor Steffensen alongside Traditional Owners
and community from Kaurna, Ngarrindjeri and Narungga Nations at our home. To
read Country and discuss preparations for cultural burning. The key to adapting to
climate change.
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Left and top right: Lara Tilbrook, A sign (in progress, details), 2021, Xanthorrhoea semiplana seed pods,
Onkaparinga woollen blanket, treated forestry pine, cotton, polyester, 293 x 210 x 18 cm.
Bottom right: Lara Tilbrook, Mother and child (in progress, detail), 2021, Kangaroo Island short-beaked
echidna pelts, wool, timber, metal tacks, 28 x 60 x 60 cm.

ELLEN TREVORROW
Interconnected Stories is a linking together of over 50 woven pieces made by school
children during the active time of Camp Coorong, in workshops with Ngarrindjeri Elder
Aunty Ellen Trevorrow, renowned cultural leader and educator. The hands at the base of
the work represent Aunty Ellen connecting all of their stories of shared learning, laughter,
sorrow and joy. The work entwines and commemorates those remarkable memories and
the mutual knowledge sharing that occurs when weaving together. Each woven piece
bears a story, and every juncture has its journey – a path intertwined with the land, culture
and people.
Ellen Trevorrow, Ngarrindjeri, Interconnected stories, 2021, with Camp Coorong workshop children
contributions and assistance from Jelina Haines, Cyperus Gymnacaulosand Cyperus Vaginatus (rushes),
synthetic yarn, galvanised wire, MDF board, hooks, total diameter: 180 cm, weaving: 144 x 110 x 6 cm.
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CLANCY WARNER
The climate changes, sea levels rise, and the People
are losing their homelands.
They are adrift yet searching, embodying both self
and spirit, present and history, ancestor and culture,
carrying with them connections that may yet be lost.
The Drifters are the People, rising and sinking,
looking for a place to land, a new Place to call home.
Clancy Warner, The Drifters, 2021, reclaimed Oregon timber, reclaimed Turpentine
jetty pylon, sand-cast bronze, 171 x 453 x 97cm.
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LAURA WILLS
Do flowers dream? Do they dream in a scent?
This resting bed of flowers clinks and tinkers
away at night. There is an interwoven mapping of
air current – the world air and wind pattern and
currents, interconnected. Migratory birds don’t need
passports. The scents mix. A rose has over 400
chemicals in its fragrance. When these fragrances
meet do they dance? The pollinator bees dance
their waggle dance. A bee orientates itself in
relation to the sun and can share the location
of nectar with the hive through vibration and
movement. The drifting air currents pick up scents
which attract pollinators, the chemicals evaporate
easily and flow through the air. The flowers dream
in fragrance — molecule narratives. They wake up,
get pollinated and stop their scent. Grand decision.
Plant signalling plant feelings. Nectar stops and
energy gets redirected into fertilising the embryo
and the seed. It is not unexpected for a drawing like
this to come out in spring, after eating flowers each
day from the garden. Feijoa flowers melting.
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Left: Laura Wills, A flower’s dream in a bed of flowers, 2021, pastel and pencil into artist’s twin
sons’ school paintings, assemblage of 36 pages, total 178 x 252 cm.
Right: Laura Wills, Information that moves (detail), 2021, pastel and pencil into artist’s twin sons’
year one maths book pages, assemblage of 12 pages, total 151 x 177 cm.
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HARBINGERS: Care or Catastrophe is commissioned by Country Arts SA in collaboration with Murray Bridge Regional Gallery
as part of the inaugural SPUR skills development and commissioning initiative.
Country Arts SA’s vision is for artists and communities of regional South Australia to thrive through engagement with the arts,
and be recognised as valued contributors to the nation’s cultural voice. We nurture, celebrate and showcase creativity from
across the state and are committed to providing valuable professional opportunities within the arts for people living in regional
South Australia. Building skills locally enables communities to realise their artistic visions, and significantly contributes to our
regional centres being exciting and thriving places to live and visit.
Murray Bridge Regional Gallery presents a rich and diverse program of contemporary art projects, which support and promote
regional, South Australian and national artists. Ranging from gallery-curated initiatives to major nationally touring exhibitions,
the gallery’s program offers enriching experiences for local communities and visitors to the region. Our beautiful gift shop also
features contemporary craft and artworks made by leading local and national makers.
Country Arts SA
Anthony Peluso, Chief Executive/Executive Director
Merilyn de Nys, Arts and Culture Leader
Louisa Norman, Executive Programmer
Lauren Mustillo, Visual Arts Manager
Lee Towton, Visual Arts Support Officer
Rural City of Murray Bridge –
Murray Bridge Regional Gallery
Fulvia Mantelli, RCMB Team Leader Arts Development + Gallery Director
Michelle Dohnt, Arts Officer
Tegan Hale, Public Art Officer
Graphic Design: Rosina Possingham
Photography: Rosina Possingham
© Country Arts SA and Murray Bridge Regional Gallery, the artists and authors
ISBN: 978-0-9954008-6-3
Country Arts SA is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body
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Previous pages: Chris De Rosa, Under here my
dreams are made of water (detail), 2021
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