As you can see from the poster, Kim Foale and I have an exhibition up at the Long Gallery in the Salamanca Arts Centre at the moment. Kim has done the ceramic bits and I have done the drawing bits, so we’ve covered the walls and the floor quite nicely. Kim’s written a bit about her stuff on her blog here.
The idea behind my part of the exhibition popped into my head when I was catching a plane from Hobart’s glorious International Airport. It was a damp sort of a day and we all had to walk across the tarmac in the rain. You could immediately spot the locals by the way they mostly ignored this, while the tourists looked increasingly baffled by the lack of a covered aerobridge at the one airport you’d think could really use a covered aerobridge. Waiting on the stairs to get in out of the drizzle, I turned, glimpsed the cheery orange WELCOME TO HOBART sign and “Damp On Arrival” was born.
On the flight to Sydney, a sketchbook was filled with scribbles about life in Australia’s southernmost capital and the exhibition is the finished result of the best of them. It’s a celebration of Hobart without, hopefully, getting too precious about it. It’s a bit of a test of how long you’ve lived here to see if you can get all 57 of them. “Whale Watching” seems to be the most elusive.
We are packing it all up this Sunday (17th of May) at 5pm. Do come along and have a look, or you might end up a sad clown like Arthur.
If you really can’t make it, the Book Of The Exhibition is available here.
UPDATE: Prints will be available from the website from Tuesday the 19th of May.
