AN ENTRALLING new exhibition by artist Liam Garstang, There’ll Be No More Shepherds, has just opened. Garstang’s works include installation, video, performance, printmaking, and ceramics, and are based on personal, generational, and collective events and iconography, as well as deep spontaneous emotional responses to place.
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There’ll Be No More Shepherds evokes questions relating to experiences of loss and reclamation, and aims to open up dialogues for the artist and his audiences that explore alternative modes of expression.
Describing the exhibition and its background, Liam Garstang notes that, “In my early twenties, I left my life on the farm in Downside to pursue my art education in Sydney. My decision to leave the farm will end my family’s hundred-year long farming tradition. Young people moving off the land to the city is common in contemporary Australia, and has occurred globally since the mid-eighteenth century. However, it is not without societal and individual confliction.”
“There’ll Be No More Shepherds explores my own personal conflictions of leaving this land and through a series site responsive actions, attempts to reconcile my emotive states around this personal narrative. This exhibition is also about the lost paradise of childhood, the grafting of fantasies onto the other, the searching nature of voluntary and involuntary memory, and the gulf between our perception of the past and what ‘truly’ happened – hence the emotive narratives we weave around places and ourselves.”
Liam Garstang: There’ll Be No More Shepherds is on display until Sunday, October, 1. A public closing for the exhibition will be held at the Gallery on Friday, September 22 from 6pm to 8pm.
ArtBlast!
ArtBlast! launches this August with a unique series of art workshops for children aged six to 12. Specially designed for children ArtBlast! provides a full grounding in a wide range of skills and techniques that encourage exploration, innovation and creativity.
ArtBlast! will run once a month on Saturday afternoons, from 1.30pm to 4pm. The dates for this session will be Saturday, August 26, Saturday,September 30, Saturday, October 21, Saturday, November 18 and Saturday, December 16.
Our August to December sessions will ‘blast off’ with Scratch the Surface.
Visit Liam Garstang’s exhibition of prints inspired by his home at Downside, and learn to enjoy one of the most fun printmaking techniques – drypoint!
Each workshop of ArtBlast! costs $20 per child and all materials are provided. Bookings and payment can be made over the phone on 6926 9660, by email at gallery@wagga.nsw.gov.au, or in person at the Gallery Shop, located in the Civic Centre Arcade. Places are limited, and payment confirms your child’s booking.