Information for Students and Teachers

Explore the exhibition through conversations with the curator of the exhibition.

James Lynch, Curator

What is the title of this exhibition and how was it decided? 

The title of this exhibition is Inside the Mirage. Early planning of this exhibition was initiated before I started working at TarraWarra Museum of Art, by the previous Head of Exhibitions and Programs, Patrice Sharkey, in conversation with our Director, Dr Victoria Lynn. I was fortunate that Patrice came up with this beautiful title, which I tweaked a little bit and then I talked with her about using it in a different way. It is a wonderfully evocative phrase that captures the imagination and a sense of inhabiting different worlds.

This exhibition looks back at the past in a number of ways, and this can sometimes feel a bit like a mirage. The pull of nostalgia can be hallucinatory, a warping of time and space.

As the curator, how did you work with the artists to create this exhibition?  

Prior to these conversations, back in 2023–24 the TarraWarra Museum of Art published a series of essays looking at different artworks from our Collection. Art historian Claire Roberts from Melbourne University wrote one of these essays, in which she looked at affinities between the modernist Scottish Australian artist Ian Fairweather from the mid-twentieth century and contemporary artist John Young. The exhibition was partly inspired by this dialogue/dialogic approach, looking more broadly at the conversations artists have with the past and the shared stories they tell. I have worked closely with John Young, who has created a series of new works inspired by the paintings of Ian Fairweather that are held in the Collection. From this, I invited nine other artists to contribute existing works to the exhibition, and I also borrowed other historical objects from various places to help create the exhibition narrative.

What ideas and themes are addressed in this exhibition? 

Inside the Mirage highlights new perspectives and connections between Australian art history and the present. It features contemporary artists from across Australia whose works foreground shared and inherited stories as their basis, revealing the intertwined histories and complex cultural narratives that shape our contemporary identities and world views. Inside the Mirage explores the ways artists navigate the complex contradictions of cross-cultural existence and the weight of lives lived between multiple worlds.

Themes of the exhibition include diasporic experiences, intertwined histories, mirroring, wandering, letter writing, and losing and finding oneself.

What will the audience see and experience in this exhibition?

The exhibition includes artworks from the 1930s to the present, encompassing painting, woodblock printing, photography, video, installation, needlepoint and porcelain. The exhibition also includes other objects and a print possibly first etched back in the 1790s.  

How were the artworks selected for this exhibition? What are some of the processes behind these decisions?  

I think I am drawn to artists who express their lived realities in their works as they have an authenticity about them that I connect with. I looked at the recent practices of artists, thinking about the stories that are often left out of the main narratives and the different ways more well-known stories can be reinterpreted. I also wanted to give emerging artists and writers an opportunity and allow them to be a bit expressive and develop some encounters that are not so predictable.

How is the exhibition laid out? Did any of the artworks’ materials, size or installation needs influence their placement or inclusion in this exhibition?

There is a painting in the exhibition by Ian Fairweather from our Collection, which comes from a series of paintings he created made around the Chinese folk tale of the Drunken Buddha. Fairweather produced the first English translation from Mandarin of this tale in 1965. In the painting the character of the drunken monk is standing upside down on his head. In researching about this work, I learnt that the monk was accepted for his unconventional behaviour and was given a new name that translates to ‘salvation by upturning’. Knowing this gave me artistic license to create a more playful layout of the exhibition and to order the artworks differently, moving beyond a linear approach.

What methods and considerations have been implemented in creating didactics about the themes, artists and artworks in this exhibition?

There are so many stories to tell about the 60 or so objects in this exhibition. This has been a big challenge, and Emma Nixon, Curatorial Assistant at the TarraWarra Museum of Art, has been an invaluable part of this process. Emma has reinterpreted my writing and has been editing my thoughts down to make them more accessible in the exhibition context. We have also been aiming to more prominently include the voices of artists in the wall labels, in particular the voice of Ian Fairweather.  

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