TWMA Contemporary 2010

TarraWarra Museum of Art has been committed to exhibiting the work of contemporary artists since its inception. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the current art scene is the diversity of art practice. For many artists, environmental issues and travails are in the forefront; their work deals with the immediate and the present, with intimations of possible futures. Others are productively developing ideas that are now almost a century old; there is life yet in the ghosts of dada and surrealism, to name but two antique movements. Some artists may hark back even further, while still availing themselves of modern technologies, re-interpreting, perhaps, Dutch still life and portraiture through the media of digital photography or video.

This diversity represents a feast for a curator of an exhibition of contemporary art, but also a quandary; given the breadth of the range of art practice, how best to sample what is on offer? The ends being pursued are so heterogeneous, and the media employed to pursue these ends so varied, it is perhaps unreasonable to expect any one curator to have a complete grasp of the art scene. Any selection would be contentious and debatable. With this in mind, for TWMA Contemporary 2010, the Museum invited eight arts industry professionals to each nominate one artist for inclusion. The exhibition curators, Amy Barrett-Lennard, Ashley Crawford, Tony Ellwood, Bronwyn Johnson, Rachel Kent, Simeon Kronenberg, Jan Minchin and Gerard Vaughan, selected Jon Campbell, Sally Gabori, Shaun Gladwell, Anastasia Klose, Kate Murphy, David Rosetzky, Gareth Sansom and Brendan Van Hek to be included.

TWMA Contemporary 2010 creates a fresh opportunity to explore Australian contemporary art practice and provides a window for key arts figures to highlight significant new directions and acknowledge new ideas.