South East Centre for Contemporary Art announces inaugural exhibition ahead of opening

South East Centre for Contemporary Art (formerly known as Bega Valley Regional Gallery) will have its official opening on 29th April 2023 and has today announced its inaugural exhibition program.

The purpose-built contemporary art space SECCA, designed by award-winning Melbourne-based architecture practice, Sibling, has undergone a major $3.5 million redevelopment and expansion of the 30-year-old site. 

The program showcases both established and emerging artists from the local region alongside those from wider Australia and the Asia Pacific, with exhibitions exploring an eclectic range of themes from gender and cultural identity, trauma and the environment to reflections on historical events and their ongoing impact. To close the year, SECCA will host the prestigious Archibald Prize exhibition, featuring portraits from 2023 shortlisted artists.

Gallery Director Iain Dawson enthused “we are excited to be launching SECCA with such a diverse range of exhibitions which reflect our ambition for the future of the gallery. It is our aim for SECCA to become the cultural heart of the South East, uplifting the local area through compelling arts and cultural programming and creating a new standard for what is possible for a regional gallery".

The gallery’s first exhibition, Perforated Sovereignty, running until 2nd July 2023, focuses on the works of local, national and international artists from Australasia. Reflecting the ambitions of the newly redeveloped facility, the exhibition brings together diverse ideas, mediums and cultural heritage to create a snapshot of a contemporary regional community, its impact on the world and the global impact of new dialogues. Exhibiting artists include Katherine Boland, Eric Bridgeman, Susan Chancellor, Lissy Cole and Rudi Robinson, Dean Cross, Cheryl Davison, Timo Hogan, Sang Hyun Lee, Maharani Mancanagara, Noŋgirrŋa Marawili, Emily Phyo, Dias Prabu, Citra Samistra, Greg Semu and Mr Wanambi.

Some Like it Hot (7th July-13th August 2023) curated by former Curator of Australian Art for the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT), Wendy Garden, brings together two of the Northern Territory’s most respected artists: Franck Gohier and Therese Ritchie in an exhibition that reflects upon gender trouble in the tropics. Both Gohier and Ritchie consider the performative nature of gender, tracing the intersections between sweat, sex, desire and discord in Australia’s hottest and most remote capital city. Alluding to gender stereotypes popularised in mid-twentieth century comic books, romance narratives and action films, Franck Gohier creates paintings and prints that deploy a pop art aesthetic to question sexualised binaries. In contrast, many of Therese Ritchie’s depictions are informed by the everyday scenes she witnesses on the streets around her.  

Weaving The Ocean (7th July-13th August 2023) is a project initiated with the Indonesian Canadian artist Ari Bayuaji. When borders closed at the start of the global pandemic, Ari found himself on the island of Bali for an extended period of time. Observing both the devastation of the local tourism industry as well as the environmental pollution despoiling Bali’s beaches, Ari embarked on a series of work transforming plastic waste into textile art, made in collaboration with Balinese artisans. Weaving The Ocean addresses pressing environmental and social issues, the pollution of oceans and the destruction of marine life and the island’s natural beauty, through a conciliatory approach that endeavours to transform the ‘negative’ into a ‘positive’. 

In Regenisis (18th August-17th September 2023), mixed media artist Jess MacNeil, now based in Sydney after a decade in London, uses painting, installation, video and film to explore themes of time, movement and stillness, memory, loss, visibility and invisibility, and the innumerable points of interconnection between individuals and world. Created in response to the 2019 bush fires, MacNeil examines how the powerful echoes of trauma, regeneration and transformation have affected her through a series of paintings and photomedia work. Having spent the majority of her childhood in the Bega Valley, MacNeil was an important artist to showcase in the inaugural program, according to Dawson.  

Another esteemed artist with local connections, trailblazing artist Bonita Ely presents Slip Slap (18th August-17th September 2023) which addresses the Baarka (Darling) River’s ongoing environmental disasters in a live in-person encounter, extending her most recent work – Menindee Fish Kill (2019).  

POWER - The Future is Here (22nd September-19th November 2023) is the result of a collaboration between artist Dennis Golding and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students from Alexandria Park Community School. Led by Golding, who was an artist in residence at the school through Solid Ground, students created superhero capes with iconography informed by their lived experiences and cultural identity. The project aimed to empower the students and act as a reminder of the strength of their culture in forming their identity and connection to Country. Individually and together, the capes critique social, political and cultural representations of the contemporary First Nations experience.

 To close the year, the perennially popular annual Archibald Prize will be on display at SECCA from 24th November 2023-January 2024, as part of a touring exhibition of 2023 artworks. Judged by the trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW, the prize is awarded to the best portrait painting. Since 1921, it has highlighted figures from all walks of life, from famous faces to local heroes, reflecting the stories of our times.

Image: Ari Bayuaji, Rangda, 2021 Wood, plastic threads, leather, cotton. Courtesy the artist; Dean Cross, Gunalgunal (A Contracted Field), installation 2021-22, Sydney and Adelaide, Credit: Saul Steed; Franck Gohier, Darwin’s Evolution, 2015, Synthetic polymer paint on board