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W. Howard Brandenburg is an artist based in Wickliffe, a small township 50km south of Ararat.

Brandenburg is fascinated in what makes the human species so successful and what that success means for the balance of nature. His oil paintings often focus on environmental changes attributed to human activities.

Movement and energy are visible in his work, using repetition and ghost images to echo key ideas while creating a sense of motion on the surface of the canvas. Depth and intensity of colour is built up with many thin washes of oil paint.

As a child, Brandenburg grew up immersed in art with both his mother and grandmother working as professional artists in Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. He went on to study art and aquatic ecology at the University of New Mexico, and has been a practising artist throughout his career. In 2018, he relocated to Australia with his wife and two children.

Brandenburg strives to create artworks that represent a global perspective in which individual viewers can see their own story.

Taking a prompt from the Stan Kelly Art Group exhibition theme of ‘From the Garden’, we searched the TAMA Collection for artworks that evoke the tranquillity of outdoor spaces and the creatures that inhabit them.

Drawing from varied mediums ranging from our focus on textiles – weavings, tapestry, embroidery – to oil painting and ink on paper, these works relate to calming places, be that the home garden, the local park, or magnificent natural landscapes.

The Stan Kelly Art Group was founded in 1981 when one of Ararat’s most important artistic sons, Stan Kelly OAM, began teaching watercolour painting at the Ararat Town Hall’s Art Craft Workshop (now the Ararat Arts Precinct Studio).

Stan Kelly was a respected botanical artist renowned for his comprehensive study of eucalypts, as well as wildflowers and fungi. Many of the original participants in these weekly classes attended with the aim of learning botanical art from this master of the genre.

Stan Kelly died in 2001, but the group continued and is known today as the Stan Kelly Art Group as a tribute to their late teacher. Since that time the turnover of membership has introduced broader genres in artworks into the group and all are inspired by individual passions.

Stemming from studio activity during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, Pages From A Lockdown Diary is a collection of artworks which measure and mark the passing of time, in works built up from daily repetitive actions and activity.

Carole Wilson and Tim Craker are two Ballarat based artists who utilise textile methodologies to create their work. Using techniques more often associated with sewing, knitting or the making of nets, thousands of knots and stitches are used to secure a variety of found objects together into curtains and shrouds, embroidered samplers and geometric arrays in both two and three dimensions. Both artists have undertaken a number of international residencies over the past ten years, during which they have gathered materials from diverse locations, forming a storehouse of items to be utilised for creative projects back in their home studios. The lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 certainly provided extended opportunities to revisit previous travel experiences, memories and materials. Both artists respond to the Japanese concept of mottainai – a sense of regret when something is wasted, and a belief that all materials and objects have an intrinsic value.

Tim Craker is drawn to the collected detritus of daily living – packaging in all its forms – which is then laboriously assembled into substantial and evocative sculptural pieces. As well as the marking and recording of time passing, the works exhibit his fascination with found objects, and the stimulus to combine and re-configure them. Pattern and the geometry of the Platonic solids are other touchstones for his work, as is the recycling and rescue of discarded materials with their embodied histories of production and use, diverting them from landfill.

Carole Wilson sources discarded maps and atlases which speak of a different era and a fast disappearing approach to sourcing information about locations and travel. In these times of smart phones and google maps, such printed items are rapidly becoming obsolete. She incorporates the techniques of domestic needlework and the politics of women’s lived experience, to undertake a critical reflection on craft practices. The meditative activity of carefully selecting, hand cutting and stitching the map components provides the opportunity to contemplate the rapidity of change in this era of globalisation, and offer a pause for thought through the appreciation of the simple stitch.

Every two years Central Goldfields Art Gallery hosts Golden Textures, a national contemporary art quilt award. The works on display here are past winners, plus a work by Jenny Bacon, the co-founder of the award.

Maryborough-based artist Jenny Bacon initiated the Golden Textures Award in 2011 with the then Gallery Director, Kay Parkin. In her words, these works represent how art quilts in Australia have ‘come off the bed and are now on the walls.’

Art quilting in Australia continues to be dominated by women artists. Artists working in this medium experiment with a wide range of subject matter, mediums, and techniques. Art quilts can now be freestanding, suspended from the ceiling, or three dimensional.

These works feature a strong sense of design, accomplished technique, and a dedication to a labour-intensive craft.

The next Golden Textures National Art Award will be held at Central Goldfields Art Gallery in Maryborough in 2023.

The quilts can be viewed here via the Central Goldfields Art Gallery profile on Google Arts and Culture.

John Eagle is an Ararat-based potter, renowned in Australia and internationally for his striking copper red glaze.

A graduate of RMIT, Eagle has worked with clay for over 40 years to develop his signature range of glazes that give the impression of a moving fluid surface.

He enjoyed early success in his career when selected for inclusion in the National Gallery of Victoria exhibition, Crafts Victoria ‘75. Eagle’s work has been recognised for a number of prestigious art prizes including, the National Bicentennial Art-Craft Award for Functional Pottery and ‘Craft Mark’ accreditation.

Eagle’s association with Ararat began following his artist residency at Marian College in 2004, which evolved into a dedicated teaching career with the school and the wider community.

Horizons is the culmination of 10 years of refining a palette of glazes to represent the rugged, weathered landscape of the Grampians, and the impact of bushfires in the region.