Blog

Christine Baines is a local artist and retired art teacher based in Elmhurst, a small village 35km north-east of Ararat. Christine has been exploring mosaics for 20 years, working with glass, stone and found objects. She is particularly interested in contemporary mosaics and how to push the boundaries of the art form.

Christine’s property, where she lives and works, was profoundly impacted by the Bayindeen bushfire in February 2024. Her Community Wall exhibition features a series of artworks responding to the impact the fire had on the surrounding forest and farmland.

In 2024, Christine’s work was exhibited in the Mosaic Artists of Australia and New Zealand international exhibition at the National Wool Museum in Geelong.

With visionary foresight, the founding team behind Ararat Gallery in the late 1960s and early 1970s established textiles as a defining focus of the Gallery’s collection. Taking inspiration from Ararat’s historical association with fine merino wool production, the Gallery has remained committed to exhibiting and collecting textile and fibre art. Fifty years on, the enduring influence of the craft revival movement continues to affirm the cultural relevance and renewed appeal of textiles.

Long recognised as a radical and subversive medium, textiles continue to command critical attention. Ararat Gallery TAMA occupies a distinctive and timely position in today’s cultural landscape through its sustained commitment to textile-based collections and exhibitions.

Many textile and fibre-based artworks look different each time they are exhibited; the elements fall and sit uniquely every time they are installed, reshaping with each outing. The artworks are responsive to their environment – watch carefully to see them gently rise and fall in the air flow.

This exhibition encompasses artworks held in the TAMA Collection, as well as artworks in the Victorian State Craft Collection, which have been on long-term loan to the Gallery since 2004.

Exhibiting artists: John Corbett, Sarah crowEST, David Green, Geoffrey La Gerche, Tass Mavrogordato, Douglas McManus, Trevor Smith, and Rose Marie Szulc.

Lisa Waup is a First Nations artist and curator of mixed cultural heritage, based in Narrm (Melbourne). Her diverse practice encompasses printmaking, weaving, sculpture, fashion, body adornment, and textiles, often pushing the boundaries in contemporary and experimental forms. Grounded in a profound engagement with materiality and their symbolic potential, Waup’s work weaves together personal experience, family connections, ancestral histories, and the enduring relationship to Country. Through this, she creates powerful narratives that speak to identity, memory, and resilience.

after ever here is an exhibition by Lisa Waup that brings together printed works, utilitarian vessels, sculptures, and body adornment, each imbued with layered stories of material history. The exhibition centres on textiles both found and gifted, whose fibres already carry histories and memory. Through her practice, Waup extends these narratives, reanimating objects once set aside and granting them renewed life and altered intention.

By observing and honouring the histories embedded in these materials, Waup reveals their intimacy and beauty, transforming them into works that adapt and evolve. In after ever here, Waup traces the enduring significance of materiality across time, while inscribing her own voice threaded into their continuing story.

after ever here is guest curated by Coby Ann Edgar. Edgar is a queer multi-racial (Gulumoerrigin (Larrakia) / Jingili / Filipino / Chinese / Irish / Scottish / English) First Nations curator, writer and presenter living and working on unceded Gadigal land in Redfern, Sydney. With over 15 years’ experience in government positions across education, galleries, and museums, in 2025 Edgar transitioned to independent work to focus on building her consultancy company Driftwood Consultancy.

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With visionary foresight, the founding team behind Ararat Gallery in the late 1960s and early 1970s established textiles as a defining focus of the Gallery’s collection. Taking inspiration from Ararat’s historical association with fine merino wool production, the Gallery has remained committed to exhibiting and collecting textile and fibre art. Fifty years on, the enduring influence of the craft revival movement continues to affirm the cultural relevance and renewed appeal of textiles.

In 2024, textiles featured prominently in major international exhibitions, including at the Barbican in London, and at an Australian state level at the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide. Long recognised as a radical and subversive medium, textiles continue to command critical attention. Ararat Gallery TAMA occupies a distinctive and timely position in today’s cultural landscape through its sustained commitment to textile-based collections and exhibitions.

Ararat Gallery TAMA is proud custodian of over a thousand artworks and objects, including quilts, tapestries, basketry, embroideries, sculpture and weavings. This exhibition includes the two newest acquisitions to the TAMA Collection: guuma-li / Gathering by Juanita McLauchlan and Beyond Homeostasis by Kasia Töns.

Exhibiting artists: Marie Cook, Sebastian Di Mauro, Starlie Geikie, Sara Lindsay, Paull McKee, Juanita McLauchlan, and Kasia Töns.

With visionary foresight, the founding team behind Ararat Gallery in the late 1960s and early 1970s established textiles as a defining focus of the Gallery’s collection. Taking inspiration from Ararat’s historical association with fine merino wool production, the Gallery has remained committed to exhibiting and collecting textile and fibre art. Fifty years on, the enduring influence of the craft revival movement continues to affirm the cultural relevance and renewed appeal of textiles.

Long recognised as a radical and subversive medium, textiles continue to command critical attention. Ararat Gallery TAMA occupies a distinctive and timely position in today’s cultural landscape through its sustained commitment to textile-based collections and exhibitions. Ararat Gallery TAMA is proud custodian of over a thousand artworks and objects, including quilts, tapestries, basketry, embroideries, sculpture and weavings.

Ararat Gallery was established in 1968 as a few small rooms in the Old Municipal Offices of the Ararat Town Hall. The Gallery space has grown significantly over the decades since, most recently during the Arts Precinct Redevelopment Project, completed in August 2018. During that project, the Gallery doubled its exhibition and collection spaces, and in recognition of its significant textile collection was renamed Ararat Gallery TAMA – Textile Art Museum Australia.

Exhibiting artists: Jutta Feddersen, Tony Garifalakis, Ann Greenwood, Paula Latos-Valier, Annemieke Mein, Julie Montgarrett, Jennifer Robertson and Sera Waters.