While 2020 may have been a year to forget for many, Maitland Regional Art Gallery is looking to make 2022 a year to remember, kicking off with two big shows in January.
Maitland Regional Art Gallery director Gerry Bobsien is excited about 2022: "We've got a massive year next year."
"One of the really great things we do in January is Free Art January all through January. Skywhales and the Archibald are tied into that," she says.
There are 23 days of art activities, six exhibitions, plus the Skywhales hot air balloon sculpture launch in January at the gallery.
"Skywhales is our big focus, for January 15. It's a fantastic collaboration with the National Gallery, a huge spectacle," Bobsien says.
The Skywhales every heart sings program was scheduled for 2021 in Maitland, but pandemic restrictions forced the tour to be cancelled after a single appearance in Albury.
"Every heart sings is a project that talks about nature, family, evolution, care and wonder. They float into our lives to make us smile and think," says sculptor Patricia Piccinini, creator of Skywhale, and now also Skywhalepapa, which debuted in 2021.
Skywhale (which has visited Newcastle) and Skywhalepapa, which each soar to seven storeys tall when inflated, will become the centre of attention at the gallery from Thursday, January 13, through Saturday, January 15, culminating in the inflation of the huge balloons and, weather permitting, their flight across the Maitland morning sky.
Piccinini will be participating in an artist talk at the gallery on Thursday, January 13, at 6pm, and will be a guest artist at a children's workshop on Friday, January 14, where they will create their own fantasy figures and otherworldly landscapes. She will also be in attendance at the flight event.
The launch will be held at Saturday, January 15, Maitland Sportsground, with the public invited to register to attend. Gallery coordinator Celeste Aldahn says 5000 tickets will be available, with the public already asking for 1300 through Monday.
The event will kick off at 4.30am.
"The whole ceremony of inflation is quite a procession," Aldahn says. "It's 90 minutes of cold, hot, then getting it up there, tethering it, getting it ready to fly. The flight is at six o'clock when the sunrise is."
There will be food stands, a rather ethereal soundtrack and an MC (Kia Handley from ABC Radio).
"The magic is really the inflation," Aldahn says. "The opportunity to be up close and personal with these two sculptures that are almost seven storeys high. It's quite beautiful and bizarre."
Bobsien readily agrees. She was in Canberra for the first-ever launch of Skywhale in 2013, and vowed to bring them to Maitland when she interviewed for the gallery director's position.
"There is a cult around them," she says. "Some people turn up in costume. There is merch. It took on a weird life of its own. They are beloved."
Archibald Prize
The touring exhibition of the Art Gallery of NSW 2021 Archibald Prize finalists will open on January 22, its first trip to Maitland since 2014.
"People love it," Bobsien says. "They love seeing people's faces in it. The celebrity of it. The controversy of it. The wildcards. It has this history, and an aura around it that does draw people in."
Artists Mirra Whale, and her Archibald subject Ben Quilty, will lead a public program at the gallery, and Kathrin Longhurst, whose painting of Kate Ceberano was in the finals (and won the Packing Room Prize), will run an artist's workshop.
The 2021 Archibald Prize winner was Peter Wegner's portrait of Guy Warren.
The gallery will also conduct its own People's Choice award for the Archibald show and show its own Young Archies exhibition, featuring selected works by 50 students drawn from 14 area schools.
Tickets to see the Archibald show, January 22 - March 6, are $7.
Activities
The extensive schedule of workshops in the gallery during January include Free Art Sunday hands-on making workshops for young creatives and their families; and several more for all age groups.
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