National Gallery Touring Exhibitions Come To Alice Springs In 2023

The National Gallery of Australia is bringing two major touring exhibitions to Mparntwe/Alice Springs in 2023, with Rauschenberg & Johns: Significant Others and the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony opening at Araluen Arts Centre this March.

Director Dr Nick Mitzevich said the National Gallery has been working closely with Araluen Arts Centre so people in the Mparntwe/Alice Springs region can enjoy and experience the national collection beyond its base in Kamberri/Canberra.

'Art is for all Australians and I look forward to seeing their national collection reach the regions more and more through our loans and touring exhibition programs' said Mitzevich.

'We are so excited to share two National Gallery Touring Exhibitions with our audiences this year. The Araluen Arts Centre enjoys supporting national and international exhibitions and performances and appreciates the National Gallery initiatives to share their collection with audiences across the country' said Araluen Arts Centre Director Felicity Green.

Visitors to Araluen Arts Centre will get to see works of art by renowned North American artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns on display in their own community.

The National Gallery's touring exhibition Rauschenberg & Johns: Significant Others will make its first stop of the tour at Araluen from this Saturday 11 March. The exhibition reveals how - at the height of the Abstract expressionist movement - a new avant-garde began to materialise from the same-sex relationship between two young artists - Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

David Greenhalgh, the National Gallery's Kenneth E Tyler Assistant Curator, Prints and Drawings, said he is excited for the national tour of Rauschenberg & Johns - whose work questioned ideas of authorship, value, and how art needed to communicate to a public audience.

'The success of both Rauschenberg and Johns is a result of them being an audience to each other. While their relationship would end after seven years, their art would continue to radiate the new ideas of their creative exchange' said Greenhalgh.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of Rauschenberg and Johns-inspired printmaking workshops, presented in partnership Central Craft.

Visitors to Araluen will also learn more about the importance of ceremony in First Nations cultures with Arrernte and Kalkadoon woman Hetti Perkin's 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony opening 25 March.

Featuring the work of 35 artists from across Australia, from the intimate and personal to the collective and collaborative, ceremonies manifest through visual art, film, music and dance - and are the nexus of Country, of culture and of community.

Perkins says: 'Ceremony is not a new idea in the context of our unique heritage, but neither is it something that belongs only in the past. In their works, the artists in this exhibition assert the prevalence of ceremony as a forum for artmaking today in First Nations communities.'

The National Gallery will share more of its collection with regional and suburban galleries as part of the sharing the national collection initiative, funded under the Australian Government's new National Cultural Policy 'Revive'.

'This support will allow us to share more of the national collection with more Australians and local communities - making it a truly national collection,' Mitzevich said.

Touring the national collection would not be possible without the support of the National Gallery's major donors and key philanthropic partners. Rauschenberg & Johns: Significant Others is a National Gallery Touring Exhibition supported by Visions of Australia. The National Gallery gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Tyler Charitable Foundation in presenting the exhibition and supporting the digital publication. The Triennial is the National Gallery's flagship exhibition of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. The National Indigenous Art Triennial is made possible through the continued generosity of the National Gallery's Indigenous Arts Partner Wesfarmers Arts and key philanthropic supporters.

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