CURRENT EXHIBITION: THE HILLS | AN ARTIST'S GATHERING

12 April - 22 June 2025

Collection Focus #4

This exhibition is a unique opportunity to peer into a slice of WA art history when artists of Darlington and surrounds became a part of a dynamic creative community and in doing so forged new directions in art making.
 
The Janet Holmes à Court Collection now holds over four thousand artworks, and, as with all art collections, it began with simply a few. As residents of Darlington, Janet and Robert Holmes à Court acquired three artworks from the 1968 Darlington Arts and Craft exhibition. These artworks inaugurated the Collection and remain an important part of its identity through to today. The Hills, An Artist’ Gathering is an opportunity to see such artworks in the company of other artworks by artists significant to the history of Western Australian art, who lived and work in the hills.

Featured: Robert Juniper 'Flood Creek', 1980

PAST EXHIBITION: DRIFT WOODS

26 January - 6 April 2025

Drift Woods is a solo exhibition by Elmari Steyn featuring a considered selection of recent art works. Steyn’s unique-state etching prints take the viewer into a wandering, many-pathed narrative journey; into exquisitely detailed worlds of wonder, sadness and delight. Drawing on her background in Namibia, Steyn folds personal stories into the familiar subject matter of trees and boats, often pictured in unison. Trees and boats become places of mystery that compel the imagination. They hold memories and emotions. Tree houses and boat houses feature as evocative of the idea of home, as well as holding a sense of child-like wonder and playfulness. Throughout the works there is a frisson between transience and stasis, between putting down roots and taking to the skies or seas. Drift Woods enables you to consider these states of stillness and movement as you enter and drift through entrancing realms of the imagination.

Featured: Elmari Steyn, Story Tree, copyright of the artist.

PAST EXHIBITION: CINQUANTA+

24 November 2024 - 19 January 2025

This exhibition from international jeweller, Dorothy Erickson, is a celebration of 55 years of exhibiting jewellery. It includes a selection of exquisite jewels from her Homage to Klimt and Wildflower collections and her newest work, the Hesperia Collection. The latter pays homage to the women who were among the first to make art as a profession in Western Australia. Many painted the unique flora of this international biodiversity hotspot that the ‘founding father’ had wanted to call Hesperia after the name of the Evening Star. Included are works that were inspired by the paintings of local stars Kathleen O’Connor, May and Helen Creeth, Loui Benham and Marie Tuck. The, at times, striking works evoke or reflect these paintings, aspiration, or inspiration. Some works create doorways for the artists to escape the constrictions of their times, others employ motifs, colour, or take a significant line and turn it into a different kind of artwork.

Featured: Dorothy Erickson, Self Portrait for Kate, courtesy and copyright of the artist.

PAST EXHIBITION: TJUKURRPA ON FABRICS

1 September - 17 November 2024

This exhibition is proud to be a part of the IOTA24 Festival, supported by Lotterywest.

Over the last four years Ikuntji Artists have been experimenting with textiles; reimagining the established Dreaming stories into fabric designs. As the designs are repeated down the length of a fabric, so too are the stories being repeated and strengthened. Emerging artists are telling their family stories with their own contemporary expressions of traditional motifs, bringing change and vibrancy to the language, while the story retains continuity. Tjukurrpa on Fabrics is a display of twenty-four textile pieces from twelve artists which highlight the traditional Dreamings and the ever-evolving re-telling of each family’s story.

ARTISTS
Pam Brown, Alice Nampitjinpa Dixon, Eunice Napanangka Jack, Zakius Jack, Walter Jugadai, Leonie Kamutu, Roseranna Larry, Mavis Marks, Lisa Multa, Mitjili Napurrula, Anmanari Nolan, Keturah Zimran OAM

Image credit: Eunice Napanangka Jack, Kuruyultu Dark Blue Cream on Black. 
All courtesy and copyright of Ikuntji Artist.
 

PAST EXHIBITION: STILLNESS

5 May - 25 August 2024

Focused on objects and moments of everyday life, this exhibition invites the viewer to take a pause in moments of stillness. The selected artworks present still life painting, images of domestic items and indoor spaces. The exhibition explores ideas of interiority and home, delving into quieter, though no less powerful, moments of existence. It explores the un-extraordinary to find the extraordinary in the everyday.

Featured: David Watt, Conversation Piece - For the Perfect Hostess, c.1987, copyright of the artist's estate

Past Exhibition: Drylands

28 January - 28 April 2024

Drylands considers changes to the Western Australian landscape of the Wheatbelt, Southern and Great Southern regions. It features painterly observations of the land following decades of deforestation, fire regimes, the impacts of climate change, increasing salinity and loss of biodiversity. The artworks picture receding islands of trees, canola fields in full bloom and dry, lone trees and empty scarred landscapes silently mourning the loss of bio and geo-diversity. 

This exhibition includes artwork from the Janet Holmes à Court Collection and invited artists.

ARTISTS
Jo Darbyshire, Elizabeth Edmonds, Clare McFarlane, Lindsay Harris, Kate Turner, Tony Windberg.

Past Exhibition: Ten

24 September 2023 - 21 January 2024

In celebration of Art Collective WA’s first decade of operation, TEN showcases the achievements of its 36 member artists with a group show of entirely new works including painting, sculpture and photography. TEN features Merrick Belyea, Cathy Blanchflower, Paul Caporn, Olga Cironis, Jennifer Cochrane, Penny Coss, Rebecca Dagnall, Jo Darbyshire, Stuart Elliott, Sarah Elson, George Haynes, Giles Hohnen, Chris Hopewell, Jeremy Kirwan-Ward, Theo Koning, Eveline Kotai, Joanna Lamb, Andre Lipscombe, Jane Martin, Minaxi May, Antony Muia, Andrew Nicholls, Brad Rimmer, Kevin Robertson, Susan Roux, Vanessa Russ, Helen Smith, Alex Spremberg, Angela Stewart, Jon Tarry, Michele Theunissen, Paul Uhlmann, Trevor Vickers, Toni Wilkinson, Tony Windberg and Jurek Wybraniec.

Pictured: Jo Darbyshire, Pink Lake (salt), 2023 oil on canvas, copyright of the artist.

Previous Exhibition : Bread of Bone

25 June – 17 September 2023

Bread of Bone features a selection of new works from five established contemporary Western Australian artists.

The exhibition focuses on such ideas as food security, different attitudes toward food, the impact of climate change on food production and supply and the value of eating locally. The artists tackle such questions as; what do we do when we can’t buy food? How do we approach children about slaughtering and preparing animals to eat? How do we promote cultural awareness and acceptance when others eat foods our ancestors deemed ‘inedible’?
Each artist’s perspective on food is explored through the staple technique of drawing, additionally considering thoughts and feelings toward modern interpretations of grinding bones to make bread.

ARTISTS
Erin Coates, Ross Potter, Andy Quilty, Anna Richardson, Ric Spencer

Image Credit: Anna Louise Richardson - Three Little Mice

Previous Exhibition : Collection Focus | Abstract Art by Women in the 1980s

12th March -  18th June 2023

After gracing the walls of the Holmes à Court Gallery @ no.10 this exhibition travels to the Holmes à Court Gallery @ Vasse Felix. This is the second instalment of the Collection Focus series of annual exhibitions drawn exclusively from the Janet Holmes à Court Collection. Here we present art works which have rarely been on display. This selection reveals the substantial contribution women artists have made to the field of abstract art in Australia. Women artists have played a fundamental role in the development of abstract art throughout the 20th century. The specific period of focus for this exhibition is the 1980s and the works span across painting, collage, ceramics and sculpture, to celebrate and acknowledge the crucial significance of abstract art by women in Australia in the 1980s. 
 

ARTISTS
Joan Campbell, Toni Donley, Pippin Drysdale, Lesley Dumbrell, Margery Edwards, Marie Jose Haass, Joy Henderson, Marie Louise Hobbs, Sandra Leveson-Meares, Anne Maughan, Helen Grey-Smith, Miriam Stannage
 

Image Credit: Lesley Dumbrell, House of Cards, 1985, copyright agency 2022, photo Dan McCabe

Previous Exhibition : Emergences

29th January - 5th March

Emergences is part of the state-wide Open Borders Project. It includes 15 unique, interconnected, exhibitions, films and performances created by artists living across regional WA.
Each of us has a complex network of physical and psychological barricades in our lives. These can be environmental, imposed on us or self-erected. What happens when a barricade falls or is breached? Some may find euphoria in such a collapse. For others, the tension this creates can be crippling.

Presented by The Creative Corner and the Holmes à Court Gallery @ Vasse Felix, Emergences has been coordinated by Christopher Young and Anita Pettit.

ARTISTS
Amanda Bell, Clocherty/Deltondo/Hart/Jennings, Shannon Clohessy, Francesco Geronazzo, Shayne Hadley, Yu-Hua Lan, Elisa Markes-Young, Katharina Meister, Kate Alida Mullen, Martine Perret and Helen Seiver
 

Photo credit - Emergences, Francesco Geronazzo, installation detail, 2023, photo Laetitia Wilson

Previous Exhibition : Monique Tippett

October 9 2022 - January 22 2023

Fire is ever present in the Australian environment and as the mid-summer sun starts scorching the land it weighs heavily upon the Australian psyche. Within bushland, fire has a dual identity as both restorative and destructive. It can destroy life and livelihoods as much as it can create the conditions for new life to emerge. Monique Tippett: Burnt is a response to the duality of fire. Fire is wielded by Tippet as a creative force. It is used for artworks that reside somewhere between sculpture and painting, as three-dimensional wall works. Burnt is a solo exhibition that brings together a selection of large and small, new and old works, that glow from gold to red and from the deepest darkest charred wood to snowy ash.

Image Credit: Monique Tippett, Flame, 2018, courtesy and copyright of the artist

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION : UNIQUE STATES

8 May - 18 September

Unique States is a print exhibition that considers different states and several possible meanings of the idea of the ‘unique state’. It refers to print making techniques, to states of being, to political, environmental and conceptual states and to our local state. 

The past three years have launched humanity into ‘unique states’ and Western Australia has become even more of a ‘unique state’ because of its position apart from the rest of Australia and indeed the world. Mobility, human relations and the environment have all felt the impacts of this time and we have been compelled to think and act differently in response to unfamiliar situations. 

In this exhibition we see a diversity of artworks using a variety of print making techniques that invite narrative speculation; invite thoughts on environmental realities; on the Australian political environment and on being in the world. They take us to local forests, to rivers and distant mountains, as well as compel us to consider flight and mobility and displaced humanity facing unyielding borders and confronting loss and grief. Some works enable us to delve into metaphysical patterning and then others bring us back to ground to reflect on the allegorical complexities of rusty farm machinery.

Artists 

Susanna Castleden, Jo Darvall, Valdene Disprose, Clyde McGill, Harvey Mullen, Sue Starken, Elmari Steyn, Perdita Phillips.

Image credit: Susanna Castleden, 1-1 Expeditor 1 (twin tail left), 2019, copyright of the artist

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION : Collection Focus - Indigenous Art

30 January 2022 - 1st May 2022

About: 

Since the early 1980’s, Janet Holmes à Court has been an avid collector of the art of the First Nations people of Australia. That is, of artistic expression grounded in thousands of years of culture that defines and powerfully resonates with the spirit of this country. Described as a “rich and sacred resource” the quality and number of indigenous Australian artworks in the Janet Holmes a Court collection is simply breathtaking. 

Collection Focus : Indigenous Art marks the first of a series of annual exhibitions focusing on specific aspects of the Janet Holmes à Court Collection. This year’s focus is indigenous art acquired over the last four years, representing seven language groups and seventeen indigenous artists. The works are derived from such regions as the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (aka APY), Martu, Kimberley, Roebourne, Warburton, Irruntju and Yuendumu lands. The exhibition attests to an ongoing, wide-spanning interest in indigenous art as the pre-eminent contemporary art of Australia.

Image credit: Renita Woods, Minyma Kutjara - Special Story for Irrunytju, 2020, Copyright of the Artist.

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION : DWELLING RITUALS

Dwelling Rituals

26 September 2021 - 23 January 2022

Dwelling Rituals focuses on home and the significance of the everyday. Small gestures, repeated actions, daily habits, the materials and objects of home each hold meanings significant to our being in the world. Artists explore the repetitiveness of housework for the sake of harmony; meditate on the dwelling rituals and traditions of past times; on the connection between home and the natural environment and how the home is affected by threats to its environment. Dwelling Rituals presents artworks from artists across the Southwest, Wheatbelt and Great Southern regions of Western Australia. 

Image: Christine Gregory, Patterns, 2021 (detail), image courtesy and copyright of the artist.

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION : GEORGE HAYNES 2020-21

George Haynes 2020-21

23 May - 19 September

A smouldering sunset, a light dappled hill, soft pastel tones swallowed by intense hues and a grip on realism almost taken over by abstraction. Such characteristics define the works of George Haynes, an artist whose skill, intellect and wry sensibility make for a dynamic, varied and influential body of work. 

George Haynes 2020-21 presents mostly recent works, created throughout 2020, a year unlike any other. 

Image: George Haynes, At the End of the Day, 2020-21, image courtesy and copyright of the artist.

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION : INTIMACY

INTIMACY

21 February - 16 May 2021

This exhibition is about intimacy and its antithesis. It offers a look at the past through the lens of the present and in particular the state that overcame humanity throughout 2020. With attention to the joys of proximity with others and the pain of separation, Intimacy considers different states of humanity, it pictures people and different relationships; scenes of decadent celebration, nights at the theatre and groups of people clustered at the beach, in contrast to scenes of isolation, convalescence, despair and emptiness. Intimacy acts as a reminder of the value of others, of caring and celebration, of the potential of a joie de vivre in a world where intimacy is so easily endangered.

Artists:
Rick Amor, Hans Arkeveld, Merrick Belyea, Josl Bergner, William Boissevain, Charles Conder, Robert Dickerson, William Dobell, David Downs, Russell Drysdale, Emanuel Fox, Anne Marie Graham, Guy Grey Smith, Paddy Jaminji, James Linton, Francis Lymburner, Mary McLean, Alexander Nganjmirra, John Oldham, Margaret Priest, Thea Proctor, Peter Skipper.

Image: Anne Marie Graham, The Outing, 1968, Copyright of the artist's estate.

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION : TRACING THE SWAN

TRACING THE SWAN

28 September 2020 - 7 February 2021

Tracing the Swan follows the story of the settlement of the Swan River Colony with the swan as the central character in artworks about race, difference and the unexpected. 

In a play between fiction and reality, the black swan is traced throughout the history of the colonisation of Western Australia up to the present day. From historical to contemporary artworks, the exhibition explores how WA was presented to potential settlers, how its landscape was impacted and has changed over time, and how the swan stands as emblem of WA against this tide of changes in its real environment. 

Image: Ross Potter, The Witness, 2020, image courtesy and copyright of the artist.

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION : FIBRE

FIBRE

25 June - 20 September 2020

FIBRE presents stitched, threaded, strung, rubbed, ripped, folded and pressed Fibre art. From silky and delicate, to course and robust, the works speak of material manipulation and ritualistic gestures of repetitive stitching and rubbing. Everyday clothing is cut, re-stitched and sculpted anew; forms of nature are enveloped in felt and fabric; human hair is shaped and strung together; paper is stitched into and; native flora and fauna are pictured and sculpted of, with and on fibres.
 
Coming out of a time of social isolation, this exhibition is about intimacy; it compels the sense of touch. It also invites us to consider the intricately crafted qualities of the natural world around us and the cultural significance of fibre and textiles as contemporary art.

Image: Susan Roux, Ink, 2018 (detail)

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION : LESLEY MEANEY | BECOMING AUSTRALIAN

Lesley Meaney | Becoming Australian

17 February - 24 May 2020

A culmination of five decades of the art work of Lesley Meaney. This show unfolds as a sensorial experience of fiery sunburnt colours, luminous greens and deep earthy tones. The works evoke a sense of place and belonging, as a sustained, experimental and unique response to the Australian landscape. For Lesley Meaney, each new body of work is another journey, another discovery, another set of artistic challenges to resolve along the way towards becoming Australian.

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION : ENIGMAS OF THE OUTBACK

Enigmas of the Outback

29 September 2019 - 9 February 2020

This exhibition is about the Australian outback as an enigmatic, mysterious, spirited and haunted terrain.

The selection of photographic, paint and sculptural works reflect upon how the outback triggers the imagination in unsettling ways. Through responses to the spirituality and mythology of the Australian landscape, this exhibition is at once darkly evocative and psychologically compelling.

Featured are both indigenous and non-indigenous works from the Janet Holmes à Court Collection, Murdoch University Collection and works by local contemporary artists for sale.

ARTISTS: Brook Andrew, Jane Burton, Rebecca Dagnall, Eva Fernandez, David Downs Jarinyanu, Nigel Hewitt, Janet Laurence, Rosslynd Piggott, Polixeni Papapetrou, Brad Rimmer, Jacqui Stockdale, Monique Tippet, Paul Uhlmann, Paddy Fordham Wainburranga, Toni Wilkinson.  

Image: Jane Burton, Motherland #8, 2008, 79 x 79cm, Type C photograph. Artwork courtesy of Murdoch University Art Collection. Copyright courtesy of Bett Gallery.

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION : CONCRETE E X P A N D E D

Concrete  E X P A N D E D

2 June - 22 September 2019

This exhibition examines the effects and affects of colour, design, pattern and shape with works featuring geometric abstraction. It takes part in a trans-historical conversation concerning the reconfiguration of Minimalist and Concrete Art in the new millennium. It suggests an expansion of the genre of Concrete Art, where hard edged minimal abstraction, pure colour forms and ephemeral light works coalesce and converse in philosophical questions of form, aesthetic experience and existence.

Image: Josh Webb, Altar 6, 2018 

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION : Vintage Portraits | Classic Paintings

Vintage Portraits | Classic Paintings

17th February - 26th May 2019

With an expansive and highly recognised career, Photographer Richard Woldendorp has captured exquisite landscape, breathtaking aerial and poignant portraiture photography. While he is best known for his geographic aerial images, this exhibition focuses on the human element, displaying recently acquired portraiture photographs of well-known Western Australian artists and pairing them with works of those artists from the Janet Holmes à Court Collection.

Artists include: William Boissevain, Tom Gibbons, Guy Grey-Smith, George Haynes, Robert Juniper, Brian McKay, Kathleen O’Connor and Hal Missingham.

Image: Richard Woldendorp, George Haynes, Darlington WA, 1989, 30.5 x 40.5cm. Copyright of the Artist

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION : HARALD VIKE SPIRIT OF THE MAN

Harald Vike - Spirit of the Man

14 October 2018 -  3 February 2019

'...the sun is my undoing' Harald Vike, 1983

Vike spent many years attempting to capture the brilliance of the Australian light in paint. From the time Vike moved from Norway to Perth in 1927 until he died in 1987 he was a dedicated and driven self - taught artist. He had a love for Perth, the first major city he lived in, creating an impressive body of work during the 1930s and 1940s. Vike had a deep respect for nature and the environment, and was passionate about untamed landscapes as well as the cultivated aspects of a city. He had an interest in people, and had great ability in capturing the essence of people in quick sketches, detailed drawings and exaggerated caricatures. Vike's life and work is reflected in this exhibition, drawing from the Janet Holmes à Court Collection, the WA Museum, the Museum of Performing Arts, North Metropolitan TAFE Collection, the Andrew Ross Collection and the Phillip and Michele McNamara Collection. 

Image: Harald Vike Parliament House Gardens 1938, oil on canvas on board, 42 x 53 cm. Copyright and courtesy the estate of the artist.

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION : THE BORDER CROSSERS

The Border Crossers - Clyde McGill

10 June - 7 October 2018

What are the borderlands? Who determines them and why? Who may cross? Who may not? Who does deliberately cross the borders? Where are they from? Why are they leaving? What are their hopes? What is their journey? What do they bring with them? Are they welcomed or turned back? Do they just disappear? Who cares? Who doesn’t?

In 2007 Clyde McGill began looking at borderlands as they relate to people who come by boat. He focussed first on the fate of a young Indonesian fisherman who tragically died on a boat detained in Darwin Harbour. This exhibition contains his story within a much broader narrative of the refugee who comes by boat. Clyde will be in residence on the studio floor in the gallery from 1 July - 22 July.

Image: Clyde McGill The Border Crosser (Except), 2011, mixed media on unstretched linen, 220 x 320 cm

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION: REMOVING THE TRACES

Removing the Traces

11 February - 3 June 2018

Aspects of abstraction from the Janet Holmes à Court Collection.

This exhibition presents intriguing aspects of south-west landscape from the Janet Holmes à Court Collection. The works demonstrate varying degrees and methods of abstraction e.g. ultra-simplification, gestural and expressive brushwork, flattening of the picture surface and saturated colour, whilst maintaining the formal principles of line, form, shape, value, movement and composition. The real subjects recede and the aesthetics become the dominant factors. The purpose of this exhibition is to share some significant and captivating abstract works from the collection, works representing the essence of land, forest and water alongside demonstrations of longstanding Aboriginal presence.

Image: Howard Taylor Landscape Emblem, 1984, oil on panel, 102 x144 cm. Copyright Howard H. Taylor Estate represnted by Galerie Dusseldorf. 

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION: SCRATCHING THE SURFACE DOWN SOUTH

Scratching the Surface Down South

8 October 2017 - 28 January 2018

Scratching the Surface Down South brings two thirds of the works currently showing at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery at UWA to the Holmes à Court Gallery at Vasse Felix for the enjoyment of Margaret River locals and visitors to the area.

The works trace how one of the most acclaimed private collections of Australian art was built – from 1968 when Janet and Robert Holmes à Court purchased their first works from the Darlington Arts & Crafts Gallery in the Perth Hills, until today.

Available also will be MUSE: A Journey through an Art Collection, written by Janet Holmes à Court and published by UWA Publishing.

The book and exhibition are tangible expressions of Janet Holmes à Court’s extensive passion for the arts. Of the 143 works in the book there will be approximately 50 in the exhibition, an even smaller scratch on the surface of the collection than that in the exhibition at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery. Enough still to provide a snapshot of place, people, history, culture and concerns – a small window into the heart and mind of the collector.

Image: Rachel Coad, Janet Holmes à Court, 2015, oil and pencil on linen, 200 x 285 cm. Janet Holmes à Court Collection. Image copyright & courtesy the artist.