Year of the Bird Catalogue

Maitland Regional Art Gallery was a big winner this year in the  Museums Australia Multimedia and Publication Design Awards (the MAPDAs)

Maitland picked up the Multimedia and Publication Design Awards in the Corporate, Poster (Paperworks | Nine Exhibitions), Website and Exhibition Branding (Versus 2012 / Blue vs Red, Battle of the Pigments) categories. It also managed to be Highly Commended for Exhibition Branding and Exhibition Catalogue (twice).

The Year of the Bird exhibition was also captured by the award winning team at Maitland Regional Art Gallery, and with particular thanks to designer, Clare Hodgins for her clever fold-out catalogue.

Please feel free to download a copy below.

Download the YOTB Catalogue as a Screen resolution PDF

Heral Review of Year of the Bird

Alas the forums for discussion and review of exhibitions are scarce in the Hunter Valley, and most often limited to a few lines at best, but Jill Stowell kindly mentioned the exhibition in the Herald column last week.

(Apologies to Kate and Merle, we know you are from further away than Tasmania!)

Just click on the image below for a larger version.

Herald review 30 March 2013

Year of the Bird flown by...

Year of the Bird has indeed flown by quickly so we just wanted to thank the artists who generously agreed to loan work to the exhibition. Much appreciation extended to Emma van Leest, Pamela See, Kate Foster & Merle Patchett, Trevor Weekes, Helen Wright, Vanessa Barbay, Marian Drew, and David Hampton.

Enormous thanks also to the Maitland Regional Art Gallery team, particularly Jo Eisenberg and Kim Blunt for their faith in the show, and also Lisa Kirkpatrick, Braddon Snape, and the MRAG volunteers for their work in installing the exhibition - Thank you from Caelli and Helen!

Below are some more installation shots from the gallery.

 

 

Exhibition images

Maitland Mercury Article YOTB

Emma Swain from the Maitland Mercury popped by as we were installing to interview Helen and myself about the exhibition. We were still curating, so we roped Lisa Kirkpatrick in for the photo as we pretended to decide on our favorite David Hamptons (which is of course, all of them!)

Please click on the image below for a more readable version.

Maitland Mercury article 21 February 2013

YOTB Install at MRAG

It felt like painting two giant lounge rooms more than anything (up until today), but work for Year of the Bird has finally made it to the walls at Maitland Regional Art Gallery.

So much paint and preparation, just to get back to the gallery's usual white cube, but it is now looking like more of an exhibition.

Lisa Kirkpatrick, Braddon Snape, the installation team and MRAG volunteers have been fantastic in materialising the show so far. Clare Hodgins has designed a fantastic catalogue to accompany the exhibition. Enormous thanks to them!

Please join us for the opening on Saturday 23rd February at 3:00pm if you can...

David Hampton's work in progress at the YOTB install @ MRAG 19/02/2013

Minding Animals CEO to open exhibition!

We're very pleased to announce that Dr Rod Bennison, CEO of Minding Animals International, will be opening the Year of the Bird exhibition on Saturday 23rd February, 2013, at around 3.30pm.

Here's some more information about Dr Bennison and his work with Minding Animals, including information about an upcoming conference in India:

'Dr Rod Bennison is the CEO of Minding Animals International. An environmentalist and animal advocate for over 30 years, he has worked for many organisations in both a paid and voluntary capacity. He has also dabbled in academia, as well as in politics and has worked for several NSW Parliamentarians and Senators. Currently, beyond his international commitments to Minding Animals and other organisations dedicated to animal protection, he is the Environmental Manager for a major engineering and environmental consultancy business based in the Hunter Valley. He also has an ongoing passion for rescuing and adopting greyhounds.


As an Animal Studies scholar, his main interests lie within the field of compassionate conservation, specifically within an environmentalist framework that he outlined over the years as Ecological Inclusion. Ecological Inclusion, as Rod has outlined, is a concept that seeks to protect as much of the natural environment as possible whilst at the same time protecting all individuals within the environment.

The next Minding Animals International Conference will be held in Dehli, India, from 14 to 20 January, 2015. Just like the first conference held in Newcastle in Australia, and the second held in Utrecht in the Netherlands, the third conference promises to be even bigger and more ground-breaking, this time focussing on wildlife. If you love animals or just know that we should afford greater respect and compassion to our fellow Earth citizens, we would like to welcome you to the conference to discuss the human nonhuman animal inter-relationship, animal protection and the future of our planet'.