On Island NOW

With some time to spare before getting on the highway back to my home in the West of

Tasmania I headed to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Some exhibition signage ‘On

Island’ introduced the exhibition. What was this about? Stepping into the darkened

space it quickly became apparent to me what this exhibition might be about. It was about

‘time travel’ and another more substantial ‘dose’ of that sense of the past. The feeling of

my younger self drifting into the room to encounter my older self and the ‘old’ gang.

Artists who worked together at the Chameleon Artist’s Co-Operative in Campbell Street

and/or The Tasmanian School of Art in the 1980’s and then formed around the ambitions

of Dick Bett to open a serious commercial exhibition space in Hobart. My large Elsewhere

World etching panorama was on display, near David Keeling’s exquisite painting, which

was behind the late John Smith’s glossy white sculpture, which was partly illuminated by

Julie Gough’s video projection around the corner from Pat Brassington’s surreal collages

across from Amanda Davies startling painting of institutional terror on the way to Richard

Wastell’s painted panorama of highland hunting & gathering.

-  Raymond Arnold, 2025

Painting gives form to the ordinary, the extraordinary and to the dreamed. This island’s shifting light – its buttery yellows, cadmium glows, raw umber shadows and falling twinkling darks- challenges how I see and feel. 

I’m not painting the island, but living here keeps teaching me how to paint.

- Amanda Davies, 2025

Working on island to me means having the clear air and space to think and produce work without distraction, to look inwards intensely, whilst having the time to perfect one’s practice.

- David Keeling, 2025

Being on island, to me, means being physically and spiritually connected to my country, lutruwita (Tasmania). Being here means I can continue the ancient Tasmanian Aboriginal artform of Shell Stringing in the same way that my Ancestors did. 

- Ashley Murray, 2025

I did a project with some kids called "the edge of nowhere is the centre of everything". Then this artist on the mainland used the title for their own work, word for word, because I am on the edge, and they are in the centre and that's how it works.

- Robert O'Connor, 2025

What On Island Now means to me now is ‘home’. When I came to Tasmania in 2015 to conduct photoshoots for Tempest I was a visitor and captivated by the natural environment. I quickly realised that this is where I wanted to live. It was 6 years before I could make the move but now, being surrounded by such beauty every day is a constant source of joy. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.

- Valerie Sparks, 2025

All photographs document time, if only for an instant. Although I often used long time exposures in my earlier night photography, recently I have been using very long daytime exposures to trace the daily passage of the sun and its seasonal movement north and south. While our human problems sometimes seem overwhelming, it’s both humbling and strangely reassuring to be reminded while watching the sun arc across the sky and etch its image onto my film that we are just specks on a big spinning rock that’s been circling for a few billion years around an enormous burning orb, itself only a tiny mote in an incomprehensively large and old universe.

- David Stephenson, 2025

Despite everything, living on island now means still being able to catch up a feed of abalone off the rocks and at the same time catch up some inspiration for my paintings.

- Richard Wastell, 2025

Being an Islander is so entwined with my life that it cannot be easily unravelled... the Island is both physical and psychological, we are circumscribed by it geographically and mentally.

- Philip Wolfhagen, 2025