Through the Artist’s Eye

While New Norcia and its collection of Old Master paintings may be well known to Western Australians, there is another side to the story. Since the Great Art Robbery of 1986 the New Norcia Gallery has been steadily building a complimentary collection of contemporary Australian art works which explore New Norcia and its interests from a range of perspectives.

Through the Artist’s Eye offered Western Australian galleries the opportunity to show selected works from New Norcia’s collection.

Using New Norcia as their inspiration, artists in this exhibition explored subjects as varied as place, history and ideas. Some like David Gregson and Kenneth Jack have been attracted by New Norcia’s strange juxtaposition of built and natural environments and explored the physicality of place. Mirriam Stannage, Ian Hill and Norma MacDonald were drawn to the early history of the site and the missionaries’ relationship to the land and the local Yuat people they came to work with. Artists like John Coburn, Brian McKay and Gillian Green represented a third group. They explored some of the central ideas of monastic life and Christianity which lay below the surface but exerted a powerful influence on the local community and its culture.

Through the Artist’s Eye featured a number of prominent Eastern States artists however the majority were Western Australian and some emerging.