9 August – 17 September, 2022
Borrowed by Carla Tucker is a community exhibition showing at the Town Hall Gallery. The exhibition features still life paintings that pay homage to existing artworks, including selected pieces from the Town Hall Gallery Collection.
Looking closely, Borrowed depicts books, Australian native flowers, vases, and more, that echo the colours, materials, or composition of an original piece. It celebrates the influence of art history by carefully revealing the traces of a painting within another painting.
Each new work in Borrowed responds to a painting that Tucker has drawn to from the twentieth century. Through the lens of reverent portraits, landscapes and still lifes, Tucker pays respect to past artists by ‘borrowing’ from their legacy, aptly bound in the form of book motifs featured throughout many of the works on display.
Influenced by numerous artists from overseas and Australia, the most prominent influence behind the Borrowed exhibition is Australian Modernist artist, Alison Rehfisch (1900-1975).
Originating in the fashion and textile industry after graduating from RMIT in textile design, Tucker was eventually taken by the pure creativity of oil painting, with a portrait of her daughter, Zoe, selected as a semi-finalist in the Darling Portrait Prize. “I love the creative freedom of painting. I paint with oils and I find the use of oil as a medium so satisfying and so broad in its range.”
Tucker expressed, “I like to arrange objects in a manner that displays a strong design element. The process of arranging a set up can take a long time before finally the composition ‘clicks’ into place.”
Image credit: Carla Tucker, ‘Banksias with Book’, 2022, oil on canvas, 93 x 74, image courtesy of the artist.
Celebrity cartoons and puns that make you cringe. Welcome to the world of Sandwich Bag Dad
16 August – 24 September, 2022
Pun king and artist, Dave Blumenthal- also known as Sandwich Bag Dad, has drawn cartoons on his kids’ lunch bags since 2012. Detailed and whimsical, this exhibition of his quirky cartoon art is on display at Town Hall Gallery, bringing smiles, laughs, and endless creativity confined only by the size of a brown paper sandwich bag. Side effects may include a few smirks, extended eye-rolling and some groans.
Combining a love of art and wordplay, ‘The Cartoon Chronicles of Sandwich Bag Dad’ is a celebration of Blumenthal’s lunch bag artworks that have entertained a growing, worldwide community of dad joke enthusiasts for nearly a decade. What started as an endearing idea to add some fun to his eldest daughter’s school day has since morphed into a collection of thousands of lunch bag cartoons and a social media following spanning the globe.
This community exhibition features a selection of Blumenthal’s greatest pun-filled, hand-drawn illustrations that have been a delight for teachers and students alike at his daughter’s school.
Blumenthal said, “I’m super excited to announce my next public exhibition at Town Hall Gallery. You’ll be surrounded by 50 of my best dad joke, carefully curated from my large collection that has grown over the years”.
Image Credit: Dave Blumenthal, ‘Whine with Dinner’, 2020, pencil on sandwich bag, 25 x 21cm, image courtesy of the artist.
