Disappearing

In March 2021 Bett Gallery hosted a Painters and Writers exhibition entitled Disappearing.

A small group of Tasmanian artists and writers were invited to join curators Carol Bett (Bett Gallery), Gerard Castles and Pete Hay to explore the idea of what it means to be Tasmanian, on our island and who we are and might be as islanders at this moment in our unfolding story. 

It required a leap of faith and collaboration. Writers and artists responded to each other’s work, challenged thinking, stimulated discussion and reset ideas. 

Fourteen visual artists and fourteen writers paired and worked collaboratively to produce new work that reflected both the artist’s and writer’s experiences, their responses to the current and future situation and to each other's perspective. The finished works toke the conversation beyond the confines of the gallery.   

Participating artists and writers were: Heather Rose and  Michaye Boulter, Simon Bevilacqua and Tim Burns, Rachel Leary and  Helen Wright, Greg Lehman and Brigita Ozolins, James Dryburgh and Richard Wastell, Ben Walter and Tom O’Hern, Danielle Wood and David Keeling, Justin Kurzel and Rob Connor, Katherine Johnson and Amanda Davies, Leigh Woolley and Neil Haddon, Carol Patterson Amber Korolu Stephenson, Jenny Weber and Matt Coyle.

Disappearing

By Pete Hay

Disappearing : to cease to be seen; vanish from sight; to cease to exist or be known; pass away; end gradually.

In our islands, their past, the land, seas, the movement of air, its peoples, the cadence of life and in the place itself is something unfathomably beautiful. You sense it as much as see it.  It’s about connection and time not the here and now. It’s a secret that has been closely held, cherished, sustaining our soul.

Entwined with that secret has been a hope that one day Tasmania would be recognised, acknowledged and able to stand on its own two feet. This has been elusive but now we are told that perhaps it is so close as to be reckoned by the beads on the accountant’s abacus.

Then again, perhaps not. Is the price we are paying a disappearing, a disappearing of the very stuff that sustains us? Or, is it a more complex story, shedding a skin as part of the inexorable march of renewal?

Disappearing.