Gippsland Art Gallery is delighted to announce the much-anticipated Annemieke Mein ‘blockbuster’ exhibition, A Life’s Work, will be staged at the Gallery from March 2 to May 26.
Coinciding with Annemieke’s 80th birthday, this major retrospective will provide the most comprehensive survey of her work yet seen.
Annemieke Mein OAM is a Dutch-born Australian textile artist, based in Sale, Gippsland, who has drawn acclaim nationally and from abroad for her vivid recreations of Australian native fauna and flora.
She was the first textile artist to be made a member of Wildlife Art Society of Australasia and the Australian Guild of Realist Artists. The subjects of her sculpted textiles range from birds, frogs and fish, through to insects such as moths, dragonflies, wasps and grasshoppers. Her fondness for insects and her highly detailed works, often greatly enlarged and showing normally invisible colours and textures, have revealed new aspects of the everyday natural world.
A Life’s Work will be a unique exhibition that will pay tribute to this greatly loved textile artist, who has inspired and influenced vast audiences over many decades. Drawing together over 200 original artworks created over a 60-year period, from private and public collections nationwide (some of which have never been exhibited), this unforgettable retrospective will explore all facets of Mein’s life and career. Occupying all five spaces at the gallery, the exhibition will present key works from her major wildlife themes, and will include a recreation of her art studio within the gallery.
A Life’s Work will span from Annemieke’s first experiments with textile in the 1960s, through to the masterworks from the 1980s that catapulted her to international acclaim. The exhibition will showcase the full range of Annemieke’s art making with three-dimensional sculptural works, drawings, sketches and bas-relief bronzes presented alongside the extraordinary wall-based relief textiles that established her reputation, in which the objects are given sculptural form and appear to project forward from the surface of the canvas.
A defining characteristic of Annemieke’s work has been her boundless passion for Australian native wildlife.
“All my textiles whether freestanding sculptures, wall panels or ‘wearables’, portray the endless diversity of Australian flora, fauna and landscape, both climatically and seasonally. Occasionally, I have depicted human involvement related to environmental issues or historical events,” she said.
“Each individual work is a statement of respect and love for my environment and it is through this work that I hope to make people more aware of the importance of preserving our natural heritage.”
A Life’s Work will coincide with the publication of a new book on Annemieke Mein – the first since 1992’s The Art of Annemieke Mein: Wildlife Artist in Textiles, which has sold almost half a million copies worldwide – together with a complete range of new merchandise. The book A Life’s Work will provide a comprehensive overview of her work, with contributions from sixteen writers who will explore every facet of her life and career.
Tickets for this unmissable exhibition are now on sale exclusively from the Gippsland Art Gallery website, noting that visitors are not required to pre-book, and will be able to purchase tickets from gallery reception on the day of their visit.
