Developed for TarraWarra Museum of Art, Intimate Imaginaries is the first major touring survey exhibition of artists from Arts Project Australia, and is shaped by the ethos of APA itself. Curator Anthony Fitzpatrick refers to the ‘deep sense of intimacy’ at APA, fostered through a 50-year history of support for studio artists who are neurodivergent, and artists with intellectual disabilities.
The studio’s close-knit community – formed by the artists and their families, studio staff, board members, collectors, as well as the broader arts sector – nurtures its artists and supports their unique creative practice.
Intimate Imaginaries is an exhibition that attests to the inventive ways that the artists engage with and imagine their world. With more than 150 artists represented in the APA studio, Fitzpatrick faced a difficult task when it came to selecting pieces for the exhibition.
Rather than exhibiting a broad range, he decided to focus on artists’ practices in depth, eventually settling on 13 artists. The wide array of work includes painting, drawing, ceramics, soft sculpture and video.
Intimate Imaginaries – quick links
An intimate approach to curating
Fitzpatrick’s curatorial approach was informed by his history with APA. He had previously worked with artists Alan Constable, Bronwyn Hack, Cathy Staughton and Terry Williams for the 2017 APA exhibition Faraway, so close. He had also commissioned Chris O’Brien to create a video in 2021. Called The Cop Shop and originally shown in Intimate Imaginaries at TarraWarra Museum of Art, O’Brien’s video is now included in the touring exhibition.
Fitzpatrick also knew many of the other selected artists from visiting APA exhibitions and reading about their work. When he came to the APA studio, he began looking through artworks in the collection and watching artists creating new pieces – research that helped him choose artworks that best represented each artist and also aligned with the exhibition’s themes.
Through this approach, he has developed an exhibition that explores the development of artists’ individual styles and visual languages, and the way these have been formed by the artist’s particular passions and perspectives.
The artists in Intimate Imaginaries
Samraing Chea, Chris O’Brien, Lisa Reid, Anthony Romagnano and Cathy Staughton reveal how we can be intimately entwined with other humans, places and objects.
Chea’s intricate and detailed drawing, During autumn season trees with leaves are dying and changed into orange colours when they start to come off (2017), reveals a close attention to patterning in both the human and natural worlds.
Reid’s pale blue and white ceramic sewing machine, Mum’s 1971 Elna Supermatic Sewing Machine (2024), evokes the intimacy and domesticity of family life, and points to the handmade aesthetic that permeates the exhibition.
The highly tactile works of Alan Constable, Bronwyn Hack, Mark Smith, Georgia Szmerling and Terry Williams prompt a more physical response, with Smith’s calico figure of a girl on a swing, Li’l Pearly Dreaming (2018), summoning the wild freedom of girlhood.
Other artists, such as Fulli Andrinopoulos, Wendy Dawson and Julian Martin, use abstract shapes, vivid colour and gestural forms of markmaking to evoke interior lives. Andrinopoulos’ tonally rich orbs, created with ink on thick watercolour paper, draw the viewer closer to the work. Like all of the works in the exhibition works, it represents a portal into the artist’s unique world.
Touring Australia
Intimate Imaginaries was initially presented at TarraWarra Museum of Art. As the first major survey of APA artists’ work in an Australian museum, it marks a significant milestone, demonstrating APA’s driving belief that artists with intellectual disabilities should have the same respect, recognition and opportunities as all other artists – including the opportunity to exhibit in major art spaces and exhibitions.
APA commits to this belief through continuous sustenance and advocacy, offering artists the freedom and agency to develop their practice, and several of its studio artists have achieved national and international success as contemporary arts practitioners.
As a further sign of this success, the exhibition now begins a 10-venue interstate regional tour with the support of NETS Victoria. This tour commences at Pinnacles Gallery in Townsville this month, then travels to regional New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory through to mid-2029.
Intimate Imaginaries is testimony to APA’s longstanding support of its artists, and to the creativity and ingenuity that arises because – and not in spite of – disability.
