Current & Upcoming Exhibitions
TINA PECH
BOOKISH
1 March - 1 June 2025
Why do we like books? Is it just their content we admire, or their look and feel? What makes a book more than a literary object? These are the questions Baradine artist Tina Pech explores in her exhibition, Bookish.
Books historically have been valued as the keepers of knowledge. Books house both information and imagination: they contain our stories, records, secrets, and potentials for growth, insight, and change. While they remain silent communicators, their power is towering, inspiring us to read, absorb, inscribe, and to become story tellers in our own right.
Bookish features works that use traditional and invented construction methods, as well as alternative stitching and materials, to create a collection of book-like sculptures, mutations, and hybrids which push and challenge how we regard books and their functions. Bookish shows works that seek to extend a book’s structure and contents beyond the expected, as well as challenging our perception of books. Bookish shows books as structural vessels able to be deconstructed and reimagined, laying bare a book’s skeletal anatomy while displaying their layers and accentuating their content.
Tina Pech is a fibre textile artist whose creative practice is heavily influenced by the physicality of books, their tactility, warmth, and tangible presence. Through the practice of constructing and deconstructing books, she invites us to explore their physical structure, experimenting and playing with a book's boundaries and anatomy.
This is a HomeGround exhibition, produced by the WPCC and supported by Orana Arts. HomeGround is sponsored by Wingewarra Dental.
IN CONVERSATION EVENT: Saturday 1 March 2025, 2pm
Register your attendance HERE
Image: Tina Pech, Book Blossom 1, 2024, altered book sculpture, gesso, acrylic paint. Image courtesy the artist.
YEAR OF TOYS
WASTE 2 ART
8 March - 25 May 2025
Waste 2 Art is an annual community art exhibition and competition that features artworks created by community members using recycled and unwanted materials. The results are imaginative and thought-provoking with the artworks showcasing recycling and sustainable living.
With this creative use of waste materials, Waste 2 Art also provides an innovative approach to waste education. Schools and community groups take up the challenge and create artworks out of materials that might otherwise be thrown away.
The theme for this year's exhibition is Toys.
Dubbo Regional Council is a proud NetWaste member and supports commitment to re-use and recycle through creative expression.
OFFICIAL OPENING: Saturday 15 March, 2pm.
Register your attendance HERE
Image: Zachary Craig, Mr Porkbunz, 2024, cardboard, image courtesy of Dubbo Regional Council.
ZANNY BEGG
THESE STORIES WILL BE DIFFERENT
8 March - 25 May 2025
These Stories Will be Different brings together a fascinating series of works that reimagine a medieval feminist utopia, probe the unsolved murder of a high-profile anti-gentrification campaigner and explore the connections between love, loss, and language in migrant communities in Australia.
The videos tell stories, but they also challenge the conventions of storytelling. Zanny Begg’s work invites you to see the world differently by drawing on ancient literary traditions, non-linear timeframes, and computer-generated randomisation.
Curated by UNSW Galleries, Sydney and touring nationally in partnership with Museums & Galleries of NSW.
Image: Zanny Begg, Stories of Kannagi 2019. Single-channel digital video, 23 minutes. Image courtesy of the artist
1080: RABBIT CONTROL
23 November 2024 - 11 May 2025
Using a series of rare images this exhibition explores the environmental impact of the European Rabbit as an introduced species into the Australian landscape. By the 1950s Rabbits had reached plaque proportions across Australia, and attempts to control the rabbit problem, included experiments conducted by the Dubbo Pastures Protection Board with the poison 1080.
This From the Vault exhibition has been supported by funding from Create NSW.
Image: Photographer Unknown, Trail leading up a hill for 1080 poison baits, c.1953, Central West Local Lands Service, Local Studies Collection, Dubbo Regional Council, 2018_103_PHO
FROM THE VAULT
A WOMAN'S PLACE
10 May 2024 - 4 May 2025
This exhibition explores the stories of three local women of Dubbo, from three different time periods dating from the late 1800s through to the 1940s. The stories of these women reflect a broader discussion around women’s roles in the public sphere.
Mrs Blanche Soane was a prominent Suffragette, Nurse Mary Adams, the Matron of a Lying-in Hospital, and Mrs ‘Kep’ Wilkins, a prominent producer and organiser in Dubbo’s Theatrical community, how do we understand such prominent and respected local women in an era when it was a firmly held view that a ‘woman’s place’ was in the home?
From the Vault is supported by Create NSW.
Curated by Simone Taylor
Image: Photographer Unknown, Group portrait of nurses including Mary McDonald, later Matron Adams, Local Studies Collection, Dubbo Regional Council, 2015_222_PHO
CRAFTING A DIFFERENCE
CHANGEMAKERS
17 May - 27 July 2025
Changemakers: Crafting a difference consists of an exhibition of textile banners that represent a range of historical and contemporary activist movements, together with banner-making workshops facilitated by artist and craftivist Dr Tal Fitzpatrick. Aesthetically, the works draw on the history of textile banners as artefacts used for activism, including the women’s suffrage campaign, as well as banners displayed in town halls and churches.
The exhibition demonstrates that Australian women’s quest for freedom and equality is ongoing. Many of the social issues raised by early activists remain vitally relevant today, including equal pay, sexual harassment, family violence, and female representation in Parliament and business.
Changemakers focuses on women’s empowerment and demonstrates that crafting — traditionally considered ‘women’s work’ — can be used for political expression and social change.
Changemakers: Crafting a difference is a travelling exhibition from the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, sponsored by Commonwealth Bank as part of CommBank Next Chapter, a program helping victim survivors of financial abuse achieve long-term financial independence.
Image: Tal Fitzpatrick, Activist banner, 2021. Museum of Australian Democracy Collection.
PEOPLE PLACES POSSESSIONS
DUBBO STORIES
Permanent Exhibition
The history of Dubbo told through the people who lived here. Stories of hardship, perseverance, ingenuity, tragedy and joy – Dubbo’s past is at once surprising and enlightening.
Telling the story of a place and its people is made easier by examining the myriad of ways we document, express and articulate our experiences. For a museum, the photographs, books, objects and official records help us to record history. The archives held by the WPCC allow community members to access this material for research or general interest. From diaries and ledgers to photographs that transport us back in time, the WPCC Collection provides a unique portal to our past.
Image Credit: Maker unknown, Shoe – Female – Chinese, date unknown. Red satin. Braid edging continues down to the toe. Calico sole with embroidery under the heel. Bird and flower embroidery. Orange tie embroidered in shades of blue. Designed for the custom of bound feet. Collection WPCC.
