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Still dreaming

19/6/2025

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In his 90th year John Adam reckons he’s still learning, one canvas at a time
By Catherine Watson
 
IN HIS 90th year, Phillip Island artist John Adam is enjoying a purple patch. He has completed a major commission for the new Cowes Community Hospital and celebrated the return of his historical mural of Phillip Island to public view in Cowes.
 
Next month Berninneit Gallery will host Vision and Reality, a retrospective of his works dating back over 70 years, including works completed this year.
 
“I’ve been very lucky,” Adam says simply. “I've been able to keep doing it. There are periods when I get depressed, but I've never stopped painting.”

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From shields to surfboards

8/6/2025

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PictureSteve Ulula Parker, with great nephew Esra. His call to country is for all of us.


​By Catherine Watson

THERE’S a recurring motif in Steve Ulula Parker’s new exhibition at Berninneit: a diamond shape. It’s in the surfboards, the skateboards, the bark canoe, the shields and the scar tree.

The diamond is a traditional pattern of the Boonwurrung, his people. He’s been researching his ancestors’ stories and connecting with their traditional patterns through artworks and artefacts held in the Melbourne Museum. While those works are off limits to most people he has access as a Traditional Owner.


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Touched by the light

5/6/2025

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Warren Nichols and Turner’s Falls of the Schaffhausen
By Catherine Watson

SEEING his painting hanging alongside original works by J.M.W. Turner is not something Warren Nichols could ever have predicted. It came to reality on Friday night with the opening of a blockbuster exhibition titled Turner & Australia at the Gippsland Art Gallery in Sale.

The exhibition draws together key works by Turner from Australian public collections, alongside works by Australian artists who have been influenced by him, including such illustrious names as Eugene von Guérard, Frederick McCubbin, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Clarice Beckett, Jessie Traill, Lloyd Rees, Tracey Moffatt, Tony Smibert and Valerie Sparks.

And Warren Nichols. Twelve months ago, the Ventnor landscape artist received an invitation from curator and gallery director Simon Gregg to join the distinguished group.

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More than water

16/5/2025

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Where Two Rivers Meet by Iryna MacMillan

​A SPECTACULAR night sky photo titled ‘Where Two Rivers Meet’ has won first prize in West Gippsland Catchment Management Authority’s (CMA) photo competition.   

The celestial image was chosen for its unique perspective of West Gippsland’s rivers. Taken by Sale resident Iryna MacMillan, it perfectly reflects the theme of rivers being much more than just water. 

“I was chasing the Milky Way at Swing Bridge. In the image we can see the Milky Way, the planet Venus and a pink Aurora on the left. It was a beautiful night and very inspiring,” said Iryna who moved to Australia from Ukraine over 20 years ago.  ​

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The birds are back

12/5/2025

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As our migratory shorebirds depart for their Arctic breeding grounds, the Flyways exhibition opens to celebrate their extraordinary journey.
By Ursula Theinert
 
LAST year ArtSpace Wonthaggi hosted a series of workshops called ‘Across the Waters’ that celebrated the migratory birds of Western Port.

As many as five million shorebirds from 36 species arrive on our shores annually after making the epic 12,500km trip from their Arctic breeding grounds.  The route they follow is called the East Asian-Australasian Flyway and it passes through 23 countries. For many of these birds, the mudflats and beaches of Western Port/Warn Marin are home from October till May.​

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​Home is where the art is

14/4/2025

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John Adam's mural of Phillip Island history has been rehung at one of the busiest entrances to Cowes.
IN HIS 90th year, Phillip Island artist John Adam is enjoying a purple patch. Last year he was commissioned to do a major work for the new Cowes Community Hospital. In July a retrospective of his works will be exhibited in the Berninneit Gallery. And on Friday John’s many friends gathered at the Creative Arts Station in Settlement Road to welcome back his mural of Phillip Island history.

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Double for Inverloch writer

27/3/2025

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Judy Vradenburg, third from right, with winners of the 2024 Victorian Community History Awards. Photo: Claryssa Humennyj-Jameson, ISKA PHOTOGRAPHY
INVERLOCH writer Judy Vradenburg has pulled off a quinella with her history of a community campaign pulling off a second major award.
​
On Monday Wallace Avenue Community Park Inverloch: A Short History took out the Collaborative Community History Award at the 2024 Victorian Community History Awards. 

The book is a fly-on-the-wall account of community activism to save a local park from being sold by the council to a developer. ​

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​The voyager

24/3/2025

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PictureA sense of timelessness, of slow-moving waters and a world beyond the human one ... Jan Learmonth at the opening of her recent exhibition Passages, at the Gippsland Art Gallery.
By Louisa Waters
 
VISITING Jan Learmonth’s studio and home at Inverloch, the phrase “salt of the earth” is befitting of the experience; quite sensorially as you take in sweeping views to the south-east of Andersons Bay, inhale the salty yet delectably clean air, which instantly calms one’s fraught inner self. But then also, less tangibly, when you are greeted by Jan’s warmth and humble disposition.

​It is the first sense you get of her practice, which is almost completely of the land. While humanly and humanely constructed, it feels devoid of an anthropocentric view. While Jan’s work rarely seeks to directly represent the unique landscape around her, the view from the studio is not one that can be ignored. The ocean is an ever-present force and so it seems to make itself present in the work in subtle if not overt ways. 


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​All together now

28/2/2025

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Picture100 Women, 100 Stories celebrates the power of women’s voices.
DURING the 2020 lockdowns, a community arts organisation called The House That Dan Built spoke to 100 women from around Australia. They shared stories of resilience, connection to community, and reflections on their lives.
​
The recorded interviews were given to six award-winning Australian female composers who wove those stories into a one-hour choral experience.
 
The event premiered at the Sydney Town Hall in 2023 and this month it comes to Wonthaggi’s Union Theatre.


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​Time and space

9/12/2024

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PictureAnnalisa Christiansen: Shack Bay
By Liane Arno

THERE aren’t many good things that have come out of our battle with COVID19 – but Annalisa Christiansen’s beautiful landscape paintings are some of them.

It was like the world had halted for Annalisa. She didn’t feel guilty by taking the time and mental space to paint when she picked up a paintbrush and started capturing the scenes around her.

It was the inspiring landscape of the Bass Coast that had brought her, her partner and two children to Inverloch.  They previously lived in Tallarook in the middle of a forest and 20 minutes at the end of a dusty road.  It was beautiful and charming for a couple but when the children were born the 20 minutes’ drive became a burden to be commuted endlessly during the day and an isolating reality in the midst of the bushfire season.


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Our summer of art

9/12/2024

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PictureElsa Osabutey: Friends 1, on show in the PICES 50 x 50 Art Exhibition.
By Warren Nichols

IN ITS endeavours to introduce contemporary art to the local and visiting community, the Phillip Island Contemporary Exhibition Space (PICES) continues to evolve in unexpected ways.

This year PICES presents an exciting series of summer exhibitions at the Berninneit Gallery, again in partnership with Bass Coast Shire Council.

Last summer we presented four of the increasingly popular pop up exhibitions, followed by the acclaimed PICES in Focus exhibition. This summer PICES is proud to present the PICES 50 x 50 Art Exhibition followed by two PICES 2025 Pop Up Exhibitions.


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Same, same, different

15/11/2024

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PictureSolace (above) and Red Rattler are a group of locals who will perform at the Dalyston Hall next month.
By Martin Cox
 
SOLACE and The Red Rattlers are groups with eerily similar people, mainly because they are mostly the same people but playing vastly different types of music.
 
The two groups will perform at Dalyston Hall at 2pm on Sunday December 8. For this concert we are very lucky to also be joined by the Stringz Costero virtuoso Dayna Roberts on violin.
 
Solace performs classical and folk music from the 14th to the 19th Century with a sprinkling of film and popular songs from the 20th Century. They include a nonet (that’s nine!) of singers plus recorders, violin and keyboard.


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Looking for the Tiger

13/11/2024

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A retrospective of Russell Kent’s art at Berninneit features his distinctive style: high realism with
a touch of humour, surrealism and romance. Above: Looking for the Tiger.

By Josephine Allen

WHEN I met Russell Kent in Perth in 1978, we were two eastern staters ... I was doing my final year at secondary teachers’ college and Russell had come west from Phillip Island and Melbourne to fulfill his itch for art and travel. He was living the life of an artist.

It wasn’t the life that had been mapped out for him. Born in the Cowes Hospital on 31 May 1954, he was a fourth-generation descendant of a Dalyston farmer and the first son of three to Jean and George Kent, bulldozer contractors. He spent his formulative and schooling years in Wonthaggi.  When Russell was thirteen his parents bought the Anchorage General store in Ventnor and the family came to live on Phillip Island.​

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Here to stay

16/10/2024

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PictureAfter years of being shuffled around, the Phillip Island Community
Art & Craft Gallery has a new home.
By Aleta Groves
 
The Phillip Island Community Art & Craft Gallery is a local not for profit community group with a long history. The art & craft centre was established in Chapel Street in 1993, and the Phillip Island Arts Council handed over the management of the centre to The Artists’ Society of Phillip Island the following year.
 
When these premises were sold in 1997, the council offered the gallery a space at the renovated Cowes Cultural Centre, and we were  located there for over 20 years.
 
When the cultural centre was demolished in 2020, Phillip Island Community and Learning Centre (PICAL) kindly offered us a place at their centre in Church Street. For two years we were very fortunate to still have a small community gallery operating from PICAL.


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Take a bow, Offshore

15/10/2024

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PictureMy Sister Jill in rehearsal: from left, Antonio Castello (Johnnie), Remi D'Agostin (Jill), Marni Johnson (Christine), Kate Bindley (Martha) and Steven Boon (Mouse)
By Catherine Watson
 
Just over a year ago, at Berninneit’s opening event, Remi D'Agostin sat in the audience and wondered what it would be like to perform in such a beautiful space.

As a member of a local community theatre company, it seemed unlikely she’d ever find out.

But next month, Remi and her colleagues at Offshore take over that “beautiful space” for their new production My Sister Jill.

What’s more, their opening performance will be part of the first birthday celebrations for Berninneit.

​“Berninneit has been such an asset to our community in this past year,” Remi says. “It’s a beautiful community space and a bit of a dream for us, a community theatre group, to be performing in such a lovely space.”


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Art, the environment and a good glass of wine

13/10/2024

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PictureWarren loved art, good wine and the Bass Coast Landcare Network.
By Janice Orchard

EVERY good story has a beginning. I hope this is one.

His name was Warren Thompson. I didn’t know him, had never met him, and didn’t want to. Through no fault of his own he had come into my orbit at a time I wasn’t ready.

Lew, a mutual friend, had called me and said that he had been tasked with getting Warren and me together with the aim of running an art show, as I had experience in that field.

But I had just wound up the KernArt Prize, a charity art show that ran for six years, and my tank was low. I wasn't interested.


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Worlds within worlds

16/8/2024

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PictureEllen Hubble and Ray Dahlstrom with Ray’s three-panel Ghost Net.
By Catherine Watson

RAY Dahlstrom and Ellen Hubble were going to call their joint exhibition Depth, until they realised there were too many floating things in their paintings. 

​So they have called it 
Real & Imagined, the idea being that the title would challenge them both.

While Ray found inspiration in the depths of the ocean, Ellen looked beyond the clouds to outer space.   

​Long-time painting friends, these two award-winning artists work very differently.

​
For Ellen, painting starts with an emotional, aesthetic response to a colour or the play of light on the sea or a hill. Despite 30 years of art practice as an artist and secondary school art teacher, she cherishes the moment when the unexpected happens in her art.​


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​Lights, cameras, action

14/7/2024

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PictureBass Coast Shorts invites entries from local filmmakers.
By Marny Javornik

DO YOU have a story to tell? The Bass Coast Shorts film festival is seeking submissions for our next festival in April 2025.

Bass Coast Shorts has hosted two very successful festivals over the past two years in partnership with the Bass Coast Shire.

In 2023, we were delighted to have film makers from all across Australia in attendance who were generous in talking about their film making experiences and processes. It was also great to have people of all ages participating and submitting films about subjects important to them.


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The universal language

13/7/2024

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Robyn Arianrhod’s new book celebrates the power of signs and symbols.
Without them, Einstein wouldn’t have been able to imagine the curving of space-time 
and you wouldn’t have a smart phone. The Post asked our resident mathematician and science writer ​to tell us more – in simple terms. 
​
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Bass Coast Post: So what’s the point of maths now that we’ve all got smart phones?
 
Robyn Arianrhod: For those of us who aren’t designing our improved smart phones and all the other maths-enabled technology we rely on, I guess it depends on taste, and on how much control we like to have over the tech that runs our lives. Understanding some of the maths and science that underpins modern life can give a sense of that control, rather than everything being a mysterious black box.

​As for taste, for me an appreciation of the elegance and power of mathematics is like an appreciation of the arts. That’s what I hope to convey in my books – that the reader comes away not necessarily with a good grasp of higher maths but with an appreciation of it, and of what it can do.


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Call in the A team

10/7/2024

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The Goods Shed, Wonthaggi ... from left, Ursula Theinert, Susan Hall, Karin Ellis and Ellen Hubble.
Words: Catherine Watson
Photos: Laura Brearley and Catherine Watson

 
IT STARTS with chaos. Over 70 works of art of varying sizes, colours, shapes and textures for the Woodlands Exhibition in the Goods Shed … A fabulous collection of works but how do you even start arranging them, especially in a makeshift gallery?
 
You call in the A team: Karin Murphy Ellis, Susan Hall and Ursula Theinert, who’ve been hanging the exhibitions at ArtSpace for the past 12 years.
 
They approached the woodlands exhibition with their customary skill and good humour. Their mission: to make every artwork show its best side. ​

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Our woodlands, frame by frame

15/6/2024

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PictureAnn Brown’s “Neighbours”
By Catherine Watson

“IF YOU go down to the woodlands you’re in for a big surprise …” That’s the theme of next weekend’s Woodlands Exhibition and it’s prompted an outpouring of creativity from our local artists.

Curator Ellen Hubble says it has been a thrill to watch the diversity and quality of the works as they arrived. They range from landscapes and botanical art to political art, sculptures, weavings and carvings.

All works will be displayed and on sale in the Goods Shed, Wonthaggi, next weekend.

Coronet Bay artist Ann Brown’s “Neighbours” portrays some of the many woodland dwellers. “The galah is showing off to the birds and other animals. The koala is not happy to be woken from his sleep. The goanna ignores the commotion intent on getting breakfast. The possum sneaks behind the kookaburra.”


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‘Wonthaggi needs a music festival!’

13/6/2024

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PictureFive-time Golden Guitar winners Lachlan and Hamish Davidson are returning to Wonthaggi to play at the first Wonthaggi Acoustic Festival.
By Ellen Hubble

I WAS at an acoustic music festival in Harrietville when a highly respected Irish fiddle player said to me “Wonthaggi needs a music festival!” 

​That's when we began to plan the Wonthaggi Acoustic Festival.


Acoustic because instruments are portable and accessible to anyone who plays or wishes to learn a musical instrument. Acoustic music has been at the core of family, folk and community music throughout the ages.  Those traditions are still practised today and community music is thriving in Bass Coast but many people are unaware of it or how to access the various acoustic groups.


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On a high

11/6/2024

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Julie Statkus discovers the joy of singing together in the Good News Community Choir.
Photo: Cath Moutafis
By Julie Statkus
 
WHO doesn't enjoy belting out a rollicking tune in the shower? It can't be just me because between 20 and 40 people come to the Wonthaggi Baptist Church Hall twice a month to sing in the Good News Community Choir.
 
Inspired by the Soweto Gospel Choir, Jacqui and Dani Paulson are leading this enthusiastic group of people who enjoy singing regardless of their skill (talking about me again). Jacqui and Dani take traditional songs and transform them into beautiful harmonies, sometimes combining a couple of songs to form something completely new. And there are often cameo solos from individual singers, adding a Soweto Choir feel. 

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The line of Counihan

6/6/2024

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PictureWoman at the Window by Noel Counihan
AT LAST we are beginning to see glimpses of some of the treasures within the Robert Smith Art Collection, and how they relate to our own community and time.
​

Donated to Wonthaggi in 2017, the collection comprises 596 works by international and Australian artists, focusing on themes of manual labour, industry, and working-class life. ​

Earlier this year a small selection of works was exhibited in the foyer of the Wonthaggi Union Theatre. Now they form the basis of a wider exhibition at Berninneit Gallery.


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The sound of a wish

4/6/2024

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The Bass Coast Chorale's mid-year concert marks the winter solstice.
By Larry Hills
 
THE title of the Bass Coast Chorale’s mid-year concert this year comes from a song in the soundtrack of the film The Diary of Anne Frank, which I've arranged for the chorale.
 
“If, at the sound of a wish,
The summer sun would shine and
If just a smile would do
To brush all the clouds from the sky.” 

​Maybe the choir’s wish is fitting for the concert on our shortest day of the year!

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