The Heritage Exhibitions of the Fleurieu Biennale celebrates artistic inspiration and documents the work of various artists who have made a particularly significant contribution to the region.

Image: Chris de Rosa, not among, 2004, etching and linocut, linoleum tiles 69x69 from the
2004 Heritage Exhibition open Borders.

top

Since the time of European settlement the Fleurieu Peninsula has been attracting artists. The Peninsula's coast, with its extraordinary variety of geological formations, was recorded by artists as early as the 1830s and 1840s, when Colonel William Light, Captain E.C. Frome and then George French Angas were inspired to record its beauty. The works of these three and others working in the nineteenth century include the original inhabitants of the land, the Aboriginal people sustained by its bounty for tens of thousands of years.

In 1998, the first Heritage Exhibition highlighted the work of South Australian artists Horace Trenerry and Kathleen Sauerbier, both particularly active in the 1930s and 1940s in the area around Port Willunga.

In 2000, the exhibition took the form of a first-time retrospective, featuring the work of well-known South Australian artist Geoff Wilson, who paints regularly in the Fleurieu Peninsula.

In 2002, Icons: Our Beloved Coast curated by Jane Hylton, saw artistic responses to particular subjects around the Fleurieu Peninsula interpreted through the eyes of various artists. With works spanning one hundred and fifty years, the exhibition was able to compare work from artists of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

In 2004, Open Borders curated by John Neylon, brought together contemporary artworks which can be identified with the Fleurieu Peninsula region, offering the opportunity to examine why a small peninsula of land on the underneath of a great southern continent can be a zone in which interesting and challenging art continues to be made.

2004 HERITAGE EXHIBITION ON TOUR
Open Borders is on a statewide tour now [more]