Great Southern artists feature in Alternative Archive survey exhibition on show at Albany Town Hall

Seven artists from across the Great Southern have had their work selected for inclusion in The Alternative Archive survey exhibition on show at the Albany Town Hall. Drawn from a 2019 Statewide exhibition the display features work by Albany’s Serena McLauchlan, Tania Spencer, Jeanne Melville and Michelle Slarke from Lake Grace, Northcliffe’s Claudette Mountjoy and Lizzie Troup and Karen McClurkin from Esperance. The show debuted at the John Curtin Gallery in 2021 and co-curator Anna Louise Richardson, who worked with John Curtin Gallery director Chris Malcom, said that the selected work captured the importance of regional artists. “Artists are recorders of social history, the creators of cultural capital in any community,” she said. “Their creative output is central to understanding our sense of identity, place and community.” The work covers a range of media that respond to the idea of the archive as collection, preservation and story telling in a local context. More than 200 WA artists took part in the 2019 exhibition and the touring survey arrived in Albany after showings in the Goldfields, Geraldton, Carnarvon and Bunbury. The Alternative Archive survey exhibition is brought to the regions by the Regional Exhibition Touring Boost program and delivered by WA contemporary visual art organisation Art on the Move. The exhibition closes on March 9.