March 18, 2019
The Wondai Regional Art Gallery’s new president Amanda Seiler officially assumed the position at the gallery’s March exhibition opening, and former president Elaine Madill said she couldn’t be happier.
Amanda began volunteering at the gallery 18 months ago, soon after her husband began farming in the region, and was elected the gallery’s vice-president last year.
Elaine, who has held the post since 2008, will be staying on as vice-president for at least the next 12 months to help ensure the transition goes smoothly.
Amanda is only the third president at the gallery since it was founded by inaugural president Alison Iszlaub (who served from 1998-2008), and also the youngest.
The 25-year-old is currently studying Fine Arts part-time at university.
She said while she wasn’t an artist herself, she was surprised how much she enjoyed helping organise exhibitions and overseeing the gallery’s operations.
Elaine told the audience at the March exhibition opening she was certain Amanda would continue the Gallery’s ongoing development.
Her appointment was part of a succession plan Elaine had developed to ensure the gallery continued to operate successfully into the future.
All the region’s organisations are “greying” and need to look at bringing younger people into leadership roles to ensure they continue to run, Elaine said.
“One of the key things I’ve been trying to do ever since I was first appointed president is ensure our gallery can operate smoothly regardless of who’s at the helm,” Elaine said.
“When I had to take several months off due to ill health, everything ran like clockwork because all our wonderful volunteers knew exactly what needed to be done.
“That’s when I knew I’d succeeded, and also when I knew the time had come for me to start looking for someone to take over my role, too.”
Elaine said she was confident Amanda would put her own stamp on the gallery, and continue to expand and improve it as the previous two presidents had done.
Under Alison Iszlaub the Gallery instituted regular monthly exhibitions; introduced local wine tastings on opening nights; and turned the venue into one of the town’s social hubs.
Over the past 11 years Elaine has expanded the gallery to take over the operation of the monthly Wondai Markets, added The Studio meeting and work area and – just recently – a storeroom and expanded kitchen; and made the Gallery a cellar door for four of the region’s leading wineries.
Elaine was honoured as the South Burnett’s Citizen Of The Year in 2017, and awarded an OAM at the 2019 Australia Day awards but she believes her replacement could make just as much of splash, given time.
Amanda was recently selected as one of only three people for a development program run by the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery Of Modern Art (GOMA) to help forge deeper relationships between the State’s premier art galleries and regional galleries.
That relationship – which has now been running for several years – has seen the Wondai Gallery regularly host children’s art activities from GOMA, as well as touring exhibitions.
The next of these will be in June, when the gallery hosts a travelling exhibition by artist Vincent Serico, who grew up in Cherbourg.
* * *
This month, the Gallery is hosting three exhibitions which offer a very diverse range of styles and themes.
In the front gallery, English-born artist Anne Shaw’s “Our Country” exhibition displays a collection of oil landscapes, many inspired by rural scenes in Victoria and NSW where she lived for many years before moving to Bundaberg two decades ago.
Anne is a self-taught artist who only took up painting in retirement, and has been exhibiting her works for the past 15 years, including several solo exhibitions.
The main gallery features “Exploring Lights, Textures and Techniques”, which showcases works by Bundaberg artists Colleen Helmore, Carmel Birchley and Maggie Spenceley.
The pieces on display range from atmospheric items through to intricately detailed photo-realistic drawings, and are variously executed in watercolours, oils, acrylics, graphite, charcoal, coloured pencil, pastels, scraperboard, metal point, ink stippling and mixed media.
And in the rear gallery, artist Suzi Wells has a wide-ranging, whimsical display of her own works on show in her solo exhibition “As I See It”.
- “Our Country”, “Exploring Lights, Textures and Techniques” and “As I See It” will remain on display from 10:00am to 4:00pm daily until the end of the month. Admission to view the exhibitions is free.
