Wollongong City Gallery

Mr CAMPBELL (Keira) [6.14 p.m.]: Wollongong City Gallery is a regional gallery that serves the Illawarra and the electorate of Keira. Although this regional gallery has a small staff, it has an ever-growing reputation for quality exhibitions and its collections program. The gallery is housed in a building which was formerly the administrative chambers of Wollongong City Council from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. The building has a number of exciting exhibition spaces within that have potential for all sorts of creative uses and exhibitions.

One of the signatures of the Wollongong City Gallery is its permanent collection of Aboriginal artworks. Many of the works have been donated by a number of prominent people in Wollongong and Sydney, and it is that permanent collection of Aboriginal works that gives the gallery some reputation. For the past several years, Wollongong City Gallery has been engaged in a long-term project to survey and present the art of Aboriginal people of the Illawarra and the South Coast of New South Wales, from the Royal National Park to the Victorian border.

The project has become known as Pallingjang, a Tharawal word meaning saltwater. It has brought many Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people together to celebrate the richness and diversity of the remarkable land, culture and history that we all share. My reason for talking about this part of the gallery’s collection is the exhibition of some of the works from the permanent collection in the Fountain Court in Parliament House. Those works are by Tim Allen, from Nowra; Jodi Boota, from Gerringong; Kevin Maxwell Butler, from Wollongong; Vally Law, or Djitdjit as some of us know her - she is a Wollongong artist these days; Georgina Parsons, Val Saunders, Marilyn Smart, Gwendolin "Shirley" Stewart, Cheryl Strickland and Freddie Timms.

I encourage honourable members to view this Pallingjang exhibition series from the permanent collection of the Wollongong City Gallery. A number of the paintings and the works, which will be on exhibition until towards the end of October, tell the stories of the artists’ life’s journey. The Freddie Timms work depicts the Mount Keira-Wollongong massacre. However, a number of the works talk about the journey and the dreaming of a number of the artists, many of whom make a significant contribution to our community in other ways. Vally Law, for example, put a huge amount of effort into the travelling exhibition of a sea of hands as part of the recognition of the stolen generation.

A number of prints in the exhibition were produced by students of the Aboriginal arts and practices course at Bombaderry TAFE, which of course is in Nowra. I congratulate Louise Brand, the curatorial officer, and Heidi Hillier, the exhibitions and collections officer, of the Wollongong City Gallery who are responsible for the exhibition in the Fountain Court. I also acknowledge the work of the Director of the Wollongong City Gallery, Mr Peter O’Neill, who has worked very hard to build the reputation of the gallery as a regional gallery of pre-eminence within our State. The gallery is supported financially by Wollongong City Council, but it also receives assistance from the New South Wales Ministry for the Arts and is a member of the Regional Galleries Association of New South Wales.

Wollongong City Gallery has strong corporate support from within the community, and that support gives the gallery the opportunity to curate exhibitions such as the one that I have been talking about. It also provides the lifestyle aspects that go with having a significant regional gallery and, through the artworks of its collection and the support that that collection receives from the community, the opportunity for us to explain the strength of the community from which I come.