Exhibition Statement
“ Hobart Town Rivulet – Artists’ Impressions”
Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts
State Library of Tasmania
31 October 2008 to 28 February 2009
The Hobart Rivulet is one of three factors – the others being a safe anchorage in a deep-water harbour and the original Hunter Island – which led David Collins to decide on the location of Hobart in 1804. Since then the Rivulet has played a significant part in Hobart’s history and development.
There are numerous studies of aspects of the rivulet (water supply, flour mills, breweries, floods, modifications of the stream bed, etc.), all illustrated with original maps, photographs and the occasional view. Never before, however, has an attempt been made to show the rivulet through the eyes of artists who captured the waterway in its various moods and uses over time.
The works displayed in this exhibition offer a visual journey, from the waterfalls within the foothills of Mt Wellington down through the fern-glades and into the Cascade Valley with its mills and bridges, then into the town environment with its underground bridges and man-made deviations which turn the rivulet into a subterranean ditch flowing on its way to its final destination at the Derwent River. They encourage the viewer to see, to wonder, to question and to search for further knowledge.
The exhibition includes more than forty works by seventeen artists - oil paintings, watercolours, pencil drawings, etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts – as well as numerous photographs from the State Library’s collections, telling the story of the Rivulet from 1845 to the present day.
This exhibition is not a comprehensive history of the Rivulet during European settlement. It is a collage, bringing together a range of artists, periods, media and viewpoints to tell many of the diverse stories of the Rivulet.
