Queenscliff Gallery Exhibitions & Events
QG Focus: Lynn Savery, Duets
Exhibition dates: Feb 9 – Mar 2, 2026
QG Mingle: Feb 15, 3 – 5pm (RSVP required)
This exhibition explores the concept of the “duet”—the unique third element that arises when two distinct parts interact. Just as a rainbow is more than water and light, Savery’s work delves into the poetic space between entities, inviting viewers to experience moments of instability, uncertainty, and potential transformation.
The exhibition encourages contemplation of the unexpected connections and intimate entanglements that can emerge when separate elements come together.
QG Focus: Trudy Rice, Garden Sweetness
Exhibition dates: Jan 12 – Feb 8, 2026
QG Mingle: Jan 24, 3 – 5pm (RSVP required)
Trudy Rice’s upcoming QG Focus, Garden Sweetness, pays tribute to the gardens and birds that continue to shape the printmaker’s practice. Layered solar plate etchings, monotypes, and delicate pochoir stencilling reveal Pardalotes, Wrens, Wattlebirds, and the Tawny Frogmouth within richly textured landscapes.
Offering quiet moments of beauty and gentle discoveries, each work draws on the artist’s current home and a newly acquired Otway property that has further strengthened her sense of connection to the natural environment.
QG Exhibition: Leunig JOMO
Queenscliff Gallery is honoured to present JOMO – The Joy of Missing Out, a commemorative exhibition celebrating the late Michael Leunig’s poetic vision and uniquely tender artistic voice. Curated in close collaboration with the Estate of Michael Leunig, the exhibition showcases a rare selection of limited-edition etchings, engravings, lithographs, and works on paper released by the estate.
At the heart of JOMO lies a sentiment that has shaped much of Leunig’s art: the quiet pleasure of stepping gently away from the clamour of everyday life. Across these prints, his familiar dreamers, ducks, moons, and wandering seekers invite viewers into spaces of stillness and reflection. In many ways, JOMO feels like a fitting tribute—a reflection of the gentle, contemplative spaces Leunig treasured. There is a quiet sense that he himself might be enjoying a kind of cosmic “joy of missing out,” resting in peaceful distance from the noise of the world he observed so tenderly.
This exhibition offers an intimate encounter with Leunig’s lyrical humour, emotional honesty, and enduring cultural legacy.
QG Exhibition Nov 13 – Dec 8, 2025: Celebrating 10 Years
Exhibition dates: August 4th, 2025
Queenscliff Gallery is thrilled to announce its 10th anniversary, marked by a spectacular art exhibition showcasing the works of ten distinguished artists who have been integral to the gallery’s journey.
This milestone celebration event will honour the gallery’s decade-long commitment to supporting and promoting the art community, with a special few weekends of official demonstrations and drinks.
Exhibiting artists: David Frazer, Andrew Gunnell, Melinda Harper, Kate Hudson, Anita Iacovella, Soula Mantalvanos, Jim Pavlidis, Trudy Rice, John Waller and Deborah Williams.
QG Focus: Antonio Balletta, Divine Offerings
Exhibition dates: Oct 23 – Nov 10, 2025
As a child growing up in Naples, Antonio Balletta often accompanied his grandparents to church, where he first encountered the extraordinary ex voto objects – votive offerings traditionally given in fulfilment of a vow or thanks for a divine favour. The objects form the inspiration for this exhibition.
QG Focus: Lucinda Tanner Skopeliti Puff
Exhibition dates: Oct 2– 20, 2025
Lucinda Tanner traces the rhythms of Skopelos in the works that form QG Focus: Skopeliti Puff. Through the methodical process of woodblock printmaking, moonrise, sunrise, day, and night shape her imagery, capturing cycles as if seen through the elements. Her prints echo Athena’s owl, the ringing of church bells, and the island’s enduring palette of stone, limewash, ochre, pine and sea.
Tanner weaves myth and daily life together: prunes bearing a farmer’s thumbprint, resin gathered from Aleppo pines, pathways and pottery of times past. Through carved wood and ink, she marks a fleeting experience, reflecting on time’s ceaseless passage.
QG Focus: Melinda Harper Colour Keeps Me Awake
Exhibition dates: Sep 13 – 29, 2025
Alongside paintings, prints and small sculptural objects, Melinda Harper’s art practice has long featured embroideries that continue her vibrant use of colour and rhythmic abstract compositions of shape and light.
These intimate works, often created during the quiet of the night, describe zigzags, stripes, circles, and triangles that create fields of threaded surfaces, enlivening the spaces within and around each piece.
Stitch by stitch, colour by colour, Harper has constructed dynamic, textured, yet disciplined works that speak to the rich traditions of art and design, drawing our attention to the processes and rhythms of ‘making’.
Weaving her paint and collage elements through a select group of embroideries, Harper extends the experimental nature of her work in the QG Focus, Colour Keeps Me Awake.
QG Focus Soula Mantalvanos Passaggi: A Painted Season
Exhibition dates: Aug 7 – Sep 8, 2025
Passaggi: A Painted Season presents the new series of oil paintings by Soula Mantalvanos, tracing her artistic journey through the towns and laneways of Central and Northern Italy. Sketched on location and completed in her Queenscliff studio, these works reflect a deep reverence for traditional artmaking and the quiet rituals of observation and walking.
Mantalvanos captures the character of Italy through its architecture, surfaces, and atmosphere. Stone, marble, and filtered light guide the viewer through narrow passages and sunlit corners. Her process is both immersive and intuitive. Drawn to the everyday poetry of place, she paints not only what is seen but also what is felt.
While most works are grounded in direct observation, two paintings emerge from memory and emotion, deeply influenced by her experience of The Barber of Seville performed at The Arena, Verona and another singular architectural encounter in the same city. In these pieces, Mantalvanos positions doll-like figures and iconographic structure again, bringing a layered, personal symbolism to the scene. They speak to identity, nostalgia, and the lingering power of cultural memory.
This exhibition celebrates Italy not only as a visual subject but also as a sensory and cultural experience—honouring its history, theatre, art and design sensibilities, and the intimacy of moving slowly through its spaces. Each painting is a passage in itself, reflecting stillness, presence, and connection.
QG Focus: Katherine Hattam Of Tables & Chairs
Exhibition dates: Jul 17 – Aug 4, 2025
At once playful and also filled with small tensions, Katherine Hattam shines a light on lived-in spaces, busy with everyday objects. We are present in the push and pull and drama of home versus the demands of the artist’s working life. Clocks are ticking, time is precious. Table settings speak of reading, thinking, and mandatory cups of tea, two chairs face each other or face away, single chairs take us to a more interior place.
In Hattam’s Of Tables and Chairs, the exhibition of works evoke moments in time, and past events or conversations about to happen. They conjure the warmth and familiarity of our domestic settings, populated with chairs and tables, cups and books, pictures on walls, views through windows, and the ever-present visiting birds.
Hattam’s art practice brings images and materials to life through her signature explorations in painting, printmaking, drawing and collage. The world she creates is sometimes lively, sometimes contemplative, but always layered.
QG proudly hosts Homage to Impressionism
Exhibition dates: Jun 19 – Jul 14, 2025
Queenscliff Gallery proudly presents Homage to Impressionism, an exhibition featuring Sir Arthur Streeton’s posthumous honeymoon etchings in celebration of the NGV’s Melbourne Winter Masterpieces – French Impressionism.
Homage to Impressionism brings together works by Lana Daubermann, Philip Davey, Mark Dober, Katherine Hattam, Paula Jenkins, Marketa Kemp, Soula Mantalvanos, Adam Nudelman, Sue Poggioli, Trudy Rice, Steve Salo, Gwen Scott, John Waller, and Sophia Xeros-Constantinides, who have used mixed media, painting, and printmaking to show their influence from the Impressionist era.
Responding—both traditionally and experimentally—to Impressionism’s enduring influence on contemporary printmaking through plein air paintings and expressive brushwork, the works reflect a shared fascination with light and atmosphere and a deep connection to place.
The exhibition also features the etchings by Sir Arthur Streeton, created during his honeymoon and first exhibited at Queenscliff Gallery in 2017 following their restoration.
Shown together again, these works sit meaningfully alongside contemporary interpretations that offer a rich and timely reflection on Impressionism’s legacy, especially as Melbourne celebrates the movement with the NGV’s Winter Masterpieces exhibition.
Adam Nudelman: Humbled by the Endless Horizon
Exhibition dates: May 29 – Jun 15, 2025
Adam Nudelman draws us into land and sea in his most recent exhibition, Humbled by the Endless Horizon.
Through reconstructed landscapes of Barwon Heads Bluff, Whisky Bay, and Wilsons Promontory, Nudelman directs us to contemplation and introspection for the mystery of the natural world in the face of the horizon and to the enduring concept of the Sublime.
Depicted as a realm for reflection, Nudelman’s endless horizons and dynamic shift of colours and moods connect us to memories and ancestral legacies. Each painting evokes sensory experiences associated with the sea—distinct smells, sounds, textures, and movements that contribute to its overall beauty and serenity, illustrating its profound power and tranquil presence.
Once again, Nudelman encourages us to stand in awe of the vastness and mystery and engage with the themes that highlight the constancy and impermanence of human existence.
QG Exhibition Philip Davey: The Landscape Speaks
Exhibition dates: May 1 – 25, 2025
Queenscliff Gallery proudly presents Philip Davey: The Landscape Speaks, an exhibition that combines the artist’s striking explorations of Australia’s environment, history, and changing landscapes.
Rich with narrative, Philip Davey’s paintings, etchings, and sculptures blend past and present to tell stories of survival, loss, and resilience. The artist’s bold compositions and deep connection to his environment demand that the viewer consider what has been lost and remains within the Australian landscape.
*QG Mingles are replacing public exhibition openings. These private invitations are exclusive to a small group of QG patrons and will be catered for celebrations with the artists.
Below: Preview of Philip Davey works to be exhibited in The Landscape Speaks and preparatory sketch.
QG Exhibition: Homage to Yayoi Kusama
Exhibition dates: Apr 3 – 27, 2025
A group exhibition of works inspired by the great Yayoi Kusama and the 2025 major exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.
Get ready to see pumpkins, spots and more by Marian Blank, Louise Blyton, Moli Carew, Charlotte Ivey, Marketa Kemp, Brett Mallon, David Moore, Sue Poggioli, Trudy Rice, Gwen Scott and Lucinda Tanner in this exciting Homage to Yayoi Kusama.