‘Absolute blinder’: The Footy Show exhibition opens at Bett Gallery in Hobart
Some say footy and art don’t mix but the Bett Gallery is putting paid to that myth with an exhibition titled The Footy Show. Read all about it.
Tasmania
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Some people were surprised when gallery owner Emma Bett told them she was having a football exhibition – but she’s convinced it will be an “absolute blinder”.
The Footy Show was opened at Hobart’s Bett Gallery on Thursday night by Tasmanian AFL team chair Grant O’Brien who is encouraging Devils’ supporters to visit the exhibition, which he described as “terrific”.
Ms Bett said football was “deeply embedded in the cultural fabric of Australia” and artists have always been at the forefront of social and cultural commentaries.
“Some people are really surprised when I tell them that we’re having a football show. They say, “what, oh I can’t imagine that,” she said.
“It’s a really interesting dynamic that a lot of people assume that you’re either into one or the other.”
Ms Bett said only one work, a tiny painting, was about the proposed Macquarie Point stadium.
Mr O’Brien loved the exhibition.
“When I look at the works, I imagine the people behind them and wonder about their connection to footy and what’s inspired them,” he said.
“It’s understandable that people might have a level of surprise on art and football coming together, but you could apply that to a whole range of professions that you might not immediately associate with football.
“People who follow football are just a slice of the population.
“In Tasmania and Victoria, you don’t meet too many people that don’t have a team, no matter what their profession.”
Author and retired sport reporter Martian Flanagan, who spoke at the opening said when he was growing up in Tasmania “sport and art were like two neighbours who never spoke and took care not to be seen together in public”.
“Sport is also like art in that it aspires to ultimate expressions of self – as Raygun demonstrated at the Paris Olympics, this puts it one short step away from the theatre of the absurd and high comedy,” he says.
The exhibition includes more than 30 paintings, sculptures, dioramas, ceramics, digital media and hand stitch.
Ms Bett said a work in Huon pine by Kevin Perkins reflected on an incident in a final in 1967 at North Hobart when the goal posts were removed by angry fans.
“It’s such a great story and displays how artists get these conversations going again,” she said.
“With an epic team of established and emerging artists involved, this exhibition promises to be an absolute blinder.”
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