Hobart Art Gallery Artwork
Phillip McKay our artist in residence is the owner/operator of Hobart Art Gallery (HAG), located opposite the Hotel's main reception.
You may have noticed some of the finely curated pieces as you were making your way to check-in just now.
HAG showcases some of Tasmania’s finest painters, printmakers and sculptors. They also provide opportunities for talented, young and emerging artists to showcase their skills.
Phillip is often in the gallery creating another masterpiece and would be more than happy to take you for a tour of the artwork in the lobby.
However, we have also put together a virtual tour for you below.
Use the map and the artwork information below to take yourself on an adventure to hopefully find that piece you have been looking or to learn more about the piece that caught your eye.
We recommend using landscape orientation for optimised viewing of the floorplan on mobile devices.
*We try our best to keep the content updated, however, this is not always possible due to artworks becoming no longer available or have sold.
Use the numbers on the floorplan above to make your way on a tour of the Lobby and Mezzanine Level pieces.
1. Title: After the Floods
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Being fortunate enough to work from a studio that overlooks Sorell Creek with its sandstone cliffs, and with the kunanyi ranges as a backdrop, I have an endless source of material to draw on for my artwork.“After the Floods” arose from recent flooding, which brought down many trees along its banks as well as changing the creek’s form and contours. As is usual, for the kunanyi/Wellington Ranges, salmon/pink tinged clouds rise upwards behind them, as if to demonstrate their majesty and power over the landform. Prompting some Pompeian anecdote, dead trees are captured in their final moment, reaching up to the sky, cut short in their cry of remonstration.Having lived on the creek for some 20 years, I have been able to observe the changes caused by Climate Change on this ecosystem – major flooding is occurring more frequently and this summer the creek will run completely dry for the first time since I have lived there.
In ‘After the Floods”, beauty is fraught and misleading - darkness competes with the light.
2. Title: Outcrop
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on canvas
“Outcrop” draws the viewer into the sublime layers of mountainous quartzite that characterise the loinnekumme/Arthurs Range, but ultimately, ”Outcrop” is a tale of two stories - one of beauty, as the viewer is drawn into a hazed sunset as it falls on the glacially formed mountain range, illuminating the blue hues, and another, showing mountains stripped bare of the Eucalypts and button grasses that normally grace these ranges. As is usual with McKay’s environmental artworks, not all is as it seems. “Outcrop” speaks to the impacts of climate change – symptoms we have already helplessly witnessed, ravaging Tasmania’s World Heritage areas over the past few years. As Phillip explains “My integrity as a landscape artist remains intact not only because I attempt to see and capture the beauty of the Tasmanian landscape, but because I am able to articulate a future that is rapidly approaching, if not already arrived”.
“Outcrop” calls on a sense of duty and purpose as an artist, to inform, protect and minimise the harm to the landscape and flora and fauna that inhabit it, including the human species.
The foreground is rendered with tense and frantic gestures, layered in rich, dark hues. This is both an attempt to mimic the turbulent glacial movements that formed the ranges but also a release of the urgency and panic with which Climate Change must be viewed and tackled.
3 Title: High Tide - Tessellated Pavement
Artist: Peter Smith
Medium: Oil on Board
Peter Smith is a self-taught Tasmanian artist who paints on location utilising a palette knife to render his works and is known for his ability to capture the Tassie light. In this work, he constructs a wonderful representation of the iconic Tessellated Pavement with the blue greys of the water lapping against the rock formation.
4
Title: Shifting Tides
Artist: Phillip McKay
Oil on board
Rocky outcrops, sandstone cliffs with tree lined mountainous backdrops are a feature of Tassies coastline. In “Shifting Tides” the artist pulls and pushes the paint to create the illusion of shifting tides lapping against the rocks, as grey mist descends over the mountains to complete this moody and captivating artwork.
5
Title: Scotts Peak, Lake Pedder
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil and acrylic on canvas
Once a glacial outwash lake, Lake Pedder is a man-made impoundment and diversion lake located in the Southwest. The lake was formed in 1972 by the damming of the Serpentine and Huon Rivers by the Hydro Electric Commission. Bushwalkers sometimes refer to it as ‘Fake Pedder’ and there was huge controversy at the time of its construction. The Lake Pedder Restoration Committee is aiming to have the lake restored to its original condition. Here, in this fantastical painting, we view the dark and absurd outcrop of Scotts Peak, a mountain now completely surrounded by water. The work is topographical, however McKay has taken the liberty of restoring the unique and lost beach that once graced the environment and has painted the Southern lights and starburst, moonlit sky to illuminate and celebrate the restoration efforts.
6
Title: Winter Wonderland
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Mixed Media on canvas
This triptych brings together 3 paintings (that can stand alone), into one panorama, with Cradle Mountain featuring in the middle ground. The sky is painted in acrylic with a spray gun and the foreground is rendered in oil with palette knives. McKay, who completed his Fine Arts degree using a spray gun, uses the atomised paint droplets to create a fine, yet surprisingly textured sky – the perfect technique for a starry night sky. McKay’s skill with the airbrush and spray gun have led him to teach art in prisons and to at-risk youth, here in Hobart, Sydney and the UK.
7
Tile: Finding the Cradle
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on canvas
In this artwork, McKay imagines Cradle Mountain from across the sea, referring to the thousands of visitors it attracts from overseas each year. McKay features Cradle Mountain in many of his paintings, having grown up nearby and visited the iconic mountain throughout his childhood and adolescent years. Despite the whimsy in this artwork, McKay has conjured a beautiful painting, with a palette of blues and greys, pinks and yellows.
8 (Currently vacant)
9
Title: Forrest Steps (Corrina)
Artist: Rafael Manzanilla
Rafael Manzanilla is a keen Tasmanian bushwalker and an excellent photographer capturing the most wonderful Tasmanian scenes – this time, Corrina, situated in the Tarkine (takayna). The Tarkine is Australia’s largest remaining single tract of temperate rainforest and is under threat from logging and mining interests. There are large sand dune areas extending several kilometres inland, some of which contain ancient Aboriginal middens. The Tarkine also provides habitat for over 60 rare, threatened and endangered species of flora and fauna.
10
Title: Tasmanian Pastiche
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on Canvas
“Often my paintings paint themselves. By this I mean organic shapes form, transmute, disappear and coalesce through the act of painting. Unconscious decisions are made by drawing on a memory of place and a sensibility fashioned by growing up and living in the Tasmanian landscape. Tasmanian Pastiche is an example of this, where sandstone cliffs, rolling hills, blue grey skies and water coalesce.”
11
Title: Elements
Artist: Phillip McKay
McKay draws together the elements of Tasmania in this stunning work which shows a blue green lagoon, sandstone and painted cliffs, eucalypt backdrop, distant mountains and characteristically pink tinged clouds. A smorgasbord of colour imagined from the artist’s Tasmanian sensibilities.
12
Title: Lake Pedder
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on Canvas
The controversial yet enchanting Lake Pedder is captured here with reflections on the water, garnished with a typically pink and blue Tasmanian sky
13
Title: From kunanyi/Mt Wellington
Artist: Peter Smith
Medium: Oil on Board
Masterfully rendered by Peter Smith, this iconic Tasmanian view is from kunanyi, overlooking Hobart, the surrounding areas, and the Derwent River.
14
Title: Washed Up
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on Canvas Board
“Washed Up” depicts the gnarled flotsam and jetsam of the riverbank but landscapes don’t always represent a natural scene drawn from the world around us (topographical), they can also convey the psychoanalytic view of the mind as a three-dimensional space – these works are sometimes referred to as “inscapes” and some of McKay’s works can be viewed this way. This dark work conjures the internal machinations of the mind, a place where the discarded experiences of life settle - the meeting point of all that is lost and wayward and most likely unresolved. Here, in the internal world, little light is cast upon the subject matter, perhaps better forgotten than illuminated.
15
Title: Painted Trees
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on canvas board
Raw umber, burnt sienna, raw sienna, titanium white and unbleached titanium form the palette for this work. Splayed trees and earthy foreground dominate the picture against a muted background. The work holds plenty of energy all over its surface and has a heavy impasto finish.
16 (Currently vacant)
17
Title: Winter Cradle
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on Canvas
The thawing snow gives way to a hint of spring in this beautifully rendered painting. As Titanium white and variations of blue and purple are pulled across the landscape, the glacial speed of this painting is easy on the eye and warming to the heart – despite the snow! Relax, this is Tassie!
18
Title: Lazy East Coast Dreaming
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on Canvas
The East Coast of Tasmania is the island’s holiday destination of choice. Its beaches stretch along its entirety with the sand spinning through an artist’s grey scale depending on the mood. Enchanting islands rise offshore, beckoning. Black rock crops up at various places, hosting pools supporting all manner of diversity. It is our island paradise - our spiritual home, where people go to play, heal, relax and dream.
19
Title: Tessellated Pavement
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on canvas
McKay captures the light and beauty of the Tessellated Pavement - an iconic rock formation at Eagle Hawk Neck, that captures the hearts of thousands of people each year and is a must-see tourist destination.
20
Title: Middle Earth
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on Linen
‘Middle Earth’ is inspired by the view from the midlands towards the Great Western Tiers – a collection of mountain bluffs that form the northern edge of the Central Highland Plateau in Tasmania. The bluffs are contained within the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage area and were most likely uplifted from the more fertile lower Meander Valley and midlands in the Eocene epoch some 50 million years ago. The edge of the ‘Tiers’ has prominent cliffs and columns of Jurassic dolerite. Though the midlands receives low rainfall compared to the rest of the state, McKay has painted a brooding rain storm, with the promise of filling up the dried up dam which can be seen in the middle ground. This work is an excellent example of McKay’s skill in glazing to achieve the dramatic skys he is known for, and layers of paint and colour to achieve the more weighty and textured foregrounds.
21
Title: Jacqui
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Mixed Media
Jacqui Lambie is a well-known, and at times, controversial Tasmanian Senator. In 2015, Phillip McKay met Jacqui when she visited a program for at-risk youth that he was managing.Phillip explains “I took the opportunity to ask if she’d like her portrait painted for the Archibald. Jacqui was excited by the idea and came up with a suggestion that I might paint her in a ball gown holding a machine gun. Afterwards Jacqui explained the gun idea to the media. “It was around the time the media were poking fun at me and calling me Lambo but it was also a tongue in cheek way to portray women in the armed forces”At the sitting she had a toy machine gun and we tried a few different poses however during the session, I grabbed the flag from her wall and she draped it around herself. These poses were used to complete the final artwork. The painting never made the final cut of the Archibald but the reworked painting, which you see before you, was selected as a finalist in the Doug Moran Portrait Prize the following year.An aboriginal flag signalling her aboriginality sets the background (the sun almost acting as a halo
22
Title: Tarkine Sunset
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Tarkine Sunset was recently painted, in response to the Bob Brown Foundation losing its court battle to protect the Tarkine from logging of old-growth forests.
23
Title: Yellow Dinghy Lewisham
Artist: Cherie Sibley
Medium: Acrylic on Paper
Bright and beautiful – just relax as the dinghy gently rocks
24
Title: Red Brick Cottage with Stripy Door Hood
Artist: Corinna Howell
Medium: Oil on paper
Corinna is a brilliant emerging artist most noted for her portraiture; however in this painting Howell turns her hand to the landscape with this playful work of a house in battery point. Howell has already been a winner and finalist in several art competitions and applies a wonderfully impressionistic style to her work. Keep an eye out for this rising star of the art world.
25
Title: Lion Rock
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Australia’s most southerly road will take you to the start or end (depending where you start) of Tasmania’s most hazardous and indomitable track, South Coast Track. Lion Rock, fortunately, can be viewed early on resting in South Cape Bay. It is named Lion Rock as from the Eastern flank it resembles a resting lion. Here though, we view it from its most impressive angle as it rises from the Southern Ocean.
This large work is highly topographical in scale and colour and the artist has attempted to capture the majesty of Lion Rock and the turbulence and power in the sky and the ocean that characterises this part of the world.
26
Title: Fragile
Artist: Phillip McKay
Oil on canvas
This artwork is one of a series of artworks made in response to the Central Highlands bushfires of 2016 that ripped through over 90 hectares of World Heritage Area. The impact was devastating with many types of flora in that area unable to renew lost forever.
27
Title: After the Fire – Central Highlands
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Another work from McKay’s Central Highlands bushfire series, “After the Fire” shows an ash covered, dystopian landscape, with burnt trees and scorched cushion plants all that remains. The greys and muted earthy colours are juxtaposed with a receding fiery backdrop gloating over its conquest. In the bottom left corner we note an aboriginal petroglyph, which has recurred in a few of McKay’s paintings, perhaps calling for a better connection with the land.
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Title: Patch of Green
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on linen
A patch of green and pink and blue and yellow. Delicately rendered with palette knife, this little beauty is rich with colours to soothe the soul.
30
Title: Dennison Canal Bridge Control Shed
Artist: Cherie Sibley
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Cherie Sibley is a talented Tasmanian artist, noted for her waterworks and highly representational depictions of local areas.
31
Title: Ravine
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inspired by the Eastern Arthur Range, this powerful work by McKay conjures the sublime nature of Tasmania’s landscape.
Techniques of the artist are in full swing in this painting, where snow covered rocky outcrops, gnarly trees and deep chasms are the feature - you wouldn’t want to fall down this seemingly bottomless ravine!
32
Title: Maria Island
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on canvas
A small but beautiful depiction of Maria Island, East Coast, Tasmania
33
Title: East Coast Blues
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Here, we find layer after layer of the East Coast elements – sky, water, sand dunes, rocks and mountains set in a scaled back palette of prussian blue, bleached titanium, paynes grey and yellow ochre. Having spent much time on the East Coast of Tasmania, throughout his life, McKay brings into focus the grey and black coastal dolerite beachside rocks, water lapping at their edges - juxtaposed with a blue mountainous backdrop with clouds soaring above. This East Coast pastiche brings together the hues and mood of Tassie’s beautiful eastern coastline.
34
Title: Navigating the Boulder Fields of kunanyi
Artist: Adrian Bradbury
Oil over Acrylic on canvas
Bradbury’s paintings are based on the optical and physical navigational challenges involved in ascending the steep Lost World Track high on the flank of kunanyi. (Mt. Wellington). Occasional boulders have been hand painted with red and yellow track-markers to help guide the way. These dolerite boulders have been formed during the Jurassic period some 170 million years ago.
35
Title: Isolation II, Fern Tree
Artist: Alexander Beech
Oil on canvas
Alexander Beech’s practice explores landscapes in paint with drawing as the fundamental basis. Using a range of techniques, an image builds that is painterly with fragments of translucent detail. His recent projects investigate vulnerability and disquiet in the landscape. This painting was made during a period of isolation at Fern Tree.
36
Title: What Remains
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on board
In this dystopian landscape, McKay paints a collapsing environment sinking into the bowels of a cooling lava flow. Devoid of flora human like figures appear to teeter on the precipice. This work is not suitable for the faint hearted or those in search of a hopeful image!
37
Title: “Blue and Green (Should never be seen)”
Artist: Phillip McKay
Oil on canvas
A classic painting by Phillip McKay, beautifully rendered with brush and palette knife, blue stone rises from an eroding landscape with greenery receding into the distance.
38
Title: ‘Twas a Wild and Wintery Night
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on board
This artwork was painted after a busk walk at Mount Field National Park. Towards the end of the walk, I came across what looked like a graveyard of Pencil Pines. Dozens of dead trees, pointing upwards to the skies, each of them monuments to their own demise, captured in their final living moment reminiscent of some post- apocalyptic landscape.
Coincidentally, the weather broke and swirling clouds formed over the hilltops as if to accompany, this most compelling experience.
39
Title: Disruption
Artist: Phillip McKay
Medium: Oil on canvas
“Disruption” places a charred tree stump at its centre, rising up into a circling and brooding cloud formation. This work moves into the world of fantasy, yet its symbolism comments on a real world under threat from the symptoms of climate change – in this case – bush fires. Perhaps the small dark silhouetted figures moving up towards the tree represent a pilgrimage towards the last tree on earth, struggling to survive.