Budding artists’ work goes on show at Leagues Club

KATINA CURTIS

BUDDING artists across the municipality will have their works hung this week in the annual Kiama Art Society’s primary schools exhibition.

All five primary schools take part in the exhibition, entering up to six works from each year group to be shown at Kiama Leagues Club.

Art Society president Ruth Hind said the exhibition’s theme this year was My Country.

“We tried for a few years to not impose a theme, but it sort of fell flat because they just sent in any classwork. This way people can compete with different ideas on the theme,” she said.

Two of the students from Kiama Public School whose art will be on exhibition certainly interpreted the theme differently.

Bede Jansens described his picture as “random things like thongs and icons of Australia and an Aboriginal flag”.

“I drew the icons with pencil and then painted the backgrounds. I have started drawing quite a bit lately, but not really done anything with it,” he said.

Fellow Year 5 student Lachlan Thomson said he had entered a watercolour “dim day scenic view” of the mountains around here.

“I was surprised it was chosen because everyone else was doing something quite different,” he said.

Both boys were proud to have their pieces going on public exhibition.

“All the other people are going to see it and it makes me feel really good because other people might like it,” Lachlan said.

Mrs Hind said that giving students a chance to display their artwork was a major reason for the society to mount the art show.

“We host the exhibition mostly to encourage the children in their art and give them a chance to display their work to the public when the public wouldn’t normally get to see it,” she said.

“Call in and enjoy the colour, liveliness, imagination and talent of these young people as much as we enjoy staging it.”

The show opens today (Wednesday) and tomorrow night there is a presentation ceremony with awards given for the first, second and highly commended artworks in each year group.

The exhibition is open from 11am to 5pm today, 11am to 7pm tomorrow and 11am to 6pm on Friday.