CANBERRA.- A new partnership between the National Gallery of Australia and the Bowness Family Foundation will enable four new photography exhibition tours across Australia.

The partnership aims to elevate the important role of photography within the arts, to provide opportunities for regional and remote communities to access key works, and to bring the national collection to new audiences across Australia through touring exhibitions.


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Starting with Nan Goldin: The ballad of sexual dependency in Western Australia, The Bowness Family Foundation Photography Touring Program will see photographs from the national collection travel throughout regional Australia over the next three years.

The program of four exhibitions will travel to twelve venues and will highlight the significant cultural influence of photography as an artform in Australia. Alongside the touring exhibitions, the program hopes to inspire creativity across Australia through programming and educational opportunities which bring together leading contemporary artists and regional communities.

Opening at John Curtin Gallery (WA) this July, the first exhibition supported through the partnership will be Nan Goldin: The ballad of sexual dependency. The North American artist Nan Goldin’s 126-part series of colour photographs from the 1970s–80s will also travel to Bank Art Museum in Moree (NSW), Griffith University Art Museum in Meanjin/Brisbane, (Qld). The partnership offers an opportunity to take this ground-breaking and highly influential international work into regional Australia. Celebrated for its intimate and personal depiction of Goldin’s social life and relationships, the series had an impact on the photography world that reverberates to this day.

Olive Cotton and her contemporaries is the second exhibition, highlighting the innovations of one of Australia’s greatest photographers, modernist artist Olive Cotton. With plans to travel to the Hawkesbury Regional Art Gallery, Gippsland Art Gallery and Cowra Regional Art Gallery, Cotton’s photographs will be displayed alongside works by key modernist photographers from the National Gallery collection to further elevate her work within an international context.Two additional exhibitions will follow, also selected from the National Gallery’s extensive collection of photography works.

Dr Nick Mitzevich, Director, National Gallery: ‘With close to 30,000 photographic works in the national collection, this program will provide communities across Australia access to the best of Australian and international photography. The National Gallery is grateful to the Bowness Family Foundation for their generosity and commitment to elevating photography’s place in art history through the establishment of this new program.'

Natasha Bowness, Chair, Bowness Family Foundation: ‘The Bowness Family Foundation Photography Touring Program responds to a growing interest in photography within society. We are delighted that through this initiative photography will reach new audiences, showcase the depth and breadth of outstanding photographic artists in the National Gallery’s collection, and stimulate conversations more broadly about photography through a range of public and education programs.’

Nan Goldin: The ballad of sexual dependency and Olive Cotton and her contemporaries are National Gallery Touring Exhibitions presented as part of the Bowness Family Foundation Photography Touring Program.



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