Artists dream big at milestone museum exhibition

With reporting from the Australian Associated Press.

Artist Lisa Reid has spent eight months crafting her latest commission - a ceramic version of her mother's old sewing machine.

The meticulously constructed 1971 Elna, complete with foot pedal, electrical cord, scissors and spools, is on show at the TarraWarra Museum of Art outside Melbourne.

It's part of the first major museum survey exhibition by artists from Arts Project Australia, an organisation that supports artists with intellectual disabilities and is marking its 50-year anniversary.

"Very exciting, it's what I have done in the past years," said Reid, who has been at Arts Project Australia four days a week for most of the past 24 years.

It's an emotional time for her sister Suzanne, who recalls Lisa doing repetitive tasks in a sheltered workshop before she became an artist.

"She was just packaging things in a sheltered workshop. She wasn't looking up," she told AAP.

"I thought, 'this is not enough for her'."

Reid is one of 13 artists participating in the show, which also includes Bronwyn Hack's soft sculptures of human organs, and ceramic cameras and viewing devices by Alan Constable.

It's a world class exhibition by world class artists, says Arts Project Australia executive director Liz Nowell.

"Their work is this unapologetically, authentically free from the constraints of conventional hierarchies or the expectations of the academy," she told the crowd at an opening event on Sunday.

"APA artists remind us that art is not about conforming, it's about being and feeling, and they redefine the boundaries of what art can be."

Reid's work, along with that of her colleague Mark Smith, featured in the National Gallery of Victoria's Melbourne Now in 2023, while Julian Martin also featured in Sydney's The National 4 in the same year.

There's also a range of work by Smith, who constructed a soft sculpture spelling out the title of the exhibition - Intimate Imaginaries - which took four hours per letter.

The artist explained to the opening day crowd that a car accident in 1995 put him into a coma for four days and he was told he would never walk again.

"I've had a lifetime of rehab, and being an artist, it amazes me how much creativity is involved in resilience," Smith said.

His work is all about mistakes and controlled messiness.

When asked about his future as an artist, Smith is not short of ambition.

"I would like a studio the size of a plane hangar," he said.

Donations and government funding have meant commissions for eight artists to make new work for the exhibition, including Georgia Szmerling, who painted a large-scale mural inspired by nearby Badger Creek.

"This is the biggest mural we've ever done. I don't think we've ever done anything like this," she said.

Many of the artists on show have already achieved national and international success, says curator Anthony Fitzpatrick.

"All of these artists could easily have a solo exhibition at any gallery. It's just really exciting, compelling contemporary art," Fitzpatrick told AAP.

Arts Project Australia was founded in 1974 and has grown to support 150 artists.

Intimate Imaginaries is at TarraWarra Museum of Art until March 10.

Photo Credit: Jacinta Keefe/AAP Image