In 2006 six artists from Baw Baw Shire, comprising Leonie Ryan, Jenny Murray-Jones, Gary Miles, Kerrie Warren, Laurie Collins & Eileen Harrison, banded together as the ‘Wild Dogs from Down Under’ and staged their first exhibition at the West Gippsland Arts Centre in Warragul.

Without any form of government funding or assistance the group of artistic entrepreneurs sought and received corporate funding to tour their artworks to, in order, Meeniyan Art Gallery; Burrinja Gallery, Upwey; Parliament House in Melbourne; Jiujiang in China; Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale; Latrobe Regional Gallery, Morwell; and back to the West Gippsland Arts Centre in 2008.

Jiujiang was chosen as the Chinese destination as it was the ‘sister city’ of Baw Baw Shire. During their exhibition, staged in August 2007, the six artists became celebrities in a city of 4.7 million people. The artists and their exhibition, ‘Gippsland’, landed on the front page of five Jiujiang newspapers and were interviewed on Chinese television twice during their stay. They also signed hundreds of catalogues and were photographed thousands of times, making them perhaps the most high-profile Gippsland artists in history.

The story of that exhibition and its tour is the subject of Wild Dogs from Down Under: Past & Present, which features original artworks from that time alongside new pieces created specifically for this retrospective, together with historical ephemera.

The artworks, featuring painting, sculpture, drawing and installation, are bound not only through their connections in time and place, but by the artists’ mutual love of their home, Gippsland.

‍Wild Dogs from Down Under is a remarkable tribute to a group of local artists who determinedly forged their own path and succeeded.