Orange Regional Gallery assistant director Brenda Gray has seen a lot of changes over her nearly three decades in Orange’s art scene.
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After joining the gallery in 1991, she’s looking to spread her wings beyond Orange and continue exploring art all across the world.
After she finishes up on December 28, Mrs Gray is planning to head to Iran and explore Tehran, but has a smorgasbord of trips planned for both herself and for the Orange Garden Club’s tours.
“Cultural tours; it’s civilisations really, food, gardens, history, temples, art galleries – that sort of thing,” she said.
We held classes for children, tours to national galleries, studios and other things they tried to add on which were really nice.
- Brenda Gray
It will carry on the cultural experiences Mrs Gray has had in Orange, with a broad range of roles and responsibilities including education and public programs, installing exhibitions, doing registration, curating and looking after collections and more.
She started working full time in 1995 and accrued more responsibility as more jobs were vacated without replacements.
The first thing which springs to mind about what she enjoyed during her job was hanging exhibitions, as well as the “camaraderie” between everyone involved in the gallery.
She was also proud of the work the gallery did with helping supply the new hospital with artwork, but said the “most important” part of her job was meeting the artists.
One of her favourite exhibitions was from former gallery director Alan Sissley, who ran an exhibition called ‘Geometry of the Earth’ which Mrs Gray found fascinating, and she also loved ‘Private Art, Public Treasures’, and exhibition which collated items from private collections and put them on public display.
She loved the generosity that came with the latter exhibitions, which had been held four or five times during her years at the gallery.
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“They had really good stuff,” she said.
Another highlight for Mrs Gray was the student programs.
“We had five or six festival of student art exhibitions which involves going around to different schools and bringing their art in,” she said.
“We held classes for children, tours to national galleries, studios and other things they tried to add on which were really nice.”
She’s also spent decades talking to people from University of the Third Age about art.
The decision to leave to travel was a sudden one.
“I only really made up my mind to go three or four weeks ago, I was thinking of staying for a couple more years but my position is a full-time on and I don’t want to keep going on full time.”
As well as travel, Mrs Gray is looking forward to reading more and spending more time with grandchildren.
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