If you go to an art gallery just once a year, make sure it’s to Campbelltown arts centre to check out the 2018 Fisher’s Ghost art award exhibition.
Even if art leaves you cold, you should still go, because this is an exhibition like no other.
Indeed it’s a lot more than an art exhibition.
There’s a place for both primary and secondary school students in the award, as well as for those who prefer photography, traditional art or sculpture.
There are also categories for artists with some form of disability, Indigenous Australians, and contemporary and surrealist practitioners.
And although anyone across the country can enter a work for the Open award, most of the 1,100 entries come from local artists.
The result is that as you move from gallery to gallery it’s obvious this exhibition is all about this local area – the place we call home.
There is a certain enjoyment you get by recognising local features in many, many of the works in this exhibition.
And of course every year there is the inevitable entry that captures a moment in the legend of Fred Fisher, the local farmer who disappeared in 1826 and in its 56th incarnation the Fisher’s Ghost art award does not disappoint.
Most people will know of at least the essence of the story: Fred Fisher’s farming neighbour, George Worrall, was eventually found guilty of murdering Fisher and he was hung for his crime.
Some people reckoned Worrall ended up having the last laugh because he was buried near the southern pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Fisher on the other hand was buried in the local Anglican cemetery, more than 50 kilometres from Port Jackson.
But the legend that lends itself to the annual festival and the art award comes from the role played by a third party, a respectable local man named John Farley.
One dark and stormy night Farley ran into the local hotel in a very agitated state, and declared he had seen the ghost of Fred Fisher sitting on the rail of a bridge.
The ghost, Farley told astonished hotel patrons, had not spoken, but just pointed, just like the figure in this painting (above) entered in the art award this year.
Eventually the local police carried out a search and Fisher’s remains were found near what is now Fisher’s Ghost Creek.
So do get down to the arts centre and spend a bit of time seeing some reflections of Campbelltown and Macarthur and the odd surprise or two – such as Katuna Reid’s portrait of Macquarie Field MP Anoulack Chanthivong (below).
It’s free entry and the exhibition continues until December 13.
