Creative Communities

The island of Tasmania is a creative cauldron full of artists, writers, musicians and designers producing work that is nationally and internationally acclaimed. Remote and isolated it may seem, but Tasmania has long been making the world sit up and take notice.

Literature
Tasmania’s unique history, culture and landscape have inspired the works of countless works of prose and poetry, from gifted writers across Tasmania and around the world. One of the first published works on Tasmania was Marcus Clarke’s epic novel about convict life, For the Term of His Natural Life (1874), written after the London-born Clarke visited Tasmania in the 1870s.

Tasmania has produced many home-grown talents, including the internationally acclaimed author, Christopher Koch. Born in Hobart, Koch’s novel The Year of Living Dangerously (1978) was later made into a high-profile film directed by Peter Weir. His most recent novel Out of Ireland (1999) is worked around the journal of Irish revolutionary, Robert Devereux, exiled in Van Diemen’s Land in 1848.

Hobart author Richard Flanagan is the state’s best known literary star. His award-winning novel Death of a River Guide (1995) weaves together Tasmanian history and myths in a story set on the Franklin River, where Flanagan once worked as a guide. His next novel, The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1997), won a national literary award, and became an acclaimed film, directed by Flanagan. Most recently, Flanagan has written an enigmatic fictional account of the infamous penal colony on Sarah Island, entitled Gould’s Book of Fish (2002).

Tasmania has become the home of a number of lauded writers, including British ex-pats Nicholas Shakespeare (author of Snowleg and In Tasmania) and Arabella Edge (The Company and The Raft).
Tasmania celebrates its vibrant literary culture in August 2006 with the inaugural Tasmanian Living Writers' Week. A readers and writers festival, TLWW will include over thirty events statewide, including book fairs, literary lunches, guest speakers and school workshops.

Craft & Design
Tasmania's crafts community has been thriving for over 200 years. Furniture-making has been particularly important, with pieces from the colonial times highly-prized today. In 2005 the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery acquired a rare colonial double-end couch, featuring Tasmanian blue gum and dating back to the early 1800s. This extremely significant piece of colonial furniture was donated to the museum by the Federal Group with support from the Art Foundation of Tasmania, after it sold at auction for $310,000.

Contemporary furniture designers and craftsmen such as Patrick Hall, Rex Heathcote and Brendan Sharpe use Tasmania’s native timbers, including Huon pine and sassafras, to create exquisite pieces that are both functional and beautiful.

The IXL Design store in Hobart and the Tasmanian Design Centre in Launceston contain some of the world’s finest collections of contemporary wood design.

Design Island is a program run by Arts Tasmania to foster emerging Tasmanian designers and encourage them to take their work to the world. The 2006 exhibition, Beneath the Surface, featured work as diverse as the Japanese-inspired fashion of Leonie Struthers to the modernist house designed by third-year architect student Poppy Taylor. Also exhibited are jewellery, furniture, textiles, ceramics and sculpture, made by young designers living, working and studying across the island.

Painting & Sculpture
Tasmania’s art scene flourished from colonial times when artists such as the English landscape painter John Glover migrated to Van Diemen’s Land. In galleries and studios across the state, the works of Tasmanian artists reveal a striking connection to this extraordinary place.

Two Tasmanian artists have won the coveted Archibald Prize for portraiture in the award’s history – Jack Carrington Smith in 1963 with a portrait of Professor James McAuleyand Geoff Dwyer in 2003, with his portrait of Richard Flanagan.

In shopfronts, classrooms and galleries across the state, the work of Tasmania’s visual artists is showcased in the biennial Tasmanian Living Artists Week. The festival brings art to the people through innovative, creative and interesting ways.

Photography
Photographers Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis took awe-inspiring photographs of Tasmania’s remote wilderness areas reflecting their deep respect for the environment. Dombrovskis’ image of the Franklin River ‘Rock Island Bend’ became the icon of the ‘No Dam’ conservation movement.

Truchanas (1923-72) was a Lithuanian-born photographer came to Tasmania as a refugee in 1945. A great admirer of Tuchanas’ work, Dombrovskis (1945-96) was born in a refugee camp in Germany near the end of World War II to Latvian parents. He arrived in Tasmania with his mother in 1950.

Tragically, both men died alone in Tasmania’s southwest, in the pursuit of their art: Truchanas died while photographing the Gordon River in 1972; it was Dombrovskis who found his body. Dombrovskis died of a massive heart attack while on a photographic expedition in the Western Arthur Range in 1996.

Performing Arts
The esteemed Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra is based in Hobart at the Federation Concert Hall. The TSO tours nationally and internationally and performs regularly across the state with artists from a range of fields.

Ten Days on the Island is a unique celebration of island culture that takes place at locations across Tasmania. This biennial event includes dance, theatre, music, opera, film, literature, exhibitions and installations, inspiring discussions, gastronomic feasts and much more.

Read about:

Where to shop in Tasmania
Tasmania's architectural evolution