Tina Havelock Stevens likes to feel the wind in her hair, which probably goes some way to explaining the “gentle epic” and generous punk spirit that infuses her multidisciplinary practice. “When I was little, I loved the ghost train at Luna Park. Anything that has a ride element, I like that feeling. It reminds me of being 10 and on the motorbike again. It’s a moving forward, but with a kind of magic.”
Traces of that same magic imbue Now is a Beginning, Havelock Stevens’ new exhibition at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, which is also a moving forward of sorts, as well as a circling back. What the artist’s late mother might describe as Holus Bolus—an expression featured in a neon work in the exhibition. “It means everything all at once.”
Curator Ann Finegan describes the exhibition as a series of apertures that “take you into multiple modes of being in the world”: historical, affective, grief-laden, joyful and sublime. These apertures take the form of immersive sound and light installations, neon works, photographic displays, home videos, film collaborations and outdoor projections, all of which continue Havelock Stevens’ investigation into the ambiguities of human nature and how we traverse physical and emotional spaces. But in this particular search for a universal experience, she started from somewhere deeply personal and very local.
“Ann has talked about psychic residues, which I thought was a good way of looking at it. Because I always did have a thing about Bathurst.”
That ‘thing’ has been shaped by deep family connections to the region – her mother grew up there, her father and grandparents are buried there, and it’s where she learned to ride that motorbike on her uncle’s farm. It’s also about the elements: the wide-open skies, the smell of the trees and that wind through the hair. Bathurst is where she made her first student film, Cow, and it’s an hour from Kandos, where Havelock Stevens has been a regular presence at the biennial Cementa festival.
But while the exhibition is inspired by Bathurst, it’s not about Bathurst. “It’s inspired by place but not about the place. It’s about people who traverse the place,” she explains. Some of these newer narratives and people include members of Compareo, the Bathurst disability performance group with whom Havelock Stevens collaborated to make High Fashun (2025), an art film and project she’s described as “social engagement with a Fellini edge.”
Another new film work—a “posthumous collaboration with Mum”—is Spectral Peace (2022—2025). It’s a dazzling, deeply affecting one-minute timelapse of daylight as it moves through the empty childhood home that Havelock Stevens nursed her mother out of and eventually packed away. “It was typical of me to just go and hang out at the house for a couple of weeks. I had cameras set up and was doing stuff but I also needed to capture everything just for my own self. I had no idea where it was going to land and so I just put it in my pocket, but then this [exhibition] came about and I thought, well this is the time to show it.”
Other works employ old black-and-white family photographs and heirlooms, and the deep orange and ultramarine blues of her recent Sydney Metro public artwork, Sonic Luminescence (2024). This interweaving of old and new, personal and universal, is important to Havelock Stevens. “I didn’t want to make a nostalgic, sentimental show. It’s about bringing new narratives.”
On 21 June, the exhibition will spill out into the streets, with Havelock Stevens inviting the public to join her on a performance trail across the city. The tour will include a work by dancer Jo Lloyd, and a stop at the tennis courts for a front row seat to Racquet Racket Duel Dual, the drums and guitar call-and-response work by Havelock Stevens and her longtime collaborator Liberty.
“There’s just an intuitive trust that all these things will resonate with people. Maybe not all people, but that’s ok … This kind of exhibition, it’s an experiential trip. It’s not like getting on a ghost train, except it is a bit of a ghost train, really. Just not in a scary way.”
Now is a Beginning
Tina Havelock Stevens
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery
On now—22 June
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