From Footy Fields to Gallery Walls: LEAGUES at Pinnacles
Image credit: Jason Phu, The Greatest Battle in the Universe/The Greatest Show of all Time (detail), 2025, mixed media on concertina book. Photo: Roslyn Budd Photography.
VAULT Editor in Chief Alison Kubler spoke to Bradley Vincent about his clever exhibition, LEAGUES, at The Pinnacles Galleries, Townsville, which explores the spirit of rugby league in the heartland of footy country through the work of nine Australian artists.
What first inspired you to curate an exhibition around rugby league, and why do you think it resonates so strongly in North Queensland? I’d love to know about this sporty side of you!
It was Director at Townsville City Galleries, Holly Arden, who reached out to me with the idea. I had commissioned and curated an exhibition with Yuriyal Bridgeman a couple of years ago at HOTA Gallery that looked specifically at Rugby League in Papua New Guinea, so she knew from that exhibition that I had an interest in Rugby League. I was thrilled with the invitation. Ever since working with Yuriyal, I have had a renewed passion for the game and interest in the cultural and aesthetic impacts of the NRL in particular.
Anyone who has been to Townsville knows that it is a Rugby League city. And in particular, that the North Queensland Cowboys are a massive part of the fabric of that city. I went away and thought about several different ways to approach the topic. Would it include historical works? Memorabilia? Was it a museum-style exhibition? But I kept coming back to contemporary art as a way to reflect the modern game and built a show focused on commissioning new work from artists who shared my love of the game.
Sports and art are often set in cultural opposition, but do you think that is accurate? How do you hope this exhibition contributes to the broader conversation about sport and culture in Australia?
In a landscape of funding scarcity, I totally understand the oppositional framing. Still, when we step back and think about broader society and how we live our lives, we see more clearly that sport and art have more in common than we acknowledge. I think about myself, and art is a massive part of my life. It is my work and my passion. And on the weekends, there is nothing that makes me happier than sitting down in front of a good game of Rugby League and giving in to the excitement and the spectacle of it.
It is also something that I bond with friends and family over – a shared interest that I’ve found can be a great connector. Honestly, there have been times in my life when I have felt that the world I work in can be isolating from family who have only a passing interest in the arts. It is amazing how quickly conversations open up when we meet on a shared platform. Bringing up the weekend’s win or big upset can be the spark that unlocks commonalities.
I think what I am saying is that we all contain multitudes. And our habit of a this or that approach to funding, or life, is less helpful than a this plus that outlook.
How did you go about selecting the nine artists featured in Leagues, and what perspectives did you want to bring together?
This exhibition is my first project as a freelance curator since leaving a full-time role at an institution. From the beginning, there was something liberating about that mindset, and perhaps because of the subject matter, it felt like a chance to play. I focused on reaching out to artists that I knew, or suspected, had an interest in the game and artists whose work could bring a unique and perhaps unexpected perspective to the exhibition.
I was also thinking about artists whose work would connect with the broad audiences that the show would attract. I wanted a group of artists whose work would collectively celebrate all the different shapes that contemporary art could take and bring audiences into a world where art was just as vibrant and exciting as a local derby on a Saturday afternoon.
The exhibition was also a chance to reconnect with many artists with whom I had worked before but hadn’t had the opportunity for a while. In many cases, LEAGUES is a bit of a reunion. So, an artist like Jason Phu was a no-brainer. I knew he was a mad league fan, I’ve had a long-time working relationship with him, and I knew his work would bring both the colour and the contemporary vision that the show demanded.
And someone like Samuel Hodge, again, a long-time friend and collaborator, I knew could bring a unique perspective to the exhibition. The question was whether he was interested in the subject matter. We had a wonderful initial conversation about his childhood in regional NSW and his family playing for the local team, the way the local game would take over town on the weekends and the complex mix of community and masculinity on display. His work for the exhibition was a chance for him to dig into his family's archive of images, splicing it with the personal archive of NRL star Ian Roberts. It is a work that is both incredibly specific and personal and full of shared cultural memories, especially for those from regional Australia.
You’ve described the show as a celebration of the “spirit and energy” of the game. How do the artworks capture that feeling, an intangible feeling?
I think it comes across in the overall aesthetic of the exhibition. Hopefully, you walk into the space, and it is abuzz with colour and contrast. There is a great material richness in the works. We have ceramics, painting, textiles, photography and drawings all bundled up together, and the works are doing wonderful things to each other. I guess it is almost like a team dynamic, if I can be a bit cheesy. A good squad requires a diverse range of complementary skills. I hope that we have assembled just the right mix to make them hum along with that kind of intangible energy.
I love that we have in the same room fan-art style textile from Romance was Born, a suspended shield painting from Yuriyal Bridgman, and surprisingly touching aura photography from Kate Mitchell. It is an uncanny mix, and it is that kind of diversity that reflects the game at its best.
What role did the North Queensland Cowboys’ 30th anniversary play in shaping the exhibition’s vision?
I cannot speak highly enough about the Cowboys’ commitment to this project. We always wanted the team to be involved in the exhibition – to truly make a project that involved the local heroes. But there was, on my behalf, a level of nerves in bringing together the world of sports and art so directly. What would a sports organisation make of the project and the kind of works that we wanted to commission?
I should not have been worried; from the outset, they were nothing but enthusiastic and trusting. They saw the project as a great addition to the 30th Anniversary celebrations. We presented the concepts of Samuel Leighton-Dore, Billy Bain and Kate Mitchell for commissions that were specifically about the Cowboys club, and they got behind them instantly.
I think Kate’s work in particular is a great example of what makes this project so full of potential. We managed to get her into camp with the team pre-season to photograph the players with her Aura camera, creating a truly unique team portrait, Team Spirit (2025). We were all a little nervous in the lead-up. What would the players make of this process? But they surprised all of us with their enthusiasm and their curiosity. Those two days of Kate sitting down with individual players, discussing their portraits and what they might reveal about them as players and people, were a perfect meeting of art and sports.
Can you talk about the process of commissioning the three new works with the Cowboys and what those collaborations brought to the exhibition?
Samuel Leighton-Dore, Billy Bain and Kate Mitchell all came up with concepts for works that could be made in collaboration with the Cowboys. For each of them, it was a matter of finding a way to do this that was still true to their practice. The works were not intended to feel like advertisements; instead, they provided an opportunity for three exciting, very different artists to respond in their own way and create complex works.
For Billy, this meant looking back over the history of the club and celebrating some of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island heroes of the last 30 years, across the men’s and women’s teams. The result is seven figures that are tributes to these icons, realised in Billy’s inimitable style. And for Samuel Leighton-Dore, whose husband grew up in Townsville and whose in-laws are die-hard Cowboys supporters, this meant a chance to bring his particular, figurative stylings to the home game experience while capturing a surprising tenderness in the rough and tumble.
Along with Kate’s unique portrait, I think that the club is so fortunate to have had these three visions created. It feels incredibly one-of-a-kind to me.
Tell me specifically about the work you commissioned from Romance Was Born and what that means to you.
This is a special one for me. I’ve been fortunate enough to know Luke and Anna for 20 years now, since their very first collection as Romance Was Born. I’ve watched them continue to create iconic visions of a specifically Australian flavour, elevated to the highest level. I also happen to know that Anna, in particular, is a mad Bunnies (South Sydney Rabbitohs) supporter. So I obviously jumped at the chance to get them in the exhibition.
While they are no stranger to art galleries – their work is held in collections across the country and internationally – I was interested in what they might create for this exhibition, specifically not a wearable work but a wall-based work. Their response was to turn a picnic blanket in Bunnies red and green into an intricately beaded, high-kitsch supporter banner that any team would be lucky to have. It feels to me like an instantly iconic, even if it will likely ruffle the feathers of a few Cowboys fans.
Rugby league is both a professional spectacle and a grassroots community sport. I think art could learn something from the way sports are marketed. I’m always fascinated that people will become generational members of sporting teams, but it is very rarely the same for the arts. This is perhaps an observation more than a question, but what do you think?
I think there is definitely something there. Arts institutions talk about building lifelong audiences, to varying levels of success, through education and public programs. But I can’t help but feel that sometimes they lack the kind of excitement that can engage someone right through into adulthood. I think we often lose all but the most ardent arts fans at some point in our teenage years and then struggle to recapture them as adults.
I don’t know the answer, and there are experts wiser than I at galleries across the country, working hard on such problems. But I would be interested to see if a project like LEAGUES could be a part of the answer. Exhibitions that cross perceived boundaries while including art from leading contemporary voices doesn’t seem like a bad place to look?
Did you notice any surprising interpretations or approaches from the artists that shifted your own view of rugby league?
I believe each artist has continued to inspire me on my journey, as I reflect on the game and its reach. It is a complex history and a sometimes-difficult present for the game. While this show is essentially a celebration, it also begins to explore some of the more complicated issues surrounding it. Sexism, racism, injury and gambling all circle around it. These nine artists demonstrate what the game can be at its best, and that has perhaps made me more aware of the work that still needs to be done.
I think it is interesting that by pointing out the best of something, it can equally bring attention to its flaws. It is something I’ve been reflecting on since the exhibition opening and something I will carry forward into future projects.
What does it mean to you personally to bring this exhibition to Townsville, a city so deeply connected to the sport?
I love Townsville. It has been such a pleasure to deliver this project up there, and I have been lucky enough to work on other projects in the city and spend time there. I am a big believer in regional galleries as essential players in communities, and I really want to see them commissioning exhibitions and artists to make work for their audiences. The chance to do just that has been deeply satisfying and then combining that with League has been a true highlight.
On opening weekend, a couple of the artists and I were lucky enough to attend a Cowboys home game. On the big screens around the stadium, they played an ad with footage from the show. Intermittently, all of the wrap-around screens of the stadium were filled with Sam Leighton-Dore’s artwork. To be in a stadium with 30,000 people surrounded by art was a first. Honestly, just so special.
Looking ahead, do you see opportunities for LEAGUES to travel beyond Townsville, or for sport to continue as a theme in your curatorial work?
It is a question I have been asked a lot. This version of the show is tailored explicitly for Townsville and its audiences. There is undoubtedly another version of the show for every league-loving town or city in the country. What that looks like, or whether it is in my future, I’m not sure yet.
Likewise, I’m not sure what role sport plays for me in my curatorial practice. I think it is more that I am interested in work that crosses siloes. Popular culture has always been a focus for me, and sport is just one example of that. More broadly, I am interested in art and exhibitions that mine culture more broadly, that collapse or reshape barriers, in the ‘thematic’ as a tool for kicking off conversation.
LEAGUES is at Pinnacles Galleries until October 19.
townsville.qld.gov.au
