Image: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Wakefield
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery will present 'Fantastic Forms', a Bundanon touring exhibition built around the work of Merric Boyd, with the show on view at the Art Gallery at Royal Park in Launceston from 4 July to 27 September 2026. The exhibition brings together more than 200 drawings and ceramics by Boyd from the Bundanon Collection, placed in dialogue with contemporary works by Rubyrose Bancroft, Stephen Benwell and Nabilah Nordin.
QVMAG describes the exhibition as capturing the energy, movement and colour of Boyd’s expansive creative practice. Boyd, born in 1888 and active until 1959, is identified by the museum as Australia’s first studio potter. The exhibition text also quotes Boyd from 1930 on the pleasure of making and decorating pottery, a line that frames the show’s emphasis on handwork, imagination and material invention.
The exhibition is organised as a touring project from Bundanon and is supported by the National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach Program, an Australian Government initiative aimed at improving access to the national collections for all Australians. QVMAG’s website says the touring exhibition will travel to ten regional and metropolitan venues across Australia between 2025 and 2028, placing the Launceston presentation within a wider national circuit rather than as a one-off local display.
The pairing of Boyd’s work with the practices of Bancroft, Benwell and Nordin extends the exhibition beyond historical survey. According to the museum’s artist notes, Rubyrose Bancroft is an emerging Bundjalung artist based in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales whose work in 'Fantastic Forms' uses humour and escapism while exploring biblical and cosmic themes. Stephen Benwell’s paintings, ceramics and bronzes reference and challenge classical forms, while Nabilah Nordin’s sculptural practice is presented as deliberately “unlearning” correct methods in favour of conscious naïveté and wonky craftwork.
Together, those contemporary responses position Boyd not only as a key figure in Australian studio pottery but as a point of departure for artists working across ceramics, sculpture and image-making. QVMAG says the exhibition highlights how the featured artists connect with, reinterpret and respond to Boyd’s body of work, while also underscoring the ongoing relevance of imagination in Australian art.
Alongside the exhibition, QVMAG will host a curator’s talk with Boe-Lin Bastian from Bundanon on Saturday 25 July from 11am to noon at the Queen Victoria Art Gallery at Royal Park, 2 Wellington Street, Launceston. The museum says the talk will explore Boyd’s legacy beyond his title as the “father of studio pottery” and will look at how the contemporary artists in the exhibition respond to his work.
The exhibition’s official launch follows that same day, on Sunday 25 July 2026, from 3pm to 5pm at the Art Gallery at Royal Park. QVMAG lists free entry for 'Fantastic Forms' and says the gallery is open daily from 10am to 4pm.
