RAYMOND ARNOLD
Born in 1950, Raymond Arnold is one of Tasmania’s most respected arts practitioners. He studied teaching and art in Victoria, Australia before developing his professional career in Tasmania.
Over the last quarter of a century he has helped run an artist’s co-operative in Hobart, lectured at the Tasmanian School of Art, been Chief Examiner for HSC Art, printed thousands of screen print posters for community groups, worked as an artist in mining towns, schools and Universities, completed public art commissions, participated in Arts Tasmania and Australia council committees and received a Federation medal for services to the Art Community.
Ray lives in Queenstown, Western Tasmania, where for ten years he directed a regional art space - Landscape Art Research Queenstown (LARQ) which fostered exhibitions, workshops, residencies and forums. They are now engaged in helping to run a community art space titled PressWEST Tasmania which has a program of exhibitions, workshops and residencies.
Raymond Arnold has held over 60 solo exhibitions of his paintings and prints in Australia, Europe and the US and participated in many group shows. He is represented in the collections of the Imperial War Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Musee Courbet in France, The National Gallery of Australia, the Australian Parliament House and various State Galleries.
EMMA BETT
Emma Bett is Co-Director of Bett Gallery in Hobart, and a third-generation gallerist. With contemporary art being the family business, Emma grew up in a gallery, surrounded by the complexities of the art world from a very young age. Emma’s grandmother, Elva Bett, opened the first (Bett) gallery in Wellington, New Zealand in 1968, followed by her parents Carol & Dick Bett, who in 1986 opened what is now known as Bett Gallery, in Hobart, Tasmania.
In 2005 Emma studied a Bachelor of Fine Art and a Bachelor of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies at Charles Darwin University leading her to work in
Art Centre’s in Arnhem Land, and on completion of her studies she returned to Hobart to join in the management of the gallery full time.
The Bett Gallery is now considered to be one of the leading and most respected contemporary art galleries in Australia, and Emma’s role in the gallery, alongside her brother Jack, sees her work with a stable of over 60 artists, and curate up to 24 exhibitions a year. Emma has sat on numerous national and local boards including the Australian Commercial Galleries Association (Chair), Australia Council for the Arts, Contemporary Arts Tasmania & the Hobart City Council Arts Advisory Board, and you can hear Emma every week on local ABC radio on the “Wide World of Arts’.
CRAIG LIMKIN
Craig Limkin has been a champion of the Arts Sector for about 25 years. Craig has over 20 years’ experience working in government agencies in Queensland, New South Wales, and (for the last 5 years) Tasmania. He was appointed Secretary of the Department of State Growth and Chief Executive Officer of the Tasmanian Development Board in October 2023. The Department of State Growth is the Tasmanian Government’s principal cultural and sporting advisory, development and funding body in Tasmania.
He was the Executive Director of Create Infrastructure and has managed large scale infrastructure delivery in the Arts and Culture sector including the relocation of the Powerhouse Museum and the development of the Cultural Infrastructure Plan 2025+ being the first of its kind in the world.
Craig is a voluntary board member of the Theatre Royal and of A New Approach, Australia’s leading arts and culture think tank.
He has previously been a board member of arts and cultural organisations in Sydney and New York.