The Devonport City Council’s Permanent Collection is rich and diverse, comprising textiles, ceramics, glass, sculpture, paintings and works on paper by iconic Tasmanian and Australian artists. The Collection has its beginnings in works collected by Jean Thomas for The Little Gallery, which opened in 1966 with an exhibition of works by Tasmanian artist Christopher Pyett. After several decades of growth and change, Devonport Regional Gallery’s Art Collection Policy was developed to ensure a collection that is cohesive, focused and significant within Tasmania. Subsequently, the Collection has become a unique, vibrant and accumulative record of professional artistic activity within Tasmania. 

Since the policy was adopted in 2011, the Gallery has continued to collect notable works by key Tasmanian practitioners including Pat Brassington, Tim Burns, Matt Calvert, Hermie CornelisseSimon Cuthbert, Lisa Garland, Julie Gough, Lola Greeno, Patrick Grieve, Neil Haddon, David Hawley, Jonathan Kimberley, Colin Langridge, Michael Muruste, Rosemary O’Rourke, Sally Rees, Troy Ruffels, Mary Scott, Michael Schlitz, Fiona Tabart, Richard Wastell, Alan Young, Amanda Davies, David Hawley and Raymond Arnold. The acquisition of these works has ensured that, when viewed with existing works, the Collection continues to evolve as a vibrant and comprehensive record of Tasmanian visual culture. 

In addition to these contemporary Tasmanian works, the gallery also holds the well-known Robinson Collection of photographic negatives, the Moon Collection of nineteenth century textiles and decorative arts, and a large number of paintings by renowned North-West coast artist Owen Lade. Other notable works include that of David Boyd, John Olsen, Clifton Pugh, Lloyd Rees, George Lambert, John Coburn, Edith Holmes, Dorothy Stoner, Bea Maddock, Gwyn Hanssen Piggott, Christopher Pyett, Grahame King, Ray Arnold, Les Blakebrough and Philip Wolfhagen.

Our Collections

Collections

The Robinson Collection

The Robinson Collection comprises over 100,000 photographic negatives. The images, which vary in subject from portraits to land-scapes, street-scapes and crowd-scapes, were taken by Bert Robinson ...
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Permanent Collection Images

The rich and varied Collection has its beginnings in works collected by Jean Thomas for The Little Gallery, 1966. After several decades the Permanent Collection ...
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Tidal Acquisitive Art Award

The Tidal: City of Devonport National Art Award is a biennial, acquisitive award, which provides a contemporary platform for artists to reflect upon the Tidal ...
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Moon Collection

The Moon Collection is a collection of nineteenth century textiles and decorative arts objects, originally owned by the Moon Family, well-off silk and trade merchants ...
Collections

The Owen Lade Collection

Owen Gower Lade was born in Hobart, Tasmania in 1922, and lived in Devonport between 1975 and 1989. Lade’s work was first exhibited in The Little Gallery ...