Eltham artists visit Mongolia

TWO Eltham artists will become the first Australians to exhibit at the National Museum of Mongolia.

Jenni Mitchell and Mervyn Hannan will spend seven weeks in the Asian country where they will exhibit with Mongolian artist Togsoyun Sodom next month.

Mitchell said she first met Sodom, her “Mongolian sister”, in 2005 when the trio travelled to South Australia’s Flinders Ranges to paint.

The trip culminated in the exhibition Desert Dreaming, which featured at Montsalvat that year.

The couple then travelled to Mongolia in 2010 where Mitchell said they painted the “wild” countryside of the northeast Siberian region with Sodom.

Mitchell said this time the trio would go to the Gobi Desert.

“It is an honour to be invited to exhibit and it will be about cultural relations more than anything else,” Mitchell said.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in the Australian desert and you feel like it goes on forever.

“But the Mongolian landscape is so much bigger again. You may see a hill in the distance, but you know that beyond that hill there are plains; it’s an endless sea of grasses.”

Mitchell and Hannan will also exhibit work with that of the late Grace Mitchell as part of Artists Open Studios on May 5 to 6 at Grace’s Gallery, 6 Mt Pleasant Rd, Eltham.