Sasha Grishin's top Canberra art picks for 2015

It was a year of a black harvest, where the year began with the death of Joy Warren, one of the permanent fixtures in the Canberra art scene, followed by the deaths of Betty Churcher, the second director of the National Gallery of Australia, Gordon Darling, the philanthropist who altered Canberra's cultural landscape and the premature and tragic death of Andrew Sayers, who led the National Portrait Gallery into existence and then became the director of the National Museum of Australia.

The single most significant event in the visual arts in Canberra was not an exhibition, but the most fundamental reorientation in the display of art at the National Gallery of Australia since it opened in 1982.

The newish director, Gerard Vaughan, a year into his appointment, decided to bring Australian art down from the attic onto the main ground floor, and took Canberra's famed collection of international art upstairs and totally remodelled the space and removed all of the secondary partitions and relit the space with LED lighting.

Not only has the international collection never looked so good, but for the first time in Australia we have a permanent world-class display of world-class art, with Sydney's John Kaldor Galleries a poor second.

The display of Australian art has also been rethought with considerably fewer items on display arranged in thematic clusters downstairs. Vaughan argues that every six months half of the galleries will change over with new displays, so that every 12 months we will have a brand-new version of Australian art available at the National Gallery.

This will be good for locals and will encourage us to visit the gallery more frequently, perhaps less good for interstate and international visitors who may not be delighted to be told, come back in six months if you want to see the Dorrit Blacks and possibly a rod for the backs of a small number of curators. A radically new presentation of the national art collection is both exciting and praiseworthy.

Myth and Magic of the Sepik River at the National Gallery was one show that stopped me in my tracks and solicited several repeat visits. It was simply an exquisite selection, beautifully presented and completely unforgettable. A scholarly catalogue rounded off the experience.

There was a black side to the display that touched on headhunting rituals, but completely appropriate when you consider the context of the artefacts. The other key exhibition at the National Gallery is Tom Roberts, a timely retrospective held almost 20 years since the previous one.

It is probably naive to say it, but for the first time I am looking at Roberts from the perspective of the 21st century. The nationalist icons, such as the scenes of shearing and bushrangers, are beautifully painted, but look decisively dated, but his work as a Victorian and Edwardian portraitist shines. The big picture, the Opening of Federal Parliament in Melbourne, cannot be salvaged and was a cross that he bore on his back, but it left him financial, so that he could indulge in the misty Whistlerian paintings in London later in life.

The peculiarity of the Canberra art scene is that it is dominated by the institutional galleries and commercial art galleries are very thin on the ground.

Beaver Galleries this year celebrated their 40th anniversary and had a stellar year with a number of outstanding exhibitions by local and interstate artists.

Alex Asch's Under Construction, held back in June, was quite sensational conceptually and in its execution. His weathered facades that he has been constructing for more than two decades are formidable meditative icons that also comment on the environment and the political issues of the day.

Canberra's newest commercial art gallery, the Nancy Sever Gallery in Kingston, has also had a strong exhibition program to see off its first year in operation. One of the more effective exhibitions this year was a small survey of the work of the veteran Canberra artist, Janet Dawson. Her dedication and application to her practice has been consistent, but not formulaic, and the show presented quite a number of fresh surprises.

A selection of five highlights from 2015 is somewhat arbitrary and I should hasten to include the strong exhibition program at the Drill Hall Gallery, with such amazing shows as that by Ann Thomson, but enough has been said to make the point that despite a political climate not well disposed to the visual arts and the general economic gloom, the arts scene in the nation's capital is strong and flourishing.