Busy times at Byron Bay’s Lone Goat Gallery with new funding and the annual Byron Bay Surf Festival art show.
Th gallery will be able to provide improved support for local artists with the recent announcement of $106,946 in NSW Government funding.
Nationals Parliamentary Secretary for Northern NSW Ben Franklin joined with Lone Goat Gallery artists and Gallerist Andrew McDonald to make the funding announcement.
Mr Franklin said the funding will go towards improving the quality of the gallery which will provide enhanced support for local artists.
‘The Northern Rivers, particularly here in Byron Bay is the arts and cultural hub for NSW,’ said Mr Franklin. ‘I want to ensure we The funding will assist in refurbishing the gallery to reflect the professional ambitions of local artists and increase functionality at the gallery.
The funding is part of the NSW Government’s Stronger Country Community Fund.
Eight artists at Surf Fest show
This weekend the Byron Bay Surf Festival Art Show returns to the gallery for 2019 with a group of eight artists on the cutting edge of surf culture from around the globe and Australia.
Spanning the fields of photography, painting, comics, collage, illustration, animation, design and journalism, all of these artists have surfing at the core of their lives and work.
The show will feature the work Luke Day, Filippa Edghill, Ted Grambeau, Duncan Macfarlane, James McMillan, Nanda Ormond, Jaleesa Vincent, Kentaro Yoshida.
The work of Duncan Macfarlane • Ted Grambeau • Nanda Ormond • James McMillan
BYRON BAY SURF FESTIVAL ART SHOW
Opning 5.30pm Friday February 22.
Special Surf Festival Hours over the weekend will be 10am–4pm Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 February.
A bit more pork-barrelling?
More importantly, how has this space been so successfully commandeered and turned from its original brief as a “COMMUNITY and exhibition space” into a gallery for the exclusive use of visual artists? With a paid coordinator for this exclusive purpose?
Mr Franklin describes Byron Bay as ‘the arts and cultural hub for NSW.’ True enough, but there is much more to arts and culture than pictures on a wall, which our precious public space has had its vision so unimaginatively confined to.
Meantime our long awaited library facility seems to lack the capacity to hold the range of literary programs we might expect in a community of writers and one of the most active population of borrowers. Does the library or Friends of the Library have access to this space? Not as far as I’m aware.