(In the following articles the artist is referred to as her previous (married) name Emma Burrows)
Tea House Collective members included digital and projection artist Michael Rogowski, creative arts workshop facilitator Emma Burrows (president of the Serpentine community arts gallery), sculptor and film-maker James Smythe, international felt artist Sachiko Kotaka, film producer and painter Sho Wakejima, and published printmaker Louis Page.
The Boat was an interactive installation, occupying vacant shop at 56 Magellan Street, Lismore. The Boat hosted workshops, poetry and music events, exhibitions and sales of local artists work, it represented an inclusive community arts centre which underpins the collaborative inclusive model integral to Emmas work.
The Boat Arts Centre
The Boat Arts Centre public art
Media Gallery
Lismore Arts Collaborative will run the Lismore Arts Centre for the next three months, holding workshops and classes, exhibits, poetry nights, and experimental light and sound shows, James has already created a big wicker boat in the space, which was a spur-of-the-moment artistic creation he made last week. “I was pruning the garden and I thought ‘I could make something out of this’,” James said. “Emma suggested I could do something for Lantern Parade night and I though ‘I’ll make a boat out of sticks’”.
The space is being run by the community for the community and any artists who would like to use the space to create art or join in workshops and meet other creative types are most welcome.
“The purpose of having the Lismore Arts Centre is to have a place where people can get inspired by one another and share skills. Rather than being at home practising on your own, it’s much nicer to be surrounded by other people,” Emma said. “It’s a space that can be used freely by anyone – people who knit can come and make their beanies here for instance and put their work up for sale, as there are not a lot of creative outlets for people to show and sell their work. Then we will have different workshops, which are about forming creative groups so people can share techniques, with those group workshops culminating in group exhibitions.”
Celebrating continued Art in the Heart funding are (l-r) Southern Cross University’s Mike Jones, Art in the Heart co-ordinator Stephen Nelson, SCU student and Art in the Heart participant Emma Burrows and Mayor Jenny Dowell.
From turning empty shopfronts into creative spaces for art and poetry to helping women sneak out in the dead of night to put jumpers on poles and knitted geckos on trees, the Art in the Heart project has pushed some weird and wonderful projects around town in the last 12 months.
And it’s not going to stop there, with Arts NSW promising funding for another year. Art in the Heart is a partnership between Arts NSW and Lismore City Council aimed to enliven the city centre with artistic endeavours – a concept that brought life back into Newcastle’s CBD.
At the announcement on Monday, Lismore Mayor Jenny Dowell congratulated Southern Cross University second-year Visual Arts student Emma Burrows at the successful conclusion of her three-month Art in the Heart project at 56 Magellan Street.
Emma has been an ‘artist-in-residence’ at the premises in order to undertake a site-specific work as part of her course of study, which she entitled ‘The Boat’.
“During her residency Emma has collaborated with members of her SCU printmaking class and other artists from the wider creative community in this sizeable temporary art space, to great effect,” Mayor Dowell said. “Southern Cross University wrote in support of our application for funding last year and has other collaborative projects in mind to be linked to ‘Art in the Heart’.”
Emma’s project will be viewed and assessed on site by her lecturers and fellow printmakers. High school students from the Gwydir Learning Region, engaged in doing SCU Visual Arts drawing and enrichment projects, will also visit ‘The Boat’ today.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Declare your undying love, share your deepest secrets, recite a little ditty, go on a poetic rant or express anything you want in words or voice. Just don’t miss The Boat.
The Boat is a space created by artist Emma Burrows in Magellan Street where she wants people to explore and express their creative selves. While she occupies the space as part of the Art in the Heart project, she plans to hold lots of different workshops, children’s activities and performance nights, including Beat, an informal poetry night held every second Friday.
Emma explained that the Beat poetry nights started at the ‘T-House’ Art in the Heart project in the former café adjacent to the Lismore Regional Gallery.
“They generated such an amazing response, lots of people came who weren’t performers because they felt it was a safe enough space in which to share,” Emma said. “I present the Beat with local poet Stephanie Petrick and we’ve been astounded at the number of people who have stories to tell and life episodes to share through the spoken word.”
Emma said she was fortunate enough growing up to be exposed to lots of creative culture – theatre, live music, art exhibitions, plenty of which included thinking outside the square. She said when she came back to Lismore, after living overseas and in the city, she felt a little starved for active community art projects, particularly for young people. She said she wanted The Boat to become a creative hub where people could play around with any artistic endeavour they wished and bounce ideas of other people, as she believes creative culture is essential to human nature.
The Boat is a private project but Emma said every day people are utilising it, to play music, create art, work on personal projects or simply be inspired by the people and the space itself, and she’d love to see Lismore City Council build a community arts centre in the future.
“There’s definitely the community support for something like that to exist,” she said. “For instance, the Beat nights are magic. There is a wonderful local wordsmith named Vera who performs ‘acappella poetry’ and a young boy from New Zealand astounded everyone recently with a five-minute declamation without any notes or preparation. That’s what it’s all about – it’s an open mic for expression.”
The next get together of this self-styled mad poets society will take place next Friday, April 15, and all are welcome. The night kicks of at 56 Magellan Street at 6pm and entry is by gold coin (bring drinks and nibblies if you want).
As the flier says, ‘Be there or be somewhere significantly less interesting’.7th Apr 2011
The space is being run by the community for the community and any artists who would like to use the space to create art or join in workshops and meet other creative types are most welcome.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Declare your undying love, share your deepest secrets, recite a little ditty, go on a poetic rant or express anything you want in words or voice. Just don’t miss The Boat.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.