‘Galleries without walls, venues without stages’: The crisis facing Lismore’s artists | LindaMorrissmh
Four months after February’s record-breaking floods, the crisis is far from over for artists, performers and musicians of the inundated river settlements in northern NSW.
But parts of the Lismore area are still without power. People have been scattered to lounges, spare rooms, tents, and caravans. Affordable accommodation and cheap studio space, already in short supply before the floods, are diabolical to find. Anxiety remains high among those rebuilding artistic practices that the floods will come again. And funding support is not reaching everyone.
At that forum, NSW arts minister Ben Franklin announced $12 million would be directed to flood impacted regions in coming days to fund the urgent repairs to theatres, music venues, museums, art centres and other cultural organisations. “I’m proud to call this region my home and many of the artists and creative practitioners are my friends. I’ll walk with them on the recovery journey for as long as it takes,” Franklin said.
When stained-glass artist Simon Falomir arrived from Sydney 20 years ago he discovered a tight-knit artistic community well-practiced in staged retreats from the Wilsons River. Not this time. “We’ve been through many, many floods but this was something else,” he says.Natalie Grono From their rooftop position, Falomir watched helplessly as his brick studio was partially swept away, along with his personal belongings and “thousands and thousands of dollars of antique glass and porcelain mold-making equipment”.
Abstract artist Michael Cusack runs the Byron School of Art with a small group of artists in a rented industrial workspace in downtown Mullumbimby that at peak flood was knee-deep in fast-flowing water. Cusack has resumed student classes and started over on his September show for the Olsen Gallery, Paddington, one-third complete before the floods struck.
At the Northern Rivers Conservatorium, 250 students have returned to refurbished teaching studios, the remaining 350 students to stay at Southern Cross University until ground-floor classrooms can be reopened. The 1902 heritage building took in almost 4.5 metres of water causing $1.4 million in damage, of which the conservatorium still needs to find $400,000, likely to be met by the arts minister’s new funding commitment.
Locally, a temporary take-over of the Lismore CBD of pop-up galleries, studios and music venues has her support. “Fringe festivals have been at the centre of regeneration of cities like Edinburgh, and Adelaide, so it’s a very successful model,” Fuller says. “Instead of two months, maybe we could have one for 12 months, something with quick movement potential for the possibility of flood - plinths on wheels, recording studio equipment in road cases, kilns off-site.
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