newy.com.au – Ten artists have drawn inspiration from Mount Sugarloaf for the first Sugarloaf Studios exhibition, opening in West Wallsend on Saturday 26 September.
The show brings together more than 30 works at the studios in a former bowling club building on Brooks Street. Each participating artist was asked to incorporate the mountain into their work.
For Taylah McDonald, the theme draws on a family connection to West Wallsend spanning six generations. Her contribution, This is home, uses fallen timber collected during a trek up Mount Sugarloaf and embedded in resin to reflect the mountain’s undulations and peak.
The work took hours to create, but McDonald said sharing a workspace with other artists had helped her creativity and motivation.
“Working from home just isn’t the same – you don’t have that collaborative approach,” she said. “Here, you have all these people coming together and doing something for the love of it.”
Lake Macquarie City Council cultural projects curator Charlotte Hilder said Sugarloaf Studios was a pilot program aimed at providing affordable studio space for local artists, creatives and community groups.
McDonald hoped the exhibition would encourage residents to visit, meet the artists and learn more about the space.
“Communities stay connected when we keep giving people reasons to come together,” she said.
“Sugarloaf Studios can be somewhere local stories are kept alive, people who may never normally cross paths meet, and younger people see that creativity belongs here too; somewhere our history can sit beside whatever comes next.”
The exhibition also features work by Nicola Hirschhorn, Vanessa Preston, Sarah Ireland, Kevin Alder, Israel Rumbel, Matilda Farr, Chris Byrnes, Ryan Greentree and Dani Lloyd-Prichard.
The official opening runs from 2pm to 4pm on Saturday at Sugarloaf Studios.
