Lismore City Council, in partnership with the NSW Reconstruction Authority, unveiled Converge: a disaster recovery initiative in March designed to bring new life and energy to Lismore’s CBD through support of the creative sector.
As an innovative, inner-city, artist-in-residence and creative enterprises development program, CONVERGE provides a space for selected artists to develop and create within. The CONVERGE residency is supported by an exciting series of professional development and entrepreneurial programs, community interaction, plus opportunities to exhibit artworks and present directly to the public.
After a highly competitive EOI process that saw more than 40 submissions, and a rigorous selection process, Lismore City Council is thrilled to unveil the creators, makers and collaborators selected to participate in Lismore’s Converge program.
Converge continues the highly successful Lismore Art in the Heart program, a flagship model of using empty spaces to foster local creativity designed to bring greater artistic energy to the city.
Lismore City Mayor Steve Krieg said Converge aims to activate and renew CBD spaces with an artistic and entrepreneurial spirit aimed at benefiting the local economy.
“We have a bustling creative community in our region that bring a positive economic outcome in terms of visitation and local spending in our CBD,” he said.
“This creative enterprise development program recognises the world-class artistic, social and economic value of Lismore’s creative community.
“Supporting our creative community by enabling spaces to create and showcase work is crucial in fostering community connection and supports the call to Back Lismore’s arts and culture.”
Congratulations to:
Michelle Gilroy: a Lismore artist painting a new body of work, comprised of self-portraits that highlight lived experience, as a person with a disability.
‘It’s’: transcending cosmic boundaries, a fusion of Scott Sinclair and Aaron McGarry’s celestial talents.Their collaborative synergy channels the harmonious balance of the cosmos, defying artistic convention with materials and processes that resonate across galaxies.
Karenza Ebejer: asocially engagedvideo artist and documentary filmmaker. Her films focus on relationship to place, culture and identity and work is often made in creative collaboration with participants.
Matt O’Brien: Framed by the grand narratives of the artists encounters with the epic Australian ‘landscape’, Matt’s work contributes a simulacrum of this, rather focussing on how the connection to past present and future dialogs in making work can create intimate dialogues between the individual and country. His site-responsive process aims to connect artist, work, and country together.
Adrienne Kenafake: a multi-disciplinary Australian artist based in Northern NSW. Working across the mediums of sculpture, performance and installation she explores the potential of objects as physical, psychological and extrasensory archives of emotion, story and place
Antoinette O’Brien: a multi-disciplinary artist with a strong focus on figurative ceramics. She is deeply committed to community and responds to it through her work, which also considers place, sky, sea and soil as integral.
Paul Walker: an independent dancer, performance artist and community arts worker based on Bundjalung Country in Northern NSW. For over 20 years, Paul has been performing, teaching and making dance, physical theatre, live art, interactive performances, cabaret and drawing.
Annie Monks: a Bundjalung Country based visual artist. Annie is passionate about exploring healing through the arts. She draws her inspiration from relationships to community and Country
Chris Lego: works across many mediums, in self-publishing a zine, Screenprinting as the Department of Nothing, making small wearable sculptures and collages and painting. He also makes events, party decor and DJs a unique and sometimes chaotic mix of music.
Stefanie Miriklis: raised in the Northern Rivers, her practice based in paper, painting and printmaking now focuses on found objects and mosaic. Through this medium she transforms memory and sentiment into thought provoking visual ingredients that address the intimate implications of societal adaptation and abrupt climate change.
