Opportunity – Outdoor Gallery

The creative city fosters creativity among its communities and provides emotionally satisfying places and experiences. The built environment, as stage and setting, is crucial for establishing a creative milieu. Launceston has a mature and lively arts scene with a diverse range of creative practitioners and organisations. However, there are limited exhibition spaces for visual artists. There is great potential to integrate exhibition spaces within the public realm, providing permanent platforms for a changing curated program of artworks. This works to dissolve the perceived barriers of entry to gallery spaces for the community, while also enabling artists and curators to gain understanding and skills for working in the public realm and expressing community conversations.

An outdoor gallery in Launceston’s city centre can provide an ongoing and seasonally changing visitor attraction. It may be independently curated or curated an as extension to QVMAG’s exhibition programs.

Recommendations

An outdoor gallery for the city centre: It is recommended that a series of outdoor gallery platforms be scoped and installed across the city centre. Platforms can include lightboxes, billboards, vitrines, digital projections, and banners. Showcasing the work of local artists, including emerging artists, can be a program focus.

City Signature: Explore and scope a permanent outdoor projection platform, such as the Stillwater Silos, as an iconic city signature artwork to be programmed in conjunction with city-wide events such as major festivals, sporting events, national cultural events such as NAIDOC week, Christmas and New Year celebrations.

Promotional branding: The collection of platforms, while physically dispersed, can be “packaged” and promoted as a single curated program.