By Emily-Rose Toohey
The Condamine Country Art and Open Studio Trail is set to take place on the 5 and 6 of November this year and Warwick Art Gallery is finalising its list of participating artists, set to be released very soon.
The event showcases some of the region’s most inspiring artists at their home studios and Warwick Art Gallery director Karina Devine said that the gallery is in the process of collecting the artists’ formal agreements in anticipation of the event.
“We’re not far away from announcing the artists – we called for submissions a couple of months ago and it’s going to be exciting this year,” Karina said.
“We’ve got artists from across the Southern Downs and they’ll be stationed at Killarney, Freestone, Glengallan, Swan Creek and Yangan for the first time – there’ll be six to eight artists.”
She said that the gallery has received a lot of feedback about the trail over the past couple of years and in 2022, they are undertaking something slightly different on top of the regular trail.
“We’re going to have a pop-up studio event on the Sunday at the art gallery for another four artists,” Karina said.
“Some artists aren’t able to host people at their studios or don’t have studios, which inspired this move.
“We’ll provide the tents and signage and it’s about the conversations that will happen.” Furthermore, Karina said that she has noticed that more and more artists are working together in groups as opposed to individual studios.
“That’s the legacy of Jumpers and Jazz in July – people like to collaborate on projects and decide they want to be part of it,” she said.
Regarding the iconic festival, Warwick Art Gallery is charged with creating the theme (this year’s was ‘ripples’) and although it is still early days, Karina said they had been discussing and throwing around a few ideas for 2023.
“We’ll likely announce the theme in October,” she said.
“We’re really keen to open registratins as early as we can and with our new website, it will make registration easier – it’s pretty exciting.”
