General News
3 May, 2022
Exhibit launch celebrates art box project
Horsham's nbn art box project comes together with it's indoor and outdoor exhibit opening.
THE completion of Horsham Rural City Council’s nbn Art Box project has been celebrated with the official launch of an indoor and outdoor art exhibition.
The art box project is a program where electrical service boxes in Horsham are hand-painted to bring more vibrance to the cityscape, while also supporting local artists.
The April 30 launch at Horsham Town Hall and Regional Art Gallery on Wilson Street showcased a collection of works including schematic designs and artists concepts.
Horsham Rural City Council development officer Jillian Pearce said each one of the art box works has meaning and gives more to our senses.
“It’s taken around two years as a project to make this happen so it’s been a lot of patience by all the artists who have donated the work to get to this point; it’s extraordinary,” she said.
“I just love the little explosions of beautiful colour and design these arts present to you … They have real meaning and give more to our sense of place and activate spaces which is what public art is very good at doing.
“nbn were really supportive in giving us the okay to use their infrastructure.”
The artworks were selected from 17 artists, two schools and two art collectives through Council’s Public Art Advisory Committee’s Expression of Interest process which ran from mid-2020.
Horsham College art teacher Sue Pavlovich said the project gave her students the opportunity to develop high-level art skills.
“When I was teaching the subject my students were given the assignment during lockdown to photograph their backyard,” she said.
“When the opportunity arose to develop this into a project students were then given the brief to develop four pieces of work.
“The good part about this was it was a real design brief and a quite advanced design brief.
“For any student who wanted to further develop their design brief the learning was to this standard.”
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The boxes also features the work of other independent local artists including: Amabile Dalfarra-Smith, Hannah French, Mark Radford, Christine Umbers; emerging young artists, Lincoln Fischer, Lani Jones and Freya Jones; as well as Dimboola Primary School and Horsham College Digital Art students, Amy Schmidt, Lani Jones, Dom Murray and Beth Riddington.
Contributing art box project artist and Goolum Goolum member Tarnisha Lovette said she wanted to get her sisters involved in the project.
“I was approached and asked if I was interested in painting or designing something for an nbn box,” she said.
“I came up with the idea where, rather than it just be about me, I’d get my sisters involved.
“There's four sides to the box and there’s four of us. It gave them the opportunity to display some of their art.”
Thirteen-year-old contributing art box project artist and Goolum Goolum member Kelanee Lovette said she had completed her piece when she was younger.
“It’s cool,” she said.
“I was going to just paint a sunset but then decided to add a tribe hunting animals.
“I was nine when I did it.”
Fellow 13-year-old contributing art box project artist and Goolum Goolum member Jaala Mark Lovette said it didn’t take long to paint her art work.
“I feel proud,” she said.
“I did it during a finger painting class during lockdown. It took me about an hour.”