Art Lovers Australia founders Nancy Donaldson and Jarrod Knight have made the move, opening the gallery on Saturday January 30 at the Brickworks Annex at Southport in the rapidly developing arts precinct on Queensland’s Gold Coast.
Donaldson said the demand for original Australian art through their online platform had been so strong that they were confident the gallery would flourish despite the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on many businesses and the general trend of operations to focus their sales capacity online.
The purpose-built gallery space will showcase the works of more than 700 artists from the Art Lovers Australia online stable.
The gallery’s premiere exhibition is titled Home and headlined by Petra Meikle de Vlas and Kathleen Rhee, each of whom have produced diverse interpretations of what ‘home’ means to them.
Meikle de Vlas employs mixed media to create dynamic and intricate pieces inspired by her home in Far North Queensland, while Rhee uses acrylic on canvas to produce beautifully calming works influenced by her love for Australia’s natural environment. The exhibition will also showcase still life, Indigenous, abstract and landscape art pieces.
Donaldson and Knight, who are both artists, launched Art Lovers Australia online in 2016 as a way to link creatives to a wider audience and make art more approachable.
“There aren’t enough spaces to support every artist so we wanted to become that bridge to showcase their works,” Donaldson said.
“We also felt like traditional galleries have a certain place in the market, so we had to position it differently in order for it to work.”
One of the ways they went about taking the work of local artists to a wider audience as well as showcasing to everyday homemakers how easy and accessible it was to fill the walls with original art, was by partnering with renovation TV shows The Block and House Rules.
It was a move that helped put local original art and Art Lovers Australia on the home renovation map.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by MAGZOID staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)