By Mikayla van Loon
A new artistic venture has landed in Lilydale giving local creatives a space to display their work, alongside a dedicated workshop area for education and mindfulness.
The Round Bird Artspace, located above the food and wine merchants, has been transformed into a multifunctional second floor.
Officially launching the gallery on Sunday 27 October, with Jessie Bleakley’s Fields exhibition, the vision is for “creatives to meet and connect” but also to pass on their passion to others.
“This is a completely new venture that’s been happening in the last nine months. I’ve worked closely with Evan and Laura, who own Round Bird cafe, to fully renovate the upstairs space,” Jessie said.
“It’s also for people who want to enjoy art out in the eastern suburbs to have a space to come and view art, but also combine that with the food and drink and wine of Round Bird.
“The sole purpose, really, is to connect with the community.”
Fitting it out with seating, Jessie said the idea is to make it accessible during cafe hours, to ensure people can experience the space in their own way.
“It is created for people to be able to engage in the way they want to. So if they don’t want to come to an opening, but they prefer to come in the quiet of the week, then they can do it their way,” she said.
Designing the space as a two-in-one, Jessie said, the Creative Collab is really about giving artists an opportunity to teach their craft but also a space for parents and children to learn.
“When I was a mum of a small child, which I still am, one of the things I found was that every activity we did was for the kids, and it was my job to sit there, and my job to drive,” Jessie said.
“I wanted to create a space for a parent to come and fill up their own cup as well as spend time with their child and to work next to each other.”
Jessie will be running a collage workshop, while fellow artists Katherine McGreevy and Jessica Harris will be running a series of classes in clay sculpting and drawing respectively.
Each class has been chosen to suit all levels of ability, especially so children can participate, but also to take the fear away from potentially practising these skills at home.
“It’s really about the parent having this moment of calm in the world of looking after a small person and also maybe going, ‘hey, that was really good for me, that’s something I need to or want to incorporate into my life’, and having the skills to do that,” Jessie said.
“What I’m doing is choosing classes, choosing workshop ideas that don’t require a huge amount of material or setup so they’re easily replicable at home.”
Every class and workshop is paired with food and drink in the cafe to further allow parents to unwind and enjoy time out of the house.
“That can be a really nice time too for them to connect with the other people in the class and hopefully create some friendships and just to also have a little bit of a more extended time.”
As for Jessie’s own work, the multidisciplinary artist said Fields comprises two bodies of work inspired by the natural environment.
The exhibition titled works depict the undulating landscapes often seen on “long country drives within Australia” and the “predominantly green and brown” colour palette.
“The landscape [can be] quite monotonous and a little bit boring but then those amazing pops of colour when you finally see canola field, or you see those large flowers that grow at the edge of the road, and the pinks and purples, and sometimes even rich purpley blue colours that just create this little pop of excitement,” she said.
“I really hoped the exhibition pieces could imbue and feel that movement of being in the car and also to highlight that joy and to help people to reminisce about their own journeys where they’ve experienced that same feeling or that same visual.”
The second collective of work, Pink Cliffs, was inspired by the geological gold mining reserve in Heathcote.
“It’s a bunch of limestone and sandstone rocks that have been exposed through a mining process where they pretty much blasted water and washed through the topsoil to expose the gold.
“It was in the late 1800s and it had a very lasting impact on the local environment there, and that’s caused permanent damage to the area. Yet in that there is this beauty that has been exposed and it looks quite otherworldly.
“It has the most mesmerising colours, and it changes based on the weather and whether or not the stones are wet or it’s sunset or just what time of day you view it.”
Jessie said from that, she was able to visualise the colour palette of pinks and oranges and reds, with “little pops of foliage and greenery” that still remain in the area.
Using collage and painting as her medium of choice, Jessie said this technique really lends itself to the Australian landscape, creating “rich texture” and beautiful layers of colour.
Fields will be showing until 26 January next year. To find upcoming workshops at the Round Bird Artspace, go to roundbird.com.au/round-bird-art-space-lilydale/
