Digital based artworks have been installed in the Bathurst CBD.
In 2020, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery received funding through the State Government’s Stronger Country Communities Fund (Round 3) to install digital public art platforms at key locations in the
Bathurst CBD. These platforms provide exhibition spaces for a changing program of artworks by local artists, youth, and community groups to coincide with local and national events and festivals.
Digital platforms have been installed in the following locations in the Bathurst CBD:
• Out There Digital Gallery, former TAFE Building, Ribbon Gang Lane: Eight (8) digital LED screens have been installed in the windows of the former TAFE building to create an outdoor digital exhibition space. These screens will host a changing program of artwork showcasing work by local artists, students, youth, and community groups.
• Out There Projection Wall, Gallery/Library forecourt, Keppel Street: a permanent outdoor projector providing a rolling program of digital artworks visible from Keppel Street. This program features commissions by local artists, digital works from the BRAG permanent collection, and projects focused on youth and community engagement.
The Out There Bathurst digital platforms form a key role in meeting the objectives of Bathurst’s Public Art Policy to provide a strategically planned and innovative Public Art program for the Bathurst Region. The platforms create safe and inclusive spaces for expression, skill development opportunities, and invigoration of the Bathurst CBD through placemaking and site activation. The inaugural work showcased on the Out There Bathurst Digital Screens is a specially commissioned artwork by local artists Sonny Day and Biddy Maroney. Titled ‘SERVED’, this artwork is a digital conversation between two individuals played out in colour, shape, texture. In ‘SERVED’, a ball bounces through and between each screen, served, volleyed, and returned by the invisible digital hands of the artists.
About the artists: Sonny Day and Biddy Maroney are an based in Orange, NSW where they run the online creative creative agency We Buy Your Kids: www.wbyk.com.au This commission was suppprted by funding through the Museums & Galleries of NSW Let’s Get Digital grant program aimed at supporting new strategies of digital engagement.
Other recent BRAG Out There Bathurst projects include:
BANHA (truly) BELONG: A mural project by Kelso youth which was digitised and projected in the BRAG forecourt for Winter Festival and NAIDOC Week 2021.
ANIMATE THIS: A smartphone animation workshop for local students whose animations were projected in the Gallery/Library Forecourt each evening during February and March 2022.
LET’S GET DIGITAL: A hands-on digital mapping workshop providing local artists and gallery/museum professionals with training in the latest in digital mapping technology and software.
