The Riddoch Art Gallery swung open its doors for the first time yesterday since the COVID-19 pandemic forced its abrupt closure in March.
It comes as Mount Gambier City Council continues to strategically welcome back visitors to its public facilities as coronavirus restrictions ease across the state.
The timing of the re-opening coincided with a local exhibition Beautiful Enemies, which will give Limestone Coast artists the first chance in several months to have their work viewed in person.
Riddoch Art Gallery director Melentie Pandilovski said it was exciting to welcome visitors back to the gallery and have an exhibition on display.
“We were getting ready for this day for a while and now we are just happy to be able to welcome people back to the space,” Mr Pandilovski said.
“The new exhibition is from the local print making group Thumbprint Inc and it is just beautiful work, so we are just excited to be able to have people in here to see it.”
Reflecting on the challenging shutdown period, Main Corner complex coordinator Talie Teakle described the days leading up to the gallery’s eventual closure on March 23.
“We had just finished installing some major exhibitions – Partnerships took a lot of work to get into the main gallery and Cleverman was a big process to get up and running upstairs,” Ms Teakle said.
“We had just planned big openings for all the exhibitions and then we had to close, so it was quite disappointing for us.”
While Ms Teakle admitted there had to be some shuffling of exhibitions, council was fortunate to be able to extend the Cleverman exhibition until September.
“That was something we worked to get here for a couple of years from ACME in Melbourne – we put so much effort in and it is so beautiful,” she said.
“Some of the elders from Boandik who came through said they had goosebumps, so to have that closed was just devastating, but to be able to negotiate to extend that exhibition was fantastic.”
During the closure, gallery staff was forced to become innovative and produce a digital program to retain cultural connection with the community.
Riddoch at Home was labelled a huge success by Ms Teakle who said it allowed the gallery to continue workshops and share exhibitions digitally.
“It’s been a really big learning curve because we really wanted to continue to deliver those workshops despite being shutdown,” she said.
“It was a great opportunity to learn some new skills regarding filming, editing and posting some of these workshops online and has resulted in really good development for our team.”
Council community wellbeing general manager Barbara Cernovskis said the gallery’s opening was just another step forward for community facilities.
“We have been reviewing things every week to work out how and when we can introduce things, we have had to be resilient to the changes as they happen,” she said.
Ms Cernovskis said programming at the library was also expected to be introduced gradually over the coming weeks.
“There will be the introduction of a few more programs and it will be a bit of a test and trial because we do not want to put anyone at risk,” she said.
“But we are definitely introducing the delivery of programs over the coming weeks in an incremental fashion.”
The library was one of the first community facilities to open their doors and manager Georgina Davison said they have had lots of positive feedback.
“We were so busy during the closure answering requests and now that we are back open we’re obviously servicing the people who are coming in as well,” she said.
“It just shows the importance of the facility to the city and the region.”
Following the “hibernation” period that everyone in the nation has had to endure, Ms Cernovskis said it was pleasing to finally see people moving throughout the city over recent weeks.
“We serviced about 200 visitors at the visitor information centre and pop-ups over the weekend, which is a positive outcome,” she said.
“People were coming to the region and my understanding is the coastal towns did really well, so it’s good to see that confidence is back and that will have a flow-on effect for our city.”
The Riddoch Art Gallery is open to the public from Thursday to Sunday at 10am-2pm.
