Roomies Artspace looking for an Encore

Tucked away in the corner of Addison Road’s Art Community Centre is a cosy and colourful art studio, Roomies Artspace. The studio is a not-for-profit supported space that provides individuals with intellectual disability and mental health issues the opportunity to develop their artistic expression.

Originally, the initiative began as fortnightly art workshops at the Tom Foster Community Centre. This was under the aegis of Newtown Neighbourhood Centre’s Boarding House Project in 1999. However, it soon became apparent that a more permanent space was needed for the regular artists to explore their practice further. So, in 2005, with the generous support of the community, Roomies Artspace was established. A small studio in which artists could attend regular workshops, store their art and utilise the space.

Hands-on co-directors Anne Kwasner and Natalie McCarthy, who have worked together for over a decade, saw potential in some of the more dedicated artists and decided to cultivate a side project, Encore. The program offered professional art workshops for artists with a disability living in Sydney’s Inner-West with the aim of presenting selected artworks in a commercial gallery space.

Due to the lack of funding, McCarthy contacted the NSW Government and received a grant to fund the program through the NSW Arts and Disability Partnership. Encore workshops were then conducted over five months in 2013, where both existing Roomies and newcomers from local boarding houses participated. Here they learned and developed skills such as solar etching, textile work, painting, portraiture and 3D paper work. The grant that Roomies Artspace received allows not-for-profit programs, like Encore, to combine arts and disability with the aim to expand and reach new audiences.

“We found that people were really engaging on different levels,” Kwasner says. “Some people will take it and run with it – that’s how we met George.”
George Liosatos, who lives locally in a Rozelle boarding house, is one of the Encore artists whose work will be featured in the Encore exhibition.
“We realised very quickly that George was talented and had very individual interpretations of what we were focusing on in the workshops. We had to remind George to eat his lunch as he was so focused on his work he did not want to make the time to stop,” Kwasner explains.

Liosatos, originally from Panama in Central America, was a graphic artist in a previous life. He injects a lot of colour into his paintings and draws a lot of his inspiration from back home, “Things come out of my head and I try to express it in art. It’s a mix between Mexican and American,” says Liosatos.

Clarrice Collien, a long-standing member of the Roomies Artspace community attended the Encore workshops alongside Liosatos and will also be exhibiting her artwork at the Encore exhibition. Collien was one of the original Roomies and has been a part of the program since 1999. Over the years Collien has developed her artwork and incorporated her favourite things into various mediums such as painting, drawings and ceramics. However, it is her unique and colourful tapestries that have been her most popular pieces. In November 2012, Collien held her first solo show entitled A Walk In The Park at the Damien Minton Gallery in Redfern, which is the same gallery that the Encore exhibition will be held over February and March.

Both Kwasner and McCarthy have selected Liosatas’, Collien’s and the other 18 artists’ best artworks to feature in the Encore exhibition and they are both looking forward to unveiling the final curated exhibition on February 19.

However, as the Roomies Artspace community celebrates their hard work and talented artists over the next few weeks, a hard road lies ahead. The Roomies Artspace has lost its home at Addison Road as the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre reportedly pulled its support funding because of the different direction the program has recently taken.

“In some ways it is good for us as because we can run the place the way we want to, which is purely as a studio, and the limitations of the original funding wouldn’t really allow us to do that,” Kwasner says.

Although the Roomies Artspace’s future looks bright, much funding is still needed for the program to continue and future workshops and potential exhibitions have been placed on hold for the moment. Kwasner and McCarthy are in the process of sourcing funding and finding a home to conduct future workshops and store all of the artists’ pieces.

Kwasner is hopeful that the generosity of the community will remain strong.

“I hope we find a home and some funding, or a philanthropist – that’s what we’re looking for at the moment,” she says.
The MCA’s previous Senior Curator, Glenn Barkley, will open Encore. (EC)

Feb 19-Mar 1, Damien Minton Gallery, 583 Elizabeth St, Redfern, free, damienmintongallery.com.au

BY ELISE CULLEN