After nearly three years of reconstruction due to severe flooding, the Lismore Regional Gallery is ready to reopen its doors tomorrow (Friday, 27 September).

The sixteen-month $5.1 million refurbishment project, funded by the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements by the state and federal governments, has been completed to a higher standard and will feature five new exhibitions, a renovated cafe, and an artist studio space.

The opening of the gallery is a milestone for the community, as it reflects the city's commitment to the arts and culture. The gallery, which is free for entry, offers a unique space for residents and visitors to enjoy local and international art.

Newly re-elected Mayor Steve Krieg said, "It is truly a state-of-the-art facility, and worthy of the rebirth and reconstruction of a regional city like Lismore.

"It really is an honour to be here today to announce the official launch of the art gallery on Friday night. It's going to be an exceptional night, and it's really exciting to see another piece of Lismore's infrastructure coming back to life after the flood. It's another step in the right direction. Lismore is coming back bigger and stronger than ever, and the regional gallery is just a testament to not only coming back but coming back better."

(Ashleigh Ralph, Director of the Lismore Regional Gallery and Lismore Mayor Steve Krieg)

With the sheer scale of the 2022 floods to the wider Lismore area, the team behind the restoration of the Lismore Regional Gallery implemented several key measures to minimise damage and improve overall building flood resilience. 

These effective measures were:

• Use Flood-Resistant Materials: Selection of materials that can withstand water exposure without significant damage. Examples include sealed concrete and epoxy floors, compact laminate joinery and partitions, and fibre cement sheets in lieu of traditional gyprock wall sheeting.
• Elevate Electrical Systems: Raise electrical outlets, switches, and appliances above the expected flood level to prevent electrical hazards and damage.
• Improve Drainage to the Quad: Ensure proper site grading and install a large sub ground drainage throughout to allow standing water to transverse the area as quickly as possible
• Seal Gaps and Cracks: Apply sealants to walls, floors, and foundations to prevent water ingress.

Lismore Regional Gallery Director Ashleigh Ralph said, "We're so excited to open the Lismore Regional Gallery. This has been a long time coming. Our whole city has been through adversity and challenges, and for me, I feel like reopening this gallery, which is free and for everyone, will be a real milestone for the community to engage in arts and culture and and feel what that means in terms of bringing people together, including not only the gallery, but the quad as well, which is open now for everyone.

(The newly renovated Lismore Quad also looking a million dollars)

"Come along on Friday night and see what we have on offer in our five new exhibitions and our ongoing program of exhibitions and public programs with many local artists and international artists as well. They'll be on till about mid-November and then we start our next new set of exhibitions. So we'll be bringing touring exhibitions from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, William Kentridge, as well as the Koori Mail indigenous art award. I'm excited to announce that we'll be bringing the Archibald to the gallery in 2025."

Ashley explained a slightly different layout to the pre-2022 flood building.

"We have extended our reception area into a gallery shop, and it's a more dynamic space for the entrance of the building and opportunities for supporting local designers. We've moved the previous cafe space to the other side of the building, which has been extended with a seating area as well as a full kitchen. We also have the artist studio space, which is a new extension in the northern courtyard of the gallery. So, the cafe replaced the artist studio, and now we have a big, brighter space for artists to work in. We'll have artists workshops and kids programs that can spill out into the northern courtyard."

Lismore City Council is looking for someone or a group to operate the new cafe. Expressions of interest are open now, so contact council on (02) 6625 0500 or email council@lismore.nsw.gov.au.

As you would expect, the Regional Gallery's emergency evacuation plan has been updated.

"If a flood is imminent, we would evacuate artworks that are inside the building to a safe storage location. We would also no longer store our permanent collection in the building, which was severely damaged in the last flood."

"This has been a mammoth effort to get this building to the way it is today. So, I'd like to extend appreciation to the NSW government and the federal government, the builders, architects, project managers from Bennett's, BKA architecture, Lismore City Council, and, of course, the gallery team for their perseverance in helping make this possible."

NSW Parliamentary Secretary for Disaster Recovery and State Member for Lismore, Janelle Saffin said, “Another iconic cultural centre, the Lismore Regional Gallery, opens its doors, following on from the Uniting Church that is a social service and worship hub last Sunday, the Lismore Workers Club on Monday and now our much-loved and missed Gallery.

“The Gallery reopening marks our social and cultural recovery. We have been the poorer with the Gallery not open as it ave,raged 150,000 visitors a year before the 2022 floods.

“I want to thank Gallery Director Ashleigh Ralph and her team, Lismore City Council, the Friends of the Gallery for all the blood, sweat and tears they have contributed to ensure it is back with us.

“Lismore’s CBD is on the move; it’s getting its vibe back and this just adds to it. I cannot wait.”

The Lismore Regional Gallery will reopen this Friday at 6pm at 11 Rural Street, Lismore.

The re-opening program:

The ArtHitects Gary Carsley and Renjie Teoh: Hannah Halle

Using only an office copier and reams of A4 paper the ArtHitects create immersive installations at the confluence of their separate practices as artist and architect. Hannah Halle, a new commission for Lismore Regional Gallery, is confabulated from over 4,000 individual A4 prints to symbolically reimagine the prized Hannah Cabinet by Geoffrey Hannah OAM. The prints will be applied ritualistically to the gallery walls in the weeks leading up to the exhibition opening, providing a multi-perspectival mise en scène featuring works from a diverse group of invited artists and creatives in the Northern Rivers. Sponsored by Hurford Harwood

Buruugaa Garaa Buruu Garaa Budgeramgali (Saltwater people Freshwater people stories) 

Co-curated by Melissa Ladkin, Buruugaa Garaa Buruu Garaa Budgeramgali features Amrita Hepi, Joshua Lynch, and Djon Mundine OAM, with a live performance by Waangenga Blanco. This exhibition is a dynamic exploration of spiritual and customary living relationships with water. Through individual screen dances, spoken word and musical composition, each artist takes the audience on a journey, offering a fluid narrative that showcases the dynamic diversity of water and how it connects us.

Nell Pearson and Matthew Brooks: Blue island

Meeting at art school in Melbourne, Nell and Matthew have since become life partners, sharing their home, studio, and, more recently, parenthood. They live and work in the Northern Rivers, where they continue a lifelong conversation about art and carry out their painting practices side by side and sometimes together. In the domestic space, small gestures of the everyday entangle with artmaking so that the making and the living happen on the same plane. This exhibition celebrates two distinct visual languages, which, like trees in a forest standing apart but whose roots are entangled, share a private intimacy.

Sprung!! Ensemble: Sprung News 

Sprung News investigates how accessible/inaccessible media and emergency information can be to the disability community, using photography, video, and audio to express diverse perspectives and representations.

Our news is not boring. We tell the truth and we wear what we want. If it’s breakfast news then we actually eat breakfast. It makes sense. You can understand it. We tell it in a different way. Did you know that floods have stories too? Or didn’t you bother asking them? Who else didn’t you ask?

This exhibition is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW, the Northern Rivers Community Fund, and the NSW Regional Arts Fund.

Chloe Smith: Unbearable Incandescence.

Unbearable Incandescence presents a series of works interrogating the paradoxical search for reality in a world of simulation and appearance. Through a series of hyperreal textile works, sculptor Chloe Smith unravels the cruel optimism of certainty and the truths we must ultimately craft for ourselves. A birthday cake awaits its single sumptuous moment. An absurdly large bunch of asparagus stands proudly phallic, valorised on a broken plinth. The lines between reality and the surreal blur beyond recognition, where the serious is suddenly silly, where memories become fiction and fiction becomes a memory.