General News
29 January, 2024
Growing pains for Avoca group
The Avoca Community Arts and Gardens group are hopeful their plans for Gallery 127 and the land surrounding the gallery can be fulfilled as soon as possible. The community group officially opened the gallery on March 25, 2017, after a $550,000...
The Avoca Community Arts and Gardens group are hopeful their plans for Gallery 127 and the land surrounding the gallery can be fulfilled as soon as possible.
The community group officially opened the gallery on March 25, 2017, after a $550,000 refurbishment project was funded by VicTrack as part of their duty of care to restore the historical station into a functional building.
The current lease for the building includes the seven acres of land surrounding Gallery 127, including the Avoca Silo Art, the old oat shed and the brick goods shed.
Arts and gardens president Hugh Forster said the group is prepared to implement many ideas to paint a brighter picture for the gallery’s future.
“It is a fantastic opportunity that is here — all of the facilities which potentially could be used can have massive community and tourist benefits,” he said.
“We are still hoping to turn the brick goods shed into six artist studios, performance and workshop spaces — we have had the idea since the planning stage.
“We are looking at plans of potentially having a community orchard, tree gardens, possibly even a butterfly growth area.
“The grain mill shed is ready to go with lights and all set up to become a mill market.”
A big attraction for Gallery 127, and the Avoca tourism industry, has been the $180,000 Avoca Silo Art project, which opened in 2022 as the first glow in the dark artwork along the Australian Silo Art Trail.
Mr Forster said the silo continues to possess untapped capabilities to hold community events.
“We want to continue to make the silo an outdoor entertainment night venue, for example, our projection facilties can be used for drive in movies,” he said.
“We could put on a drive in movietomorrow, we can put concerts on, we can put sound and light shows on, it is all ready to go.”
The issue holding these events back from commencing are planning permits and the land currently being zoned as transport instead of being rezoned into community use.
Mr Forster said these issues have plagued these plans, and could negatively affect the longevity of the gallery.
“We are a community group with no money — if we can’t survive by bringing in other income sources, we will be forced to close it down,” he said.
“We are stuck in this terrible limbo, waiting on this rezoning in order to get these things up and running.
“In terms of our economic sustainability, once these are running, we will be able to help support and fund some of our own projects without needing all of the funding coming from grants and other support.”
Pyrenees Shire Council bought the buildings surrounding Gallery 127 from GrainCorp in 2020, obtaining full control of the facilities.
Council’s CEO Jim Nolan said multiple issues are handcuffing council from allowing the gallery to fulfil the community group’s plans.
“We are working with Avoca arts and gardens to understand what might be needed from a planning perspective to be able to run community events,” he said.
“The volunteers have put a lot of effort into making that area a really lovely experience for visitors.
“For it to be legitimised as a proper events space, it requires planning scheme amendments to the zoning and appropriate permits to be in place.
“Even a planning scheme amendment requires the authorisation by the State Government, which can take from 18 months to multiple years.
“We have a number of competing priorities from a strategic planning perspective that we have to juggle, so [Gallery 127] is not the highest priority at the moment.
“The brick goods shed is also listed as Victorian Heritage, so any developments of that building is required to have the consent of Heritage Victoria — we have, and will continue to seek funding for the preservation and the restoration of the goods shed.”
In the Pyrenees, a separate historical railway station in Beaufort was turned into an art gallery called Art Trax in 2014, which help ignite the idea for Gallery 127.
Since then, Art Trax has been able to run multiple events such as steam rallies and town markets.
Mr Nolan said the two railway services turned artwork exhibitions are different scenarios in allowing events to occur on their grounds.
“Art Trax’s events are of a smaller scale compared to what is being considered for the north side of Gallery 127,” he said.
“Larger numbers of people with more equipment like sound and projections require more planning and permits.”