On the Local Arts Trail in May 2025
— with Alison Desmond —
As conditions turn dark, wet and gloomy, the arts in Moorabool this month will draw you in with warmth and set your soul alight…
Flack Post & Telegraph Office
A Snooze of Roos is one of a series of oil and watercolour paintings featuring native wildlife by Lesley Rosochodski at Flack through May.
Two “lazing roos,” slender, elongated legs intertwined, strong muscled rumps and large silhouetted ears, basking in the red Australian heat are visited by three “cheeky cockatoos.”
Lesley’s work is held in Australian and international collections. She also accepts commissions via her website.
• Coming up at Flack PTO next month: beginners to experienced artists can enjoy a bargain-priced drawing bootcamp with popular teacher Colin for only $40, from noon to 4pm on Sunday, 15 June.
• FlackPTO also has some historic, light, airy spaces available for hire for creative photographic shoots.
Flack Post and Telegraph Office is open 10am to 3pm Thursday, Friday, Saturday
Oak Grove Gallery
Marty Cleal’s Oak Grove Gallery is located in the renovated Victorian-style former Ballan News building in Inglis Street, Ballan.
Employing a young local handyman, Marty took the weatherboard building from dilapidated to restored with some sourced second-hand features, a new mezzanine, an exterior paint job, retaining the original fireplaces, pinelining and timber flooring.
Marty’s residence is at the rear, with a drought-resistant Australian bush garden featuring arrangements of driftwood and rocks
After a lick of paint and new signage, Oak Grove Gallery has now been open for business five days a week for three years, and it’s here you can find Marty tinkering with his landscapes and seascapes.
Ballan Art Space
Realism and representation combine like baking ingredients in Preparations for Winter Feast, by Lily Eggleston, a quiet still life in the style of Johannes Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age of painting.
Textual relationships between eggshell, yolk, silver and wooden spoons, glazed crockery and a glass measuring jug, are both hidden in heavy shadows and delineated in natural sunlight.
Lily’s style is free and loose leaving room to mentally fill the blanks; just like a good book her paintings leave room for the viewer’s imaginative play.
Lily’s paintings can be viewed as part of group exhibition, Zesty Feast.
The next exhibition at Ballan Art Space is themed, My Neighbourhood. The exhibition runs from May 16 to June 8 and is sponsored by Ballan Neighbourhood House.
St Martin’s Chapel, Blackwood
What impresses you first looking at Gayle Cykner’s Gateway to the Past is the creative distribution of light fanning across the picture plane, abstractly affecting the country landscape.
A swaying massive clump of roots and branches frames the pastoral scene, mingling with a complementary blue and paddock of pastoral greens change and reflect tonal variety.
The central focus is a typical wrought iron entrance gate, mirrored with a corrugated tin shed creating scale, depth and repetition of form, with two narrow pale stumps shooting up to distant otherworldly baby pink clouds with a Japanese accent.
Gayle’s new show is opening at St Martin’s Chapel, Blackwood from 3pm to 6pm on 9 May and can be viewed from 11am to 4pm on 10, 11, 16, 17 and 18 May.
BMAC Gallery, Lerderderg Library, Bacchus Marsh
Janice Webster uses the luscious velvety medium of pastel to create a romantic bouquet fit for a bride in a demonstration at BMAC’s April meeting.
A crown of trumpeting lillies surrounded by gerberers like fanning dials, both dusky pinks, with blue-green foliage offset with luminous grassy green, finished with sprays of baby’s breath, like confetti frozen in time.
The flowers’ variegated, structural strength and delicacy is transmitted, and the fine detailed linework of the stamens is juxtaposed with the reflective blurred background.
Lerderderg Library is open Monday to Saturday, check the website for times
Gordon Bar Room Gallery
The Gordon Bar Room Gallery takes its moniker from the building’s previous life as a hotel, with the cellar trapdoor still in place as evidence.
The gallery was established by a group of local creatives to showcase artwork from Gordon, Mt Egerton, Ballan and surrounds, and has since hosted collections of everything from still life paintings, contemporary drawings and hand-made cards to rustic pottery and sculptures.
Call in this month to see an ever-evolving and eclectic collection of pieces, with well-crafted pottery to the fore.
MAPP Up in Lights, Bacchus Marsh
From Sunday 18 May - Monday 30 May, the outdoor MAPP Gallery in Bacchus Marsh will host Djinda @ Bahloo, an exhibition by Wayne Quilliam.
Wayne is a NAIDOC Artist of the Year and National Portrait Photographic Portrait Award winner, and the exhibition is part of this year’s National Reconciliation Week program.
Moorabool artists are encouraged to apply to exhibit in the MAPP Up in Lights galleries - check the Moorabool Shire Council Arts & Culture webpage for details.
Creative Network Forum at Ballan Neighbourhood House
Local artists can learn about self-promotion and how to maximise exposure of their creative content online, at the free Creative Network Forum this month.
Panellists include Punctum Artistic Director Jude Anderson, poet, writer and broadcaster Izzy Robert’s-Orr and Tourism Midwest Victoria Sustainable Destination Development Officer Madeleine Sawyer.
The forum, suitable for all levels of digital literacy, will be at Ballan Neighbourhood House, 3.30pm - 5pm on Wednesday 28 May.
Public and Community Arts
Moorabool Shire has amazing public and community arts, from permanent historic markers of time in bush settings to Ballan’s cosily yarnbombed street decoration to colourful paste-ups in town centres and more.
You can find out more about Moorabool’s public art pieces at the Moorbool Shire website
About On the Local Arts Trail
The Local Arts Trail column is released through our monthly eNewsletter and on this website at the start of each month.
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