First Coat is not over.
Sure it’s true this is the last First Coat Festival. Those three days in May when we invite people to town to party and watch 30 artists, national and international, paint live on our streets won’t happen again.
It’s also true First Coat is more than a three-day festival.
It was created as a way to make art more accessible, to rejuvenate our public spaces and to build the skills of, and connections between, our local artists.
It’s achieved all that and more. Let’s be real, Toowoomba can’t claim to be any kind of ‘cool’ without First Coat.
The festival may be over but there’s lots of life left in First Coat yet, with plans to continue undertaking mural projects both here and throughout Australia.
I sat down with festival organiser and curator Grace Dewar to talk about the first First Coat, what’s next and what she loves about art.
“We might close as a festival model but I’m in no way saying that we won’t be doing mural projects locally in our city post this model…”
Taking it back to the start
Remember TheGrid Hybrid Arts Collective? We have that now defunct space to thank for First Coat. The original three directors of the festival met there – Grace doing pop up exhibitions straight out of her arts degree.
“My business partner Ian [McCallum] was floating around, he had started the venture with another local artist inside TheGrid Hybrid Arts Collective,” Grace says. “The other local artist was a screen printer, Ian was a graffiti artist and a sign painter.
“They operated as an aerosol store and started doing Kontraband as a retail store. I got on board after my degree doing pop up exhibitions in their foyer space.
“We saw the need and the lack of opportunities for local artists to be able to exhibit, to have our own space, and to provide that for local creative people.”
The three teamed up and received the keys to Kontraband Studio on Laurel Street on July 2012. In that year they’d already been working with Council and TheGrid to rejuvenate public spaces and run workshops across the region. Receiving State Government Funding late in 2012 was the final catalyst for delivering the very first First Coat in February 2013.
It didn’t start with a trickle. It was ambitious from the get-go – 27 artists, three of whom were international, and 19 walls across Toowoomba. And at the conclusion of this year’s First Coat over 100 walls will be left as a legacy.
What’s next for First Coat?
Street art is a very mutable thing. Buildings change hands, things get knocked down, paintings age, get redone or painted over or added to. It’s only natural that a festival dedicated to street art would evolve too – and that the answer about what’s going to happen next isn’t set in stone.
“We might close as a festival model but I’m in no way saying that we won’t be doing mural projects locally in our city post this model,” Grace says.
“Directly after the festival wraps up we are rolling into a local project here in Toowoomba. We’ve received some funding to transform the bus interchange on Neil Street, working with Translink and our local council to paint the interior of that space, so it’s a pleasure to roll into a local project.”
After that, First Coat is hitting the road. Three murals are planned for our friends down in Gatton, one each in Warwick, Ipswich, and Wandoan.
A First Coat road trip isn’t new.
They’ve already experimented with being a travelling art initiative, delivering murals in Oakey and Stanthorpe last year. And a total of five were completed for the Sunshine Coast Regional Council as part of their 2016 Horizon Festival.
For the creatives behind First Coat the idea of travelling and discovering new spaces and people is what makes art exciting and keeps them inspired.
“To talk on behalf of Ian, there’s only so many walls as an artist you can paint in one city,” Grace says. “His work is very much inspired by things around him. So to keep that momentum going, travel is inevitable and we really needed to be able to keep moving. I feel a very similar way as a curator.”
Grace says they’re in conversations with a lot of other regions about bringing some First Coat magic to their public spaces, but there won’t be another festival anywhere else.
“What we’ve done in Toowoomba is very unique to Toowoomba and we can’t replicate it somewhere else,” she says. “Toowoomba in some way owns these walls; they own this festival. I would love to think with a strong creative community that lives and works from this regional hub that other projects will come out of this.”
This is already happening – we seem to love being a street art town and you can see murals everywhere – from Grand Central’s culture wall, to murals in cafés like The Finch and Little Seed.
The future for Kontraband Studios
“I’m confident we’ve got enough artists based locally to continue to share those skills and allow those outdoor galleries to evolve.”
As home base for First Coat and other local art initiatives, Grace and Ian spend six days a week at Kontraband Studios, but they’ve been taking steps to make sure the space can move into a new chapter.
“Moving forward we are looking at making the studio space sustainable,” Grace says. “That would be a membership driven, not-for-profit organisation that has shared studio spaces for artists.
“So we don’t physically have to be in the studio six days a week to keep it alive. And that means Ian and I can do more travel and do more projects out of Toowoomba.”
Recently they received financial assistance from a Regional Arts Development Fund to host five local artists in a four-week residency called Public: A.I.R. at Kontraband. Grace says this was an important step in keeping art at the forefront for our region.
“Artists that choose to live and work from this regional hub are choosing a lifestyle separate to a metropolitan area, but it doesn’t change the skill set, and it doesn’t change the quality of work,” Grace says.
“I’m confident we’ve got enough artists based locally to continue to share those skills and allow those outdoor galleries to evolve.”
In the last four years Kontraband has turned over a new art exhibition in the on-site gallery No Comply once every four weeks and that’s still definitely a priority for the future.
How do you know what art to choose?
Imagine being a curator for Queensland’s largest open-air gallery. How do you choose?
For Grace, curating is all about connection.
“What I look for when inviting artists or accepting artist to be involved in any of the First Coat projects is, I have either been following these artists, or enjoying seeing their work evolve for some time,” she says.
“A lot of it is keeping on the pulse of what’s being made in the Australian contemporary art community, particularly those that are working on a larger scale in the mural realm.
“For me it’s being really interested in the work, seeing it, and then wanting to understand why they’re making it and then wanting to connect with that artist.”
There’s no mural in town Grace counts as a favourite. She likes them all – because they’re all about the memories. She names watching Frank and Mimi (the duo behind the While We Flourish piece on Thorn Street) collaborate as one of the most memorable experiences.
“I don’t have a favourite,” she says. “I have the experience I’ve had with the artist while they’ve been making it.
“In 2014 we worked for the first time with a Brisbane based duo called Frank and Mimi. I got to see how two people who are partners in life and partners in their creative endeavours work side by side and what they can do in complementing each other in producing a work as a duo.
“For me it was eye opening to see how those skill sets came together and what they could produce and actually getting to know them as people. The kind of work they’re making is exactly the kind of people they are.”
While she doesn’t consider herself a practicing artist now, while studying and straight after uni Grace’s preferred way to make art was to just let it happen.
“I was doing a lot of site specific installation work,” she says. “Using a venue to make something specific for that space and using lighting and foreign objects and industrial materials that were lit internally to create an emotion. Trying to make you feel something when you walk into that room. It has always been very intuitive, making on the go, letting the materials dictate the outcome.
“The role I’m stepping into more heavily now as a curator parallels nicely with my original arts practice. It’s making installations, just in a different way, and working with other people to do so.”
She says we’re in new territory for art. Some street artists don’t want to be known as just a graffiti artist, or street artist at all. They’re adding fine art to their repertoire, changing their style and even their names.
Grace gives Elliot Routledge as an example. Formerly known as just Numskull, he’s now reverting back to his name from this tag.
“For him specifically it’s not just outdoor painting and it’s not just fine art canvas painting in the gallery,” she says. “When these things are starting to overlap I’m really interested in how these artists can be multidisciplinary and create a broad range of works because the ideas can extend themselves to any medium.”
Choose your own adventure
The fourth and final First Coat Festival launches 19 May and wraps up 21 May. A final celebration party headlined by the Triple J Unearthed Laneway Festival winners Good Boy will go off on Saturday 20 May at the Mills Precinct. The festival will include a program of workshops and on-site artist talks and events. Gallery maps and programs will be available from the festival hub at the CUA space at Walton Stores on Ruthven Street.
Visit firstcoat.com.au or on Facebook or Instagram.
If you want to commission a mural or connect with an artist email hello@firstcoat.com.au
