Regional Arts Australia's Artlands '23 gathering embodied a profound systems change and flipped the script on how to bring people together for hard and important conversations. The experience was captured in the newly released C R E A T I N G S P A C E documentary, exploring what is possible when a conference is curated around care and wellbeing. This new five-part podcast series continues the conversation, sharing some of the fuller interviews and diving deeper into the idea that “The future is regional. The future is creative.” 

MEET: WARWICK GOW

This conversation takes place at Moffat Beach, Queensland, with Warwick Gow, an artist, art worker and co-founder of LANTANA Space. Warwick’s practice is primarily based in photography and installation, using the portrait to place local fringe culture within arm’s length of the mainstream. Destabilising notions of representation, elevating unique identities and that of the self by hijacking the thin veil of commercialism and elegantly smashing it against a DIY ethic. This ethos carries through into Warwick’s approach as an arts worker as part of Sunshine Coast Council’s Creative Development Team and into his emerging practice as an independent curator in a regional setting. 

We speak about Warwick’s experience of some of the Maori cultural practices taught to us by our facilitators Desna Whaanga-Schollum, Chelita Kahutianui-o-te-Rangi Zainey and Te Hira Kaiwai. We also speak about the opening cross-sector panel of Act 1 which included Michelle Tuahine, Ruby Heard, Troy Merritt and Sheridan Morris. 

Warwick Gow: “Connecting some of those connections and threads through really regional remote areas of Australia. That was a real privilege to sort of be facilitated to do that in a really authentic way where everyone's on this level playing field. And I think there's a real hope about what the future for regional arts can be.”  

Artlands ‘23 brought 80 purposefully selected participants together at the National Gallery Australia on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country (in Canberra), for three days, five acts, tackling the challenges and opportunities presented by the provocation: The Future of Regional Australia is Fundamentally Creative. 

Artlands ‘23 is supported by the Regional Arts Fund and delivered by Regional Arts Australia. The Regional Arts Fund is an Australian Government program that supports sustainable cultural development in regional and remote communities in Australia. 

'The future is regional. The future is creative' is a registered trademark of Regional Arts Australia.  

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Regional Arts Australia.