By now most of you will probably have heard this news, but for those of you who have not, I have made the hard decision to close - for good - the doors of Maleny Artworks Gallery.
There are several factors that have persuaded me to take this action – art sales have been pathetically slow since the financial turndown ( and I believe worse is yet to come – especially with the price of petrol tipped to reach 150 by mid year ), the lease on 50 Maple Street is soon to expire and I'm not sure I want to sign up for another 3 years, my own “emerging” arts practice has pretty much ground to a standstill in recent months and finally, I feel that there are a few more community arts projects that I can contribute to that will have a greater benefit to the overall Maleny arts scene.
It’s never easy to walk away from a project that has been so all consuming, however I feel that now is the right time for me to take this action and February 03 is the date that I take the final walk down the stairs.
I have had wonderful support from so many people – including yourself - over the years and it has been a delight to show off artworks from our talented artists. I am proud for what Maleny Artworks has achieved in a short time but believe that we are now entering into a new cultural era – not all good I’m afraid – that will maybe change the way artists promote and market themselves. We are firmly in the IT era and as artists we are going to have to really embrace the Internet as the primary source of our marketing.
I am certainly not leaving Maleny at this stage, and as I mentioned earlier, there is a lot of work now to do to expand COMA to a wider audience including thinking about our June exhibition. I hope you will continue to support COMA and participate in any up-coming projects that promote Maleny arts.
Thank you for supporting me over the years, and I trust we will continue working together during times to come.
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