Opening an art gallery in the Deep South is a dream come true for a North Island couple.Shig and Shane Nicolson opened The Space art gallery in Riverton last month after years of searching for a community to realise their passion.<\/p>\n
The pair and their tamariki travelled around the South Island in a caravan three years ago, in the hope of finding a community that shared their values and where they would eventually start their venture.<\/p>\n
Mrs Nicolson said their long-held dream had finally been realised when the gallery officially opened last month.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018It\u2019s been a dream of ours for a long time to have a hub for the community, a place where people could come and hang out . . .so it’s an art gallery but it’s also a community space,\u2019\u2019 Mrs Nicolson said.<\/p>\n
They were motivated to create a space which would bring the community together and have a similar \u2018\u2018kaupapa to a marae.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Mr Nicolson hoped The Space would become a hub where people could connect and express their creativity.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018That\u2019s been lost over the years so we are quite passionate about trying to bring people together again,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
The Space art gallery is a community focused creative venue that supports local artists.<\/p>\n
It also hosts workshops, classes and is an open gathering space.<\/p>\n
Each month the gallery will feature a new art exhibition and hold an evening which will involve community participation with musical items and food offerings.<\/p>\n
The first art exhibition was held in December, a collaboration with six local artists which included paintings, sculpture and photography.<\/p>\n
A Painted Land exhibition held this month featured works by locals Roger Thompson and couple Judith and Rex Mills.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018Our vision is to constantly change the use of the space . . .and what is so exciting is that we can generate beautiful things and it just continues to get better and better,\u2019\u2019 Mrs Nicolson said<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Opening an art gallery in the Deep South is a dream come true for a North Island couple.Shig…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-258937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}