This year at the Woodford Folk Festival, you’ll find an art gallery in the most unlikely of places.
Aptly named the ‘Loo-vre’, the artwork started life as an outdoor mural and is now installed permanently in the amenities block just outside the Larrikin venue in the festival precinct.
The Loo-vre is an ongoing, collaborative art project, that invites new beauty to one of the most used Woodford Folk Festival restrooms.
The idea stemmed from multiple outdoor murals created at The Planting Festivals in recent years. After the positive response to these pieces, festival organisers wanted to continue creating more as a means to integrate permanent artwork and design elements across the festival site.
The Loo-vre came to life at the 2017 Winter Warmer in August, starting as a plywood sheet covered in simple squiggles and swirls made by a thick black marker at the hand of Woodfordia’s Artist in Residence Gavin Ryan. Volunteer painters were then given a four-tone colour palette and their own space to create.
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- Woodford Folk Festival Artist in Residence Gavin Ryan preps the plywood for painting.
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- Volunteers painted individual spaces on the outdoor mural.
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- Each element of the Loo-vre has individual patterns and style.
Woodford Folk Festival’s Artist in Residence, Gavin Ryan had no definitive vision of how he wanted the finished piece to look.
“It was created by building it up layer by layer and detail by detail,” he says.
“We worked with the tiniest brushes possible. I used medium sized brushes to do the first layer and shapes and patterns and then got everybody to work with the smallest brushes I had so it created nice fine lines and patterns.”
Each person was given an area to fill in the overall design, which was held together by the strong line work.
“It gave people space to play with – they had all the freedom they want in that shape.”
The artwork has now been installed as cubicle doors to the loos in The Larrikin amenities. Eventually, all amenities blocks on site will be updated with these unique works of art.
“All the Loo-vre artworks will be working with a limited palette of four colours. We’ll change the colour palette across each block we do – you change those colours to get a drastically different effect while still keeping in a unified style,” says Ryan.
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- The finished product! Loo-vre doors installed in the Larrikin amenities block.
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- All on site amenities blocks will eventually be updated.
Woodfordian’s will have the chance to contribute to future Loo-vre pieces at this year’s Woodford Folk Festival, with a set up at Bill’s Bar for patrons to test out their creative flair.
“It gives people a really good feeling to be part of something so striking,” says Ryan.
“It’s quite powerful as an artwork when it’s done right.”
Located in one of the festival’s busiest areas, the Larrikin loos will have hundreds of art-buffs admiring the new additions every day.
Loo-vre Painting will be held daily from 9am to 5pm at Bill’s Bar during the 2017/18 Woodford Folk Festival.
Painting workshops will be held daily at Bill’s Bar during this year’s festival.
If you’re planning on joining us at the Woodford Folk Festival this year, make sure you book your tickets online – there’ll be no opportunity to buy them at the gate this year.
Ticket allocation will be capped and all vehicles require a Vehicle Pass.
