After years of being shuffled around, the Phillip Island Community Art & Craft Gallery has a new home.
By Aleta Groves
The Phillip Island Community Art & Craft Gallery is a local not for profit community group with a long history. The art & craft centre was established in Chapel Street in 1993, and the Phillip Island Arts Council handed over the management of the centre to The Artists’ Society of Phillip Island the following year.
When these premises were sold in 1997, the council offered the gallery a space at the renovated Cowes Cultural Centre, and we were located there for over 20 years.
When the cultural centre was demolished in 2020, Phillip Island Community and Learning Centre (PICAL) kindly offered us a place at their centre in Church Street. For two years we were very fortunate to still have a small community gallery operating from PICAL.
The Phillip Island Community Art & Craft Gallery is a local not for profit community group with a long history. The art & craft centre was established in Chapel Street in 1993, and the Phillip Island Arts Council handed over the management of the centre to The Artists’ Society of Phillip Island the following year.
When these premises were sold in 1997, the council offered the gallery a space at the renovated Cowes Cultural Centre, and we were located there for over 20 years.
When the cultural centre was demolished in 2020, Phillip Island Community and Learning Centre (PICAL) kindly offered us a place at their centre in Church Street. For two years we were very fortunate to still have a small community gallery operating from PICAL.
When PICAL moved to their new facility in 2022 we again found ourselves without a space. In November 2022 we closed our doors. All we could do was hope that eventually we would have a new location to operate from.
We are delighted to finally be able to say the Phillip Island Gallery is back!
We opened on September 26 in our forever home at the old CFA building, now called the Creative Arts Station. You can find us at 119 Settlement Road Cowes, next to the SES.
We share our wonderful new home with three other arts & crafts groups from the island (Artists Society of Phillip Island, Phillip Island Contemporary Exhibition Space & Boomerang Bags). Out the back is the PICAL community garden which looks amazing.
We are very proud of our new gallery and we have loads of beautiful new arts & crafts on display and for sale. It’s all hand made by our members who are Bass Coast Residents.
We have now been open three weeks and we have had such a positive response to our beautiful Gallery. We have so far had more than 300 people come through the gallery since we opened.
We are delighted to finally be able to say the Phillip Island Gallery is back!
We opened on September 26 in our forever home at the old CFA building, now called the Creative Arts Station. You can find us at 119 Settlement Road Cowes, next to the SES.
We share our wonderful new home with three other arts & crafts groups from the island (Artists Society of Phillip Island, Phillip Island Contemporary Exhibition Space & Boomerang Bags). Out the back is the PICAL community garden which looks amazing.
We are very proud of our new gallery and we have loads of beautiful new arts & crafts on display and for sale. It’s all hand made by our members who are Bass Coast Residents.
We have now been open three weeks and we have had such a positive response to our beautiful Gallery. We have so far had more than 300 people come through the gallery since we opened.
We have had many visitors to the island come and take a look. We have also had lots of locals come and visit, many locals who supported us when we were in the cultural centre are so happy to see us back up and running. We have always had such a great support base from locals and it is so nice to welcome them into our new home.
The comments have been so positive about our new space, especially how we have turned our part of the old fire station into a beautiful, bright gallery that beautifully displays our local arts & crafts.
Phillip Island Community Art & Craft Gallery at 119 Settlement Road is open Thursday-Sunday 11am-3pm.
The comments have been so positive about our new space, especially how we have turned our part of the old fire station into a beautiful, bright gallery that beautifully displays our local arts & crafts.
Phillip Island Community Art & Craft Gallery at 119 Settlement Road is open Thursday-Sunday 11am-3pm.