Bushfire Relief Fundraiser Exhibition
After watching our country and especially our south coast community go up in flames we decided to put on an exhibition and raise some money for the RFS, who continue to tirelessly fight fires and keep lives and property safe.
Hearing about our current bushfire disaster every day for a few weeks starts to make you feel a bit helpless. We felt as though we would love to help but our shallow, small business pockets weren’t going to go far in terms of donations and financial aid. Then we floated the idea of doing a fundraiser exhibition where we ask for a donation upon entry and sell some art via silent auction. It was going to be a nice little fundraiser on a Sunday evening that might raise a few thousand dollars if we were lucky. Little did we know we would end up packing out our gallery with over 400 people and all together raising OVER ELEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.
We started by contacting some local artists and friends of ours who we thought might be keen to be involved and donate some of their work to the cause. As usual, Wollongong’s art community started to band together straight away. We had art works donated from not only the people and friends we asked but an array of other artists contacted us and asked if they too could donate some of their work. Pretty quickly we started to realise that we were running out of wall space for all this art in our little gallery space and that this Sunday night, in less than a weeks time might be a bit bigger than we had originally expected.
So we had plenty of support from local and even some not so local artists. Next we got some other generous people and companies jumping on board to make the night bigger and better. Firstly Capital Brewing Co. sent a bunch of beers our way to keep the good times flowing. Kwik Kopy Wollongong also hooked us up by donating some printing services and gave us a wad of flyers to put up in cafes, stores, restaurants and anywhere else we could stick ‘em. As the Facebook event continued to grow to over 500 people we realised that this was looking to possibly be our biggest event yet and thankfully Kennards Hire Corrimal also chipped in and dropped off some rent-a-fences so we could build a nice little out door area.
We’ve received all this support from artists and other businesses, surely it couldn’t get any better but the community stepped up again. Our good friends at Wandering Merchants and Warren Keelan were keen to get involved and so were the Your’s & Owls and Unknown Records crews. The logical way to best utilise all this support was to put together a raffle and these four Wollongong icons put together some highly sought after prize packs.
After a hectic week of organising the logistics and framing and hanging art, Sunday evening rolled around and a steady flow of people were coming in the doors. Everyone was happily donating ten bucks on arrival and some even donating fifties and hundreds before they had even made it inside. A silent auction sheet for each of the 38 artworks for sale was hung on the wall and the bidding kicked off to a cruisey start.
Of course we were’t just standing around in silence, we started with some tunes from Gus Kennely followed by the fellas from Cove Sound System and Sucker DJs and topped off by Pantheon. Now this is the part where the night really kicked up a notch. We welcomed MC Big Twisty and the Twisty Gang to the stage (which wasn’t a stage at all, we are in an art gallery remember) and for about half an hour our humble studio and gallery space became a full blown party with people on shoulders and in the words of Twisty himself, The whole crowd was jumpin’. Big Twisty closed out an incredible performance by auctioning off a giant Twisty (the snack) he made with his own hands and a framed, signed portrait of himself. Twisty’s auction alone raised over one thousand dollars in a matter of seconds.
As we got closer to the end of the evening the bidding started to heat up. Big Twisty had announced that there was 5 minutes of auction time left and some people really had their eyes on all of the incredible art that adorned the walls. People were watching their auction sheets like hawks and pens started to disappear. While it felt like the winning bids would keep climbing for ever we had to eventually cut the chord before someone got hurt or lost their life savings.
Our Fire Fundraiser Exhibition was just about wrapped up so we rushed to count the money and announce how much we raised and say a big thank you to everyone for being involved and coming along. The further the total climbed the more amazed we were by how much everyone got behind the cause. In a frenzy of excitement we announced the total including Twisty’s auction to be somewhere just over eleven thousand dollars and everyone gave themselves a well deserved round of applause.
Upon counting the next day the exact amount raised was $11,076.66 and we can’t thank all the artists, businesses, attendees and our local community enough for coming out and showing their support for the cause and for our Fire Fighters who are still out there fighting fires today, tomorrow and probably for some time to come. Thanks again Wollongong.
Love the Teelies xo.