Karungkarni Arts and Culture Centre Redevelopment Stage 2

The artist community working at the Karungkarni Arts and Culture Centre are dedicated to preserving and celebrating the local culture through arts, language and story telling. Improved facilities are required to support and enhance their programs. In 2018 and again in 2023 the Karungkarni Arts and Culture Centre invited Bower Studio to continue to support their vibrant arts program and extend and improve the facility. The directors are aware of the importance of keeping culture strong with a facility that encourages the connections between arts, language and country. Following on from the 2018 Bower Studio project that doubled the space available to artists at the centre the Bower Studio team was asked to return to complete further improvements in a staged program across 2023 and 2024. Consultation began in 2021 with the primary aims to expand the space available for painters, improve the capacity of the centre to moderate temperature and dust, and improve the capacity to store and exhibit artworks for sale. Prioritising the visual link to the Karungkarni hills was important as the existing centre had poor visual connections to the hills despite the arts centre being named for these cultural landmarks. Maintaining the architectural forms and tectonics of the previous upgrade remained important to the artists. The immediate design and consultation periods led to a period of materials procurement and prefabrication of key structural components. This 'kit of parts' was loaded into a shipping container in Melbourne and transported to Kalkaringi by train and truck arriving one week before the Bower construction team arrived. Over 11 days the team assembled and clad the structure – adding 50m2 of additional floor area and opening the east side of the building to the Karungkarni hills.