At the end of March, as floodwaters rose in Lismore for the second time in just four weeks, a portrait of Karla Dickens was delivered to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.
The painting, titled Moby Dickens, is Dhungutti artist Blak Douglas's entry into the Archibald Prize. It depicts Dickens, a Lismore-based Wiradjuri artist, standing in floodwaters, holding a leaking pail of water in each hand.
While Dickens lives 5 kilometres from the CBD, hit hardest by the floods, the constant rain in the region destroyed her studio.
"If [the painting] makes one more person aware of what's happened where I live, I'm really grateful for that," Dickens says.
The Wilsons River in Lismore peaked at 14.4 metres on February 28 and flooded again in late March.
Homes, businesses and arts spaces were inundated, leaving some residents stranded on their roofs.
Douglas (born Adam Hill), who had already started his portrait of Dickens – his friend – prior to the floods, realised he needed to change it.
"I was definitely happy that he made that choice," Dickens says.
"[I said,] 'As long as you make it grumpy. I want to be grumpy.'"
She says the holes in the bottom of the buckets symbolise the government's inaction on climate change.
Speaking to ABC Arts in the month after the floodwaters peaked, artists and arts organisations in the region shared their experiences and posed ideas about how to rebuild – with the arts sector taking on a pivotal role.
The damage
The estimated cost of the damage to independent artists across the Northern Rivers, as of April 5, is more than $5.1 million – averaging about $20,000 per artist – according to the region's peak arts support body, Arts Northern Rivers.
"People have lost not just their homes, cars, possessions and are homeless, but they have lost their future income, studios, whole collections, equipment, musical instruments — the lot," says Jane Fuller, Arts Northern Rivers' executive director.
Lismore Regional Gallery director Ashleigh Ralph does not yet know the extent of the damage to their collection.
"All the artworks were damaged. We may not be able to save them all," she says.
Among these are the Hannah Cabinet, valued at more than $1.5 million; works by artists Margaret Olley and Max Dupain; and the Afghanistan war rugs collection being toured by ANU's Drill Hall Gallery.
"The conservators are positive about restoring the Hannah Cabinet, though it may take some time," Ralph says.
Her team worked for 10 days straight cleaning up the gallery, with more than 450 volunteers arriving to help in that first week.
"It was a community effort; people who had never been to the gallery before as well, just showing up knowing that they could lend a hand," says Ralph.
But flooding in late March has set the clean-up effort back.
"We had it [the building] at the most pristine it could possibly be, and then the floods came through again … We have to clean it again, like the rest of the city."
History repeating
Lismore's flood levee, built in 2005, overflowed for the first time in March 2017, leading to a so-called "one-in-100-year flood".
At that time, NORPA (Northern Rivers Performing Arts), based at the Lismore City Hall, was inundated with 2m of water, silt and sewerage. Their studio, green room, furniture, and much of their archives were wiped out.
This year, the impact on the venue was much worse, amounting to around $500,000 of damage, according to Julian Louis, NORPA's artistic director and CEO.
Their NORPA Flood Relief fundraising campaign has raised more than $36,000 so far.
After 2017, organisations like Lismore Regional Gallery and NORPA created flood plans – which they enacted in February as the waters rose, moving much of their collections and equipment upstairs.
These measures proved to be insufficient – but were better than local council precautions, which Louis describes as basically non-existent.
"Council put up some signs that showed us how high the flood was in previous years. And that's about it," says Louis.
Government response
The NSW government committed up to $435,000 in flood relief funding to the arts sector in the Northern Rivers in March, with Arts Minister Ben Franklin noting that the region has "the highest number of creative practitioners per capita" in the state.
As part of this, Create NSW allocated $70,000 to Arts Northern Rivers to deliver micro-grants of up to $1,000 to local artists and groups; and a further $70,000 to Screenworks for micro-grants of up to $5,000 to screen practitioners.
It will also provide $50,000 to Lismore Regional Museum to restore its collection.
Everyone else is eligible to apply for a $200,000 pool of funding administered by Create NSW, for grants of up to $30,000 for small-to-medium organisations and up to $10,000 for individuals and groups.
Funds can be used to replace equipment and art supplies, repair damaged studios and workspaces, restore damaged work, and employ artists and arts workers.
A further $40,000 was committed to Arts Northern Rivers for the micro-grant scheme in late April.
In addition, in April, the federal and NSW state governments announced $100 million towards repairing and rebuilding community, arts and cultural infrastructure, such as libraries.
This is the only targeted support for arts organisations announced by the federal government so far.
At the same time, funding for regional arts in the federal budget has more than halved, from $18 million in 2021-22 to $7.5 million in 2022-23.
And Lismore Regional Gallery, Arts Northern Rivers, Elevator ARI and NORPA all had their applications for federal RISE funding rejected earlier this year.
RISE funding is not emergency funding: instead, it is intended to fund cultural and creative projects, activities and events.
"It just demonstrates how little is afforded to the regions when it comes to major funding like that."
The community steps in
In the absence of financial support from government – or while they were waiting to see if and when it would eventuate – many Northern Rivers organisations did their own fundraising.
Lismore Regional Gallery has so far raised more than $28,000 through a GiveNow campaign, and Arts Northern Rivers has fundraised more than $107,000 to assist artists with immediate flood recovery.
That's in addition to the funding from Create NSW, and donations from Koori Mail and Northern Rivers Community Foundation – all of which is marked for affected artists, after the organisation received more than 250 applications for support.
The gallery intends to apply for the Create NSW grant for small-to-medium organisations. In the meantime, the funds they've raised so far will go towards supporting artists.
"[We want] to start commissioning artists to make new work. [For now] we're just kind of patiently waiting for funding to roll out for the recovery," Ralph says.
What is still needed
Artist Karla Dickens stresses that the funding priority now needs to be housing people.
Following the February floods, more than 2,600 homes in the Lismore LGA were significantly damaged, and more than 2,000 were deemed uninhabitable, according to Resilience NSW.
Artists who are now unable to make work – whether because of shortages in supplies, or the loss of their homes and studio spaces – are the same people who are often called upon to donate art as part of crisis fundraising efforts.
For example, artists Kate Pittas and Andrea Hamann, who are based outside of the region, organised the Art for Floods fundraiser, with artists from across the country selling their work and donating the proceeds to NORPA, Arts Northern Rivers and GIVIT.
The campaign raised more than $217,000, with 425 artists participating and more than 400 artworks sold.
Kylie Caldwell is a Bundjalung woman, an artist, and the Indigenous Arts Officer at Arts Northern Rivers.
"Artists are often at the forefront of recovery in disasters using their innovative repertoires to bring people together, activate spaces, and support businesses and their local community," she says.
"Governments need to acknowledge and continue investing in the arts as it does with other industries; they need to continue nurturing and protecting artists' multiple roles within our communities."
Parallels in Queensland
The floods in late February also dramatically impacted Brisbane's arts companies – many of which are based on the banks of the flood-prone Brisbane River.
In 2011, a 4.46m flood wiped out thousands of historical props and costumes at Queensland Theatre (QT).
This year, its bar, courtyard, and studio and theatre spaces were damaged.
"It sucks and it smells and it's horrible and the mould is awful," QT's artistic director Lee Lewis told ABC Arts at the end of March.
"But we know how to fix the building because we've done it before and we know how to raise money to fix the theatre because we did that before."
QT applied what it had learned from the last major floods, setting up its own flood plan.
"I've been taking a lot of strength from what was learned in 2011," says Lewis.
As part of its clean-up efforts this year, the theatre has ripped out its floors and walls and is attempting to rescue electrical wiring.
For the rebuild, it plans to use materials – like smart woods and plastic – that can better sustain flood damage, rather than gyprock, timber and laminates.
Moving forward, the theatre will be looking at flood mitigation – including possibly instituting a flood line, which would require all electricals be 1m off the ground. Other measures include building a flood wall around the venue or raising the theatre higher up.
"We know that this is going to happen again. What can we do to help protect the theatre even better in the future?" asks Lewis.
First Nations knowledge
The traditional knowledge of the First Nations peoples of the Northern Rivers, the Bundjalung Nation, need to be drawn upon when thinking about how to rebuild Lismore, says Karla Dickens.
"It's really about deep listening and communication, with communities coming together," says the artist.
"First Nations people know this country and this land … They know different histories. Not just a couple of generations of history, but they know the history of this land."
Bundjalung artist Kylie Caldwell says that the local Aboriginal community needs to be involved in all aspects of community building, including disaster management.
"First Nation knowledge is necessary for creating future planning that aids understanding land and rivers systems, guides response, recovery, and restoration of many places, establishes disaster preparedness strategies before our wet seasons and discusses future aspirations for the rebuild."
She points to ongoing environmental issues in Bundjalung Country – including silt-stained waterways, heavily polluted rivers, landslides and habitat destruction.
"Our community continues to change; the population is growing, agriculture is expanding, water availability is still a concern, and we are in a housing crisis. There is a lot to consider, and the weather is changing, becoming more extreme," she says.
Caldwell is also a member of First Nations contemporary weaving group Casino Wake Up Time, whose work is featured at the 23rd Biennale of Sydney.
There's resonance between the work of Casino Wake Up Time at the Biennale – which is this year titled "rīvus", meaning "stream" in Latin – and the ongoing crisis in the Northern Rivers.
"Many of the artworks [at the Biennale] speak to our current circumstances of displacement and changing weather systems which cause water issues," Caldwell says.
"The exhibition gives our freshwater and saltwater a voice, ongoing attention regarding their role and uses in our communities and the challenges faced by the community with changing water systems. It focuses on thinking about our waterways as living, moving beings with rights."
'We need a place'
The arts sector intends to be a part of difficult conversations about how the region – and the arts in particular – re-envisions itself after the floods.
The state government has set up the Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation (NRRC) to coordinate rebuilding efforts between different government agencies and levels of government.
It has also established an independent flood inquiry, focused on its causes, preparation and planning, the immediate response, and recovery efforts.
Deputy Premier Paul Toole said it represented a shift in focus "to how we can make the infrastructure and homes of the region more resilient in the event of future natural disasters".
Arts Northern Rivers is working on a number of creative industries forums in the region – which will hopefully generate ideas for a long-term strategy for the future of Lismore.
Executive director Jane Fuller has suggested holding an initial forum while people are still living with the immediate impacts of the floods, followed by another in about five months' time.
She has her own ideas about what that future could look like for artists in the Northern Rivers.
"We need the state and federal governments to come in and we need to really look at our planning around our civic buildings, our art spaces.
"Do we do a multipurpose arts destination or space like a MONA [Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart] or like a HOTA [Home of the Arts] on the Gold Coast?"
At the same time, organisations like Lismore Regional Gallery, NORPA and Arts Northern Rivers are considering the potential of mobile gallery, studio and theatre spaces.
Lismore Regional Gallery has already applied for funding from both Create NSW and the Australia Council to create temporary exhibition spaces out the front of the gallery – to hold exhibitions, performances, workshops, activities and events.
"It's really important for the community to have that activation and to have that creativity happening down where they would always come for inspiration and to gather," says gallery director Ashleigh Ralph.
Fuller thinks that shipping containers could work as temporary multi-arts spaces that could be easily moved in the event of a flood.
What now?
When artist Karla Dickens speaks to ABC Arts in April, she has just finished a painting about the floods. As Lismore continues to rebuild — and artists regain a sense of stability — many more creative responses like this are likely to follow.
"I just know that it's going to be really incredibly healing and incredibly powerful work that comes from the personal experiences everybody's had," Dickens says.
Fuller wonders if creatives will leave the Northern Rivers now that many studio spaces have been destroyed.
"I suspect we'll see an exodus of quite a lot of our creatives from the region," she says.
"How much do you reinvest back into replacement of all your equipment and all your life's artworks and practice, just for it to happen again?"
Born in Sydney, Dickens moved to the Northern Rivers 20 years ago, enticed by the region's affordability.
"I'm a single mother, I'm an artist, I own my own home. I've got two studios and I've got space for people at times like this, and that would never have happened for me in Sydney," she says.
"I wouldn't have been able to have the career I have, because I wouldn't have had the time to make art. I would've been chasing money to pay the bills."
She too reckons some people may leave due to the risk of future natural disasters – but not the artists she knows.
"All my friends that have lost their houses are just waiting to find out how to go forward. They don't want to move. They don't want to leave the area."
Dickens is the creative director of contemporary art festival Art Byron, which will be run for the first time at the end of September.
"There's all local artists in that festival, all gathering," she says.
"If anybody's out there with any great ideas or money or art supplies or anything where they want to support other artists, the time's now to act."
