After three years on Baylis Street Eckersley’s Art & Craft store manager Tiffany Purvis said they needed more space to accommodate growing demand. Photo: Chris Roe.
Riverina creatives will be relieved to hear that Wagga’s dedicated art supply shop won’t be closed for long and will reopen in the next week or so at a new location.
“We’re moving 200 metres down the road so that we’ll have a much bigger shop and we’ll be closer to Wagga’s commercial arts precinct,” explained Eckersley’s Art & Craft store manager Tiffany Purvis.
“It used to be a clothing store so we’ve knocked down all the changerooms and pushed the back office further, so it’s gonna be a massive space and there’s also the potential for us to hold workshops as well.”
The new location is near the intersection of Baylis and Tompson Streets and close to three fantastic local art spaces: Middlemost, Unique State and The Little Yellow House.
Tiffany says the extra room will allow them to offer more products and she’s promising a few surprises for local artists.
“We’re expanding on a couple of ranges that the community has been asking for nearly three years now,” she said.
“We will be getting Atelier Interactive acrylics, Art Spectrum oil paints and a few other little secrets that I can’t reveal just yet.”
Eckersley’s Art & Craft’s new location near the intersection of Baylis and Tompson Streets. Photo: Chris Roe.
Eckersley’s Art & Craft has been around for almost six decades; the original store opened in Melbourne in 1965 and arrived in Wagga three years ago.
“We opened just before COVID and it was a time when there were a lot of people getting into art,” Tiffany said, explaining that the pandemic had seen a boom in art sales as housebound locals looked for new hobbies.
“There were all these people who had never done it before or they did it in high school and then just forgot about it, and they picked it up again during COVID and some have actually been quite successful in town.”
Tiffany said there was a vibrant arts community in the Riverina and she enjoyed playing a part in people’s creative journey.
“It’s huge here, and we’re expanding predominantly because we have so much demand,” she said.
“We see a lot of oil painters, but massively it’s acrylic painters and interestingly, we also have a really strong calligraphy and ink work community here.
“I think a lot of people are interested in art and of course, we recently had the Archibald Prize tour through here as well, so we just see it getting bigger and bigger.”
Eckersley’s Art & Craft will be reopening bigger and better than before in its new location at the end of August.
You can keep up with the latest here.
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