Callan Park Bushcare 30th Anniversary

Exhibition + Community Planting, 6 & 7 September 2025

Callan Park Bushcarers at work, 2024. Photo Denise Corrigan

This winter our house has been full of new plant names … thanks to Denise, iNaturalist and Callan Park Bushcare (CPB). Every Wednesday morning D heads off to weed, chat and plan with bushcare confrères down on Callan Point. The group, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in early September – having deployed the nous and volunteer muscle of hundreds of local people since 1995 – has transformed two hectares of degraded Gadigal Wangal Country down on Iron Cove by planting, tending, resuscitating and linking up pockets of remnant bushland above King George Park. With bamboo excised and invasive weeds like Madeira vine and morning glory largely in check, today the site (which straddles the Bay Run) is alive with local natives incl. wattle (sickle, fringed & golden), banksia (coastal & heath-leaved), kangaroo apple, cockspur, golden guinea vine, needlebush, lilly pilly, rice flower and lomandra. A leafy bushtrack with views to the water snakes its way past turpentine, ironbark, giant, sprawling Port Jackson figs and a grand old blackbutt.

Over recent months Denise has worked with CPB stalwarts Bronwen Campbell & Elisabeth Dark + artist Tony Fuery (44’s Naarm-based design affiliate) to create materials for a 30th Anniversary Exhibition @ the Summerhouse (at the end of Point Road in Lilyfield … just up from the beach on Callan Point) from 10am to 4pm on Saturday 6 September & 12pm to 4pm on Sunday 7 September. The display will feature a suite of colourful corflutes charting CPB’s achievements over three decades … before-and-after-shots of bushcare sites + recent flora & fauna sightings … with contributions from Callan Street’s Marg Carter (drawings/photographs), Holly Gorman (banner), Denise Corrigan (photographs) & David Watson.

If you haven’t seen the site for a while you may be surprised by its transformation, thanks to CPB + an extraordinary 15” of August rain!

Please join us for the official Opening @ 12.30pm on Sunday 7 @ the Summerhouse (after the Community Planting - see below).

11-year-old Luca Watson @ CPB Mother’s Day Planting, 2008. Photo Denise Corrigan. Today the triangular Mothers’ Flat site forms a welcome eucalypt, paperbark and casuarina buffer between the Bay Run and Iron Cove.

In nurturing indigenous plant species and attracting wildlife, birds and insects, bush care reminds us daily that Callan Park, ‘the jewel of the inner west’, always was, always will be Aboriginal land … and that its custodianship depends upon us all getting our hands dirty, on occasion.

From 10am to 12pm on Sunday 7 September – National Threatened Species and Father’s Day! – there will be a 30th Anniversary Community Planting along the bushy southern edge of King George Park, just up from the ablutions block. Everyone is welcome + there’s plenty of parking close by at the bottom of Manning Street, Rozelle. Might see you there?!

You can check out all 20 of CPB’s Summerhouse Exhibition corflutes here.

CPB’s 30th anniversary will be marked in & around the Summerhouse (Point Road, Lilyfield) on Saturday 6 & Sunday 7 September 2025

Legacy - new photo work by Denise Corrigan, July 2025

A great opening of Legacy - New photo work by Denise Corrigan @ 44 on Saturday arvo. Thank you to all our confrères and local supporters. Lots of sales ... lots of roses, making-do collages and kangaroo-paw migrations heading to local loungerooms across the inner west! Photo Aladdin Watson

Penelope and Justine checking out four of Denise’s Making-do works

Denise introduces her series ‘Super Six’ Roses to artist confreres Betsy and Bruce, on Sunday. Her large prints (101 x 76 cm), which struck quite a chord with visitors over our opening weekend, are also available in a smaller (tiny-house friendly) A3 version @ $75 each. See roomsheet below.

Darling magazine, Winter 2025

Six WRVAPs @ Articulate project space in Leichhardt, May 2025

A rare convocation of six WRVAPs @ Articulate project space in Leichhardt, 25 May 2025 … (l. to r.) Neil Berecry-Brown, Margaret Roberts, Sue Callanan, Noelene Lucas, Juliet Fowler Smith & David Watson (absent: Toni Warburton, Suzanne Bartos) … on the closing afternoon of the Williams River Valley Artists’ Project (WRVAP) Archive show, as part of Agitate/d. As a collective of environmentally-concerned contemporary artists/writers/community activists, WRVAP worked together to research, exhibit, publish, agitate, witness and support grass-roots protest for eight years (2009-16), initially to help save the Williams River near Dungog from being dammed, and thence to draw attention to the gargantuan threats to life on earth posed by the extraction, burning and export of coal and CSG. Photo: Denise Corrigan

We showed our work @ NSW regional galleries and cultural hubs in Muswellbrook, Maitland, Tocal & Kandos, and in Sydney @ Tin Sheds, Articulate & SCA, and published two editions of our arts-activist bugle The Stuttering Frog. Copies of this free tabloid-newspaper ‘catalogue’ were delivered to local communities (via libraries, doctors’ waiting rooms, clubs and galleries) across the Hunter region, to Sydney art audiences + to the pigeon holes of every NSW Member of Parliament.

David (l.), Juliet (r.) and Sue spoke about WRVAP and the Archive at an artist talk on 18 May. Photo: Beata Geyer

The WRVAP Archive show @ Articulate was put together by Noelene Lucas and Juliet Fowler Smith. It offered a sampling of WRVAP’s diverse output, spanning performance, sculpture, installation, ceramics, video, drawing, photography, writing and publishing. WRVAP Archive materials were recently deposited with the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Those unfamiliar with our work can check out WRVAP’s blogspot here. David’s website also features a wealth of WRVAP material under ‘Exhibitions’ (e.g. Cry Me a River, Leave It in the Ground, Instruments of Democracy, The Bridge).

Download a PDF of The Stuttering Frog #2 (2013) here.

David Watson (with Denise Corrigan), Ransom Note, 2013

An entreaty featuring typography sampled from the logos of leading global warmers active in Austraia.

Shady Nasty’s TREK, February 2025

Frame still from Shady Nasty’s video SCREWDRIVA [SN’s latest single]. Directed, shot & edited by Luca Watson, February 2025. VFX Sebastian Webster, Volumetric video supervisor Josh Gladstone

Our 27-yr-old son Luca - a long-term fellow artist-in-residence with us here @ 44 - makes music and vids with Sydney’s post-punk trio Shady Nasty (Kevin Stathis guitar/vocals, Haydn Green bass, Luca Watson drums). Having plied their craft at home and abroad for a decade and released two EPs, last week Shady Nasty launched their debut album TREK @ Phoenix, and were ‘Album of the Week’ on Sydney’s fbi.radio. The band plays Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in April/May. Six years’ ago we screened the vids for Shady Nasty’s Get Buff and Jewellery as part our exhibition ‘Curbed & Gutted’ here @ 44 in the aftermath of WCX. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then. Via heaving moshes at local pubs, city recitals, national radio & TV, regional tours across the eastern states (fortunately, the boys like driving!), and through supporting touring acts like Sleaford Mods, Amyl & the Sniffers, and Shame [Metro 4/3/25], the band, ‘as much a product of Sydney as they are observers of it … embodies a new wave of Australian music: hyper-aware, fiercely DIY, and unwilling to be boxed in.’ [Phoenix 2/25]. Check out Shady Nasty’s new website here. There’s a great recently-published piece of writing re Luca’s videos & SN here, and below is L’s video for SN’s latest single SCREWDRIVA.

David Watson’s koalanimbus, December 2024

For further info about this work see David’s exhibition Koala Inn

Denise Corrigan’s Council Papers @ Northern Beaches Environmental Art & Design Prize

Manly Art Gallery & Museum, August 2024

Denise Corrigan was a finalist in the Northern Beaches Environmental Art & Design Prize @ Manly Art Gallery in August. On Saturday 10 August she spoke about her work Council Papers Fig. 1 at a well-attended afternoon of artist talks. Video: Janette Willett

unentitled @ 44, April 2024

Jamie Parker & Kobi Shetty with proprietors David Watson & Denise Corrigan in front of Denise’s work Council Papers at the opening of unentitled @ 44 (6 April 2024). Jamie, with whom we campaigned against WestCONnex’s reviled Rozelle Interchange for many years, was the state MP for Balmain 2011-23. Kobi is our current local Member.

The opening was a buoyant affair, attracting a diverse mix of 120 or so art lovers & artists, activist-confreres, cultural workers, bush-carers, local neighbours and winter swimmers. The show was enjoyed by 200 visitors over seven days, with some healthy sales.

 

Darling Magazine, Autumn 2024

Prior to our recent home studio/gallery upgrade (& launch of unentitled @ 44 in April 2024) we’d mounted six locally-fuelled weekend exhibitions open to the general public at 44 Callan Street, under the moniker Salon Callan (2001-19). These events were embraced under the banner of Leichhardt (now Inner West) Council’s Open Studio Trail initiative. You can see the work + installation shots, invites & catalogues from these shows on David’s website under Exhibitions and on Denise’s quietworks site. Links to relevant individual webpages below…