The Forge: Creative Warehouse

The face of St Vincent Street is changing thanks to Renew Adelaide filling a number of empty buildings with creative enterprises. The addition of The Forge looks set to add to the landscape and help Port Adelaide on its way to becoming a centre for arts and culture. Occupying the first floor of an art deco building the huge warehouse, which was vacant for a few years, has been transformed by Phil Brown, John Goodridge, Christopher Morrison and Steve O’Conner. As a photographer himself, Brown says he was frustrated with not getting a lot of work he wanted to exhibit into galleries. “We wanted to make it easy for anyone to put together an exhibition and get their work out there,” Brown says. “We already have a few people who have expressed interest in having exhibitions. Hopefully it will be continually evolving with all sorts of new stuff.” The gallery area occupies the front of the warehouse and is set up with moveable partitions that can be reconfigured depending on the exhibition with each exhibition running for approximately two weeks. “Some people may want shorter and some people may want longer [than two weeks]. The whole idea is we want it to be a community space. We don’t want to tell you, `You must have a week long exhibition in a gallery that looks like this’.” The middle section is set up as a communal workspace with a variety of desks, communal workbenches and lounges – something to suit everyone’s needs. There are three different levels of membership with basic (which includes Wi-Fi access and all the tea and coffee you can drink) while the top two levels have the additional perk of 24-hour access to the building, so if you do your best work at night then this is the membership for you. Artists such as Rebecca Prince, Donovan Christie and FLEtCH CUtS have adorned the walls of the workspace with murals. The space also includes two photo studio areas, one with a backdrop and an area for hair and make up, and the other one set up at the back of the building is a natural light studio. While the Forge has a focus on photography, everyone is welcome to come in and enjoy the space. With nowhere else like it in the Port, it will be exciting to see what creative ideas come out of the hub. forgewarehouse.com