Corrigin Agricultural Society Inc.
As this year marks the 100th Agricultural Show for Corrigin, the committee has been planning for an exciting event. Apart from the fun filled attractions on show day 9th September, the main event will be the unveiling of the mural at a sundowner on the Friday prior to show day from 5.30 – 8pm. Many special guests have been invited including all living Life Members and past presidents. Beth McDonnell (RAS Councillor) has accepted too as she has been a regular supporter of our show.
The mural will be erected alongside of the existing ram pavilion/shearing shed. It has been painted on 30 individual panels, with every 3 panels representing a decade. Each panel is 3m high and 1.5m wide, with 2 extra panels, one telling the story of it and one showing the names of the sponsors. The total length is 45m! The truly exciting feature is that it has been painted by locals and interested visitors. It was designed to be painted by numbers by talented local artist Sonia Price (nee Turner). Her vision and ability to transfer the design onto the panels has been simply awe inspiring. She designed the panels to look like a giant colouring in book, so we painted by number. She mixed 540 small pots of different colours to match the numbers, so the detail in the finished panels is stunning.
The project commenced in October 2022 and presently the final panels are being finished. Sonia has been double coating the finished panels with an anti-graffiti gloss. Twelve different community groups have been involved, with over 220 painters. It is truly an inspiring project with everyone loving it. It will become a tourist attraction for Corrigin, rivalling any silo art.
The painting has been very time consuming as most of it has been done using very small brushes, applying several coats. Local business owners of the decommissioned Uniting Church, Kate Matthews and Caron Green gave permission for the project to take place in their building. This has been ideal as the panels (3 at a time) were painted while resting on trestles in the small hall area, then when finished were carried through a door into the church and stored against the pews. The church is now taken over with them.
A large frame to house the panels will be built by Corrigin Engineering’s Steve Warwick. This has proved to be more difficult than first thought as the actual shed didn’t provide enough stability for the panels to be fixed directly to it. They will be alongside it, supported by the frame that will then be braced to the shed. The covering of the panels and how to unveil was also a problem that has now been solved. Light tarps will be threaded through wires top and bottom (one tarp per decade) and they will be slid across like a large shower curtain effect. Many hours have been put into planning, effecting, and solving the problems of this enormous project.
