After being closed to the public due to the Covid-19 pandemic, The Grafton Regional Gallery re-opened its doors to the public on Wednesday 3 June.

Gallery Director Niomi Sands said that during the phased re-opening of the gallery, opening hours would be reduced to 10am to 2pm weekdays only.

Ms Sands said that Prentice House (at the front of the gallery) was the only accessible section of the gallery open at the moment due to the gallery’s expansion and restoration works in progress at the moment.

“It’s been really strange not having a gallery full of people so it’s so exciting to be inviting the public (back) in,” Ms Sands said.

“We’ve got a few slightly different changes to our hours so that we can keep everybody safe.

“We are doing timed visits every half hour because we can only fit 15 people in Prentice House safely. We are not open on weekends just yet as we’re taking the time to test the waters and see how it goes.

“Further changes will happen until we get back to our normal opening hours,” she said.

Ms Sands said that during the closure of the Regional Gallery to the public, the staff have still been going to work, working behind the scenes.
“We’ve had a few projects that we have wanted to do which have been on the ‘to do when we have time’ pile,” she said.

“One of those things was ‘Art at Home’, which we launched on our website.

“This (project) involved a whole heaps of artist activities created by our local artists that you can create at home.

“We had wanted to do this for a very long time, so we finally had the opportunity and it was a way of supporting our local artists during this time,” she said.