Beaches Art Residency: A brush with retail

Westfield Warringah Mall hosts a local, living artist residency

In a climate where commercial spaces are increasingly transient, it is heartening to encounter an initiative that blurs the boundaries between art and retail, community and commerce. The Artist Residency at Westfield Warringah Mall is one such project – a vibrant intervention that has transformed a vacant retail tenancy into a living, breathing studio and exhibition space.

Conceived through a collaboration between Westfield Warringah Mall and Brookvale Arts District (BAD), the residency is a quietly radical gesture: five artists working in full view of the public, each contributing their own distinctive visual language to the fabric of the space. Lara Allport, Jaimee Paul, Jessica Watts, Monique Tyacke and Jo Horsley have collectively created not only a striking body of work, but a site of continual engagement and dialogue with the public.

This initiative is the result of sustained advocacy and imaginative thinking. Conversations between the Westfield marketing and leasing teams and BAD co-founder Lara Allport planted the seed, not merely to fill a shopfront, but to reframe it as a cultural hub. The resulting residency launched in May 2025, and has since drawn steady footfall, proving as compelling for passers-by as it is meaningful for the artists involved.

There is something profoundly democratic about the experience: no ticketed entry, no white-cube reverence, just the pleasure of stumbling upon art in progress as part of one’s daily routine. The public have responded in kind, with generous feedback and genuine curiosity, whether peeking in as the artists work, striking up conversation, or returning with friends in tow. It is, as one visitor put it, “exactly the kind of thing that brings a Mall to life.”

And now, as the original site has been reclaimed by a new commercial tenant, the project evolves once again. Rather than seeing the end of the initiative, Westfield Warringah Mall has embraced the residency’s value and offered a new space elsewhere in the centre – a gesture that speaks volumes about the mutual benefits of art-led activation.

Workshops, paint-and-sip sessions, and further creative programming are on the horizon, all of which promise to deepen community connection and encourage hands-on participation.

What this project demonstrates, above all, is the power of imaginative reuse, not simply to decorate, but to reanimate. The Artist Residency is more than a display of paintings; it is an assertion that creativity belongs in the everyday, that artists are not ornaments to a city but essential contributors to its vitality.

In the end, the message is clear: empty spaces are opportunities. And when given over to artists, remarkable things can happen. Art will save the world. Stay tuned.