From site-specific installations to collaborative curatorial projects, Byron Coathup has built a practice that blurs the lines between art-making and community-building. Based in Murwillumbah on Bundjalung Country, Byron is both a visual artist and project curator whose work has taken shape across galleries, festivals, and rediscovered public spaces, from Testing Grounds in Melbourne to Gallery HOTA on the Gold Coast, as well as major commissions for Bleach* Festival and the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. Alongside his own practice, Byron plays an active role in the region’s creative ecology by working with the local orgs and supporting artists to realise large-scale projects.

For our final Northern Rivers Creative feature of 2025, we are speaking with Kate McDowell about Golden Thursdays. Golden Thursdays is a bold contemporary dance Ensemble led by Alice Boscheinen, Bryn James, Max McAuley, supported by Creative Catalysts Kate McDowell and Stuart Shugg. The company centres and elevates the choreographic voices of neuro-divergent artists, and you may recognise their work from recent performances such as the Tropical Fruits Recovery Day Cabaret and Hidden in the Hinterland’s Halloween Cabaret at the Drill Hall Theatre. Get to know Golden Thursdays from up close!

This month, we’re shining a light on Natalie Wilkin, a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the thresholds between the human body, the natural world, and the unseen forces that shape consciousness. Working across photography, film and sculptural textiles, Natalie creates immersive works where material, spirit and landscape intertwine. Her practice has been showcased across Australia and the United States, and later this month you’ll have the chance to experience it locally when her solo exhibition Moon Pool opens at Lone Goat Gallery in Byron Bay at the end of November. Read on to learn more about her creative process, inspirations and the journey that shaped her distinctive practice.

Public art has the power to transform how we experience everyday spaces, and few understand this better than Rebecca Townsend, founding Director of Creative Road, a Byron Bay–based organisation connecting artists with communities, businesses and places. We spoke with Rebecca about the heart of Creative Road’s work, the importance of collaboration, and what it takes to keep an artist’s vision at the centre of complex projects.

This month, we have the privilege of speaking with Bindimu—a multi-disciplinary artist and curator whose expansive practice spans fibre art, sand painting, DJing, soundscapes, cultural dance, and works on canvas and bark. Grounded in the preservation and continuation of Indigenous creative practices, her work speaks to survival, resistance, and deep connection to Country.